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Jul 31, 2012 4:20 PM   Here's a neat/gross piece of trivia that should make waking up to a stiflingly hot forecast a little easier to deal with. In Japan, a website called Gokiten—aka Cockroach Weather—takes the current conditions into account to determine how likely it is you'll run across a cockroach as you go about your day. In fact, the various regions of Japan are each given their own unique color-coded Cockroach Index—or Cockdex (we kid you not)—which rates the likelihood of increased roach activity in that area. Users are even encouraged to submit their own reports and sightings which help to make the forecasts more accurate, but besides just staying indoors, there's not much one can really do if the Cockdex is particularly high on a given day. Maybe wear heavier boots for more effective stomping? [Gokiten via RocketNews24] View the original article here This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts ...

Lenovo ThinkPads have a strong, almost cult-like following, and for good reason. This sturdy, high-performance line of business notebooks has long-set the gold standard for keyboard quality, with fantastic tactile feedback, great key layouts and slightly convex keys that are easy to find by feel. So when the company ditched the classic keyboard for a new island-style unit on its entire 2012 lineup, many ThinkPad fans were understandably concerned. Laptop Mag's Avram Piltch put both keyboards through the ringer. So what's the final verdict? Would the new keyboard be as good as last year's model or was Lenovo just trying to make its notebooks look more contemporary, while sacrificing quality? To answer this question, we put last year's ThinkPad T420 (classic keyboard) head-to-head against the new ThinkPad T430 in a no-keys-barrred type-off. We also talked to Lenovo's Chief Designer David Hill and Keyboard Guru Aaron Stewart of Lenovo to get their perspective on the c...

The opening ceremony of the Olympics is happening right now, kicked off by a giant, colored-smoke flyover by the Royal Air Force's Red Arrows squadron. Pretty cool! Your pounds at work! But does it beat... The Super Bowl? Those RAF boys just dropped thick ropes of red white and blue (no, not that kind) over London's Olympic stadium. The crowd roared. It's fun to watch powerful jets fly over you, especially when they're dropping colored smoke. Everyone loves colored smoke. Everyone, that is, except the audience of the Super Bowl (and plenty of other yankee matches), who are treated to the Cold War thrill of a B-2 stealth bomber cruising overhead, close enough to yank out of the sky, high enough to drop its bellyful of ordnance onto a screaming crowd below. The patriotism is orgiastic. They're both pretty awesome! But as this is the Olympics, and not an English doily swap meet, there must be a winner. So who's your pick? A few things to consider: Cool name—sort ...

Jul 23, 2012 5:00 PM   Having helped the fast food giant improve its image in Europe by revamping the interior design of its restaurants, Patrick Norguet was once again hired by McDonald's to create a more eco-friendly alternative to its disposable coffee cups. The result is the Tasse, a ceramic cup wrapped in an insulating foam sleeve that helps keep the coffee hot, but more importantly, prevents customers from burning their hands. Its minimal design is branded with the golden arches logo, but besides that no one will be able to tell you're drinking coffee from the same place that sells Happy Meals—a culinary crime that's probably even more shocking in a country like France. But it's hard to complain about the branding when McDonald's actually intends to give away five million of the cups absolutely free to encourage its patrons to switch from relying on the disposable variety. In the long run the promotion could actually save the company money, and if it's s...

Jul 22, 2012 12:00 PM   WinUnleaked has some new leaked screenshots from Microsoft's Windows 8 RTM (Release to Manufacturers) build that show how the new OS will look. From the look of them, Microsoft is making an effort to make Metro work as a unifying design across all of Windows 8. The big difference is that IE10 now changes its color to coordinate itself with the color scheme of Windows 8. It seems reasonable to guess that other apps will eventually get similar treatment, since Microsoft also made the color scheme the same for window borders and the taskbar. The only ugly bit is the new boot screen, with that hideous Windows 8 logo on black: For other details, like a look at some of the new wallpapers, head over to WinUnleaked. [WinUnleaked via Verge] View the original article here This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.