Fans over at the Halo Waypoint forums received a tantalizing email yesterday from Microsoft entitled “Your piece of the Halo 4 puzzle.” The group quickly collected the 32 fragments of the image and eventually puzzled them together to discover what is likely to be the box art for the forthcoming game. You know you want to see this.

The intense storm system that ravaged Texas earlier in the week, dropping a reported 15 tornados before finally dissipating, shocked viewers across the country as incredible footage of the storms dominated news coverage. Scienistists at the National Oceanica and Atmospheric Administration were watching too, and have released a video of the storms as seen from space using data from their Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 13 (GOES 13).

Back in August of 2011, Google began mapping the Amazon Rainforest for their ever-growing Street View feature within Google Maps. Now, Google has released the fruits of their rainforest labor, as the bits of the rainforest they explored are available for you to explore on Google Street View.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Mars is its weather, which we’re now in a great position to observe thanks to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRise camera. Back on February 16, the orbiter captured a remarkable image of dust devil spinning over the red surface of the planet. Now, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have handily reconstructed the twister on their computers here on Earth, giving us a closer look at this remarkably phenomenon. 

Smartphone cameras are constantly getting better and better, all but putting the consumer camera market completely out of business. Considering the quality of the lens you’re using heavily contributes to the quality of the camera, it’s not surprising that there are plenty of awkward-looking, but effective smartphone camera lenses out there. But it doesn’t always take an expensive lens to take a good picture. In fact, you can turn your smartphone’s camera into a microscope using nothing but a drop of water.

Google’s Street View project is a pretty interesting and widespread endeavor. It can come in handy for plotting out by-sight directions from one place to another or can help you waste time “walking” around places you’ll probably never visit. It can also publish a candid shot of you peeing into your garden, thereby making you the laughing stock of the small village in which you live. That’s exactly what happened to an unfortunate Frenchman who is now suing Google to get the image removed.

Animator Evan Seitz has put together a neat little video that will test your knowledge of film in what he calls “ABCinema.” If you’re a film buff, you’ll probably have no trouble picking out each reference, but if you’re familiar with such geeky classics as Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Inception, then you’ll have a fighting chance. Given the speed at which they go by, just processing the imagery is half the battle. I think I’ve got most of them, but the choice for “z” is still eluding me. Any ideas? Video has some course language, so consider yourself forewarned. See it, after the break.

When you think of Third World problems, you general think of lack of food, lack of shelter, lack of clean water supplies, and things like that. While these are some of the more prominent issues, there are also many, many more you probably wouldn’t think of, like lack of access to corrective lenses, for example. Over one billion people in Third World countries are getting by with eyesight that is anywhere from “pretty bad” to “totally abysmal” because they lack access to optometrists, diagnostic equipment, and lenses. There may be a solution on the horizon however: $2 smartphone-operated diagnostic scopes in conjunction with liquid-lens glasses that can make themselves.

Ghent, Belgium’s annual Light Festival, had some pretty amazing presentations, including videos projected onto water, gardens of light, and projections onto buildings. However, the crown jewel of the event was probably the Luminarie De Cagna — an enormous, 84-foot-high, 55,000 LED cathedral of light. Amazingly, this colorful building consumes only 20 kilowatts per hour. Read on after the break to see more of the Luminaire De Cagna and a video of the festival.

To herald the arrival of their new bigger, two-color 3D printer The Replicator, MakerBot released a stop motion animated film about a 3D printed princess called The Right Heart. It’s even got a catchy tune, too. In the video, the princess goes looking for her missing heart, finding it in an unexpected place. It’s cool because the aforementioned princess doesn’t need rescuing, or someone else to (in this sense, literally) complete her, she goes out and earns what she’s looking for on her own. It’s a good message, and fits with the MakerBot ethos, as well — she didn’t receive what she wanted, she made it herself. But I can’t help myself feeling a little sorry for those fellas with their hearts on the ground. See the video, after the break.