NewCityMovement

HAL 9000

HAL9000 Wallpaper here. [Via FFFFound.com]

Wireless Music In Every Room?

Sony, among other companies like Soundcast and JBL are catching onto the possibilities of wireless music for the home. Sony's S-AIR technology delivers a practical wireless multi-room solution without complicated set-up requirements, such as IP addresses, WEP keys and pin codes. Wireless audio can be transmitted from the main system in the living room to multiple rooms throughout the home — up to 164 feet — simply by connecting a separate S-AIR Air Station receiver/speaker into a power outlet. It's a proprietary system, meaning you have to have all Sony components in your house to work with these things. I would be interested to see if it really works.

Sony Introduced the first Walkman today, July 1, 1979 (Via Disinfo)

Laptops designed by 7-9 year olds. (Via TMN)

Samsung animated documentary on the Burj Dubai (Dubai Tower).

Sisterhood Of The Traveling Genes

The Genographic Project is a DNA human history study funded by National Geographic Society, The Wiatt Family Foundation and IBM. Me and my signif other recently got the testing kit in the mail that allows every day people to plug into the findings and discover where their ancestors hail from. Ancestors as in 150,000 years ago - back to 'Mother Africa' ancestors. Geneticist Spencer Wells started the project in 1996 by sampling pure DNA from isolated cultures and tribes around the globe and using them to "chart the ancient human migrations from Africa across the continents." For those of us with Mormon backgrounds, where genealogy is a really big deal, this should definitely take the cake... assuming you believe in science, DNA and that the world is older than 2000 years old.

NKOTB

The New Kids On The Block telephone came out in 1990. Someone was mentioning the other day that it was one of the first high profile 900 number rip off scams. The phone came preset with a hotline button that connected one hundred thousand unsuspecting little girls per week to recordings of the 'Kids' for 95 cents per minute. The service was advertised in newspapers and television as well.

AT&T has confirmed that the Hulk Hogan Hotline was the most lucrative 900 line in the United States from 1991 through 1993. Other early leaders in amassing huge volumes of revenue were the New Kids on the BlockDionne Warwick Psychic Network. – Wikipedia

You're New Reac Table

As heard on PRI's The World here is a new musical instrument called the Reactable. Unsurprisingly, Bjork is one of the few people who owns one. [Thanks Doug]

Gay scientists isolate 'Christian' gene. CNN [Thanks Stewf]

The New Melodyne Dimension

This crazy German guy invented something called Direct Note Access, a technology that makes the impossible possible. For the first time in audio recording history you can identify and edit individual notes within polyphonic audio material. The unique access that Melodyne affords to pitch, timing, note lengths and other parameters of melodic notes will now also be afforded to individual notes within chords. [Thanks Joe]

I love the look of the new Xmission homepage.

The new MacBook is tres heroin chic.

Birdmen

Humans can fly (sort of) now. [Thanks Brian]

Be A Micro Lender With Kiva.org

You've probably heard of "micro loans" by now but Kiva.org is the first website/organization of it's kind by helping everyday people provide a "micro loan" to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored and the repayment rate is currently 100%.

Kiva's new service is currently experiencing record traffic from the incredible press attention it's received (Oprah, The Today Show, and President Clinton's book "Giving" and Frontline World). On average, loans fundraising on the Kiva website receive full funding within a day. To give everyone a chance to lend, they have temporarily limited loan contributions to $25 per business. Kiva hopes to remove the limit soon, as they work with Field Partners to post more loans on the site.

Watch this 15 minute segment from Frontline World to see how truly revolutionary personal micro loans can be.

(Shown above is Allen Byaruhanga's group, one of the four people NCM is supporting using Kiva. She is in clothing sales and requesting a loan to buy a baby lock sewing/embroidery machine in order to improve the services that she proves to customers.)

A Smart Car Built Fortwo

Three feet smaller than a Mini Cooper, the Mercedes-Benz engineered Smart car "fortwo" arrives stateside in 2008 starting at $11,600. [Via Men.Style.com]