geekosystem

Google, Twitter, and SayNow have taken it upon themselves to give a voice to the masses in Egypt, who have been completely cut off from the Internet. Over the weekend, the team created "Speak2Tweet", a service that allows anyone to tweet a recorded message via telephone. Though the latest reports claim that cell networks will be shutdown in anticipation of tomorrow's "march of millions", landline phones can still be used. While most of the recordings are in Arabic, a few particularly heartwarming messages can be found in English on the speak2tweet Twitter account.

We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company we acquired last week, to make this idea a reality. It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet. We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone there.

(via Google) (title pic via Al Jazeera)

While we can't promise one of these videos every day, we can give you this one. For the tiniest bit of context (which you don't even need to enjoy this video), this dance troupe is performing a routine inspired by the popular anime series Space Battleship Yamamoto on a Japanese TV show that seems to resemble Dancing With the Stars. It's got precision, it's got enthusiasm, it's got break-dancing, it's got a move I'd like to call "the accidental Nazi" ... give it a look. You will be entertained. (io9 via Topless Robot)

This afternoon, Christopher Poole, a.k.a. moot, announced the closed beta launch of Canvas (canv.as), which aspires to be "the best place to share and play with images." The site looks pretty enough [though I say this based on screenshots, having not received one of the 4,000 launch invites], but what makes this launch notable is moot's role as the founder and administrator of 4chan.org [warning: 4chan], the feared and revered imageboard and hub of breathtaking creativity and unspeakable villainy. Thanks to its founder and its image-centric nature, comparisons to 4chan are inevitable for Canvas, which raised $625,000 in funding. TechCrunch guesses that "more than a few of the 4chan crowd may head over to Canvas to take a gander." Maybe so, but Canvas, which some in the tech press have referred to as "4chan 2," has its work cut out for it if it wants to win over the sizable population of 4chan 1.0.

The Canadian Radio-Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has sanctioned "Usage-Based Billing" for Bell Canada, effectively killing all forms of competition in the ISP space. Telco goliath Bell leases their lines to smaller providers, such as TekSavvy, at a rate governed by the CRTC. As a reseller, TekSavvy previously offered high-bandwidth plans at a lower cost than Bell. With UBB in place, TekSavvy is forced to lower their $31.95 premium data caps from 200GB to a miserable 25GB per month (both download and upload combined), with overages costing users an additional CAN $1.90 per gigabyte.

The makers of TweetDeck, the popular Twitter client, have unveiled a new fully-integrated system to extend tweets past Twitter's 140-character limit and into infinity. The new service, called Deck.ly is now baked-in to the TweetDeck desktop, Chrome, and Android clients with specially-made iPad and iPhone apps on the way. Deck.ly works by creating a separate webpage for each tweet over 140 characters. This gives users the freedom to write as much as they want, even embed media (videos, etc.), and still share the information through Twitter's hyper-connected network. Deck.ly is also seamlessly integrated into TweetDeck clients. Users simply type as much as they want and receive a warning once they pass 140 characters informing them that Deck.ly has been activated. TweetDeck users will see these longer posts in the application as full-sized posts, non-users will see the beginning of the tweet with a deck.ly link they can follow to see the entire messsage. Also, since they operate outside Twitter's framework, all Deck.ly pages will be publicly accessible. Though other tweet-lengthening services have existed for some time, the seamless integration and wide user base puts Deck.ly in a class all its own, and may have wider implications for Twitter users.

Ridiculously-sized weapons are pretty much synonymous with Japanese video game heroes nowadays, and the above video posted on YouTube by user michaelcthulhu takes one of the most iconic ridiculously-sized swords, Cloud's Buster Sword from Final Fantasy VII, and shows us what would happen if a hero actually had to use said sword in real life. Head on past the break to see some pictures of the sword.

Happy 50-year anniversary, Astrochimp (LIFE) Netgear CEO: Jobs' closed style will lead to trouble for Apple (SMH) A still-image tour of the Grand Canyon (Giz) How to make your own CPU (Homebrew CPU) Design flaw leads to Intel chip recall (HuffPo) Evolution of the cell phone in papercraft (Geek.com) Clue, Arrested Development-Style (Pleated-Jeans) (title pic via THD)

This stop-motion animated video using nothing but coins on a black sheet seems really impressive.  Then in the making-of clip at the end the animators show you the simple trick they use to position the coins. And it's still really impressive. (via Laughing Squid.)

This poor, innocent man has become the latest victim to the Internet's insatiable need for PhotoShop-driven laughs. Caught in one of the sudden and brutal winter storms the man, now identified as Zach Burroughs, sought shelter for him and his frozen treat. Perhaps it was the apparent devotion to his ice cream or because he looked more like a time traveler from next summer, Burroughs has become the darling of Reddit and is the foci of many a meme mashup. Burroughs remains lukewarm about his newfound popularity, but apparently even more blasé about the foodstuff that catapulted him to internet stardom. As he said to The Washington Post, who originally ran his picture:

“I don’t even like ice cream that much,” said Burroughs, an attorney who works on 15th Street NW.

The WaPo also has a meme post-mortem, giving us a peak behind the curtain of what makes an internet star. But more importantly is your fix of funny pictures.

Calvin and Hobbes' snowmen are unrivaled in creative brutality, which is why they served as inspiration for a group of Indiana Tech students who playfully impaled them on the school's Ellifritt Structure. (via TDW)

The above picture shows belly button bacteria growing in petri dishes, harvested from scientists, journalists and bloggers attending the ScienceOnline 2011 Conference. One may wonder why this is a thing, and the answer--as it usually is--is because of science, of course. The growing bacteria are part of the Belly Button Biodiversity project, which is also a thing, headed by North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and is part of a larger project with the goal of teaching humans the kinds of things that live in and on us. To gross us out. But, you know, for science.

(via Boing Boing)

According to a post on founder and CEO Markus Frind's blog, popular free online dating site PlentyofFish was hacked last week, leading the PlentyofFish team to believe that all usernames and passwords were downloaded and compromised. Though the news is coming from the CEO's personal blog, PlentyofFish hasn't yet released an official statement. Sites get hacked all the time--even Facebook overlord Mark Zuckerberg's own Facebook page was hacked last week--but the PlentyofFish hack comes with a fairly elaborate and ridiculous story.

Well-played, Apple. Well-played, indeed. In proving just how light the MacBook Air really is, this Apple Store has one displayed in the front window, suspended in mid-air by a helium-filled balloon. No, really -- it's that light! Look for yourself! (The Next Web)

The vast majority of contributors to Wikipedia are male, according to a New York Times piece that studied the user-curated site. Not only that, but the "female-oriented" entries are generally shorter and less comprehensive than those authored by men, "for men." Really? What, exactly, determines what women are interested in, and did the NYT really make fair comparisons? Um, no. That is the answer.

The city of Bergen County, New Jersey, is slated to become the most delicious smelling city in America. Provided, of course, that you are a fan of deli pickles. In the wake of a rough, stormy winter season on the east coast, the affluent enclave has turned to pickle brine as a cheaper alternative rock salt to keep their roads clear and navigable. From the Time Magazine newsfeed blog:

And the price can't be beat: the briny mixture costs just 7 cents a gallon, compared to $63 a ton for salt. Quick math works the pickle juice out to roughly $16 per ton [...]

This is just one more use for pickle brine after it's recent resurgence on the cocktail scene. If it can keep our roads clean and chase our shots, is there nothing that preserved foods can't do? Next up: 101 uses for putrefied shark fin. (via Time newsfeed, image via TeaWithBuzz)