Reality Bites
Del.icio.us, a beloved social bookmarking service, is being killed off as part of some "organizational streamlining" by Yahoo and we're already in tears. Here's some advice on how to preserve the memories—and bookmarks—we have with the service. More »
While tossing hats onto the ice when a player scores three goals might be hockey’s most famous tossing tradition, it simply doesn’t compare to the Technicolor grandeur of 23,096 teddy bears and other stuffed animals blanketing the rink as they did at the Calgary Hitmen game on Sunday:
For 16 years the Hitmen, who were co-owned by and named after former WWF champion Bret Hart, have held a Teddy Bear Toss to benefit over 50 charities in Alberta that work with children. On Monday, after the 23,000-strong toss, the players hand-delivered teddy bears to the Alberta Children’s Hospital.
[Rewind: Fans protest by making it rain tennis balls]
The fans bring the stuffed animals to the game and then wait for the first goal to be scored. For the 16,844 fans at the Scotiabank Saddledome watching the Hitmen take on the Red Deer Rebels on Sunday, the honor went to Cody Sylvester at 3:49 of the first period. He scored, and the mayhem started and continued for 40 minutes while play was delayed. "It's unbelievable," Sylvester told the Examiner after the game. "Scoring in front of all those fans and all those teddy bears coming down on you — it's a pretty special moment."
Here’s a longer look at the Teddy Bear Toss: a five-minute clip that chronicles what it was like to sit against the glass and have 23,000 stuffed animals pelting you, the other fans and, eventually, the ice.
This year's total was an improvement on last season's 16,755 bears. The Hitmen own the world record for the Teddy Bear Toss, now a minor league hockey tradition, with 26,919 in 2007. If you’re wondering what that looked like, here’s a glimpse.
[Rewind: Fan taser incident interrupts game]
The Teddy Bear Toss may not be one of hockey's most well-known traditions, but for the teams that hold them there's nothing else like it.
Stick-tap to Deadspin for the clip.
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Android: Google Maps on Android has always been great, but today's update brings it to a new level of awesome, adding 3D maps, compass mode, and offline caching so you can get anywhere you need to go—even without internet. More »
Facebook has announced its latest plans to assimilate our lives—facial recognition. In a few weeks, the social network will scan pics you upload and attempt to identify your friends—then tag them. It's OK, you can turn it off. More »
South Korea says it will conduct artillery drills similar to ones that prompted North Korea to shell a front-line island last month.
The Windows Live Team has launched a new website showcasing and organizing plugins for Photo Gallery, Movie Maker and Writer.
Photo Gallery plugins include, Inkubook (for creating professional looking photobooks), various uploaders (Facebook, Picasa, and Youtube) and other publishers for content management systems.
Movie Maker plugins are currently a little more limited,…
Dramatic video emerged Wednesday showing a Florida man who burst into a school board meeting with a gun, shooting point blank at the board members before being shot by a security guard.
A consumer protection group filed a class action suit against McDonald’s, Wednesday morning, claiming the toys included in Happy Meals bait and induce children to develop a preference for nutritionally poor foods.
Google has recently demoed an interesting WebGL application called Body Browser, which lets you explore the human body just like you can explore the world in Google Earth. Now you can try Google Body Browser before it’s added to Google Labs, assuming that you have a WebGL-enabled browser:
* WebGL is available, but not enabled by default in Chrome 8 (the latest stable version). Type about:flags in the address bar, click “Enable” next to “WebGL” and then click on “Restart now”. Please note that this is an experimental feature in Chrome 8.
* WebGL is enabled by default in Chrome 9 Beta, Chrome 9 Dev Channel, Chrome Canary Build and Firefox 4 beta.
Damon Hernandez was surprised to notice that the application doesn’t require a plugin. “Unlike other web based medical applications I have seen, no Flash, Java, or other plugins are needed. This application will run on any WebGL supported browser. (…) Last year I got the opportunity to work on an open standards based web3D medical app for learning the bones of the body. After witnessing how that app really helped students learn the bones, I am sold on using web3D for medical education.”
Here’s Google’s demo:
{ Thanks, Juuso. }
This holiday, we wanted to enable the Chrome community to work together for a good cause. Starting today, we invite you to support five worthy causes by counting and “donating” the tabs you open in Chrome.
To find out more about this effort and the organizations we’re partnering with, visit google.com/chrome/intl/en/p/cause/.
Next week, we’ll be sharing the details of the good deeds you’ve enacted. In the meantime, browse away!
Posted by Sarah Nahm, Product Marketing Manager
Back pain, migraines and other chronic pain hinder about one in 10 Canadians aged 12 to 44, Statistics Canada says.
Focusing on work you really want to do is probably the best way to get more done. But for a small side benefit, try adding something sweet to your caffeine breaks. A new study shows glucose and caffeine could work better together. More »
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been named Person of the Year by Time magazine. Yep, Mark Zuckerberg. Not Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Not imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. Not even the Chilean miners. Mark Zuckerberg.
Time’s Lev Grossman wrote that Zuckerberg received the honor “[f]or connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives.” The inconvenient truth, of course, is that Zuckerberg basically did all that about six years ago, when he created Facebook. But he did have a movie made about him this year. And it was really good. Besides, Zuckerberg’s young, and young people use Facebook, and Time magazine wants to stay hip with the kids. So it totally makes sense. You can find Time’s full explanation here, and read about things you probably already knew.
Time Magazine Names Facebook’s Zuckerberg Person of the Year. Seriously. originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 09:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Google Docs offers up to 1 GB of free space, but only file-by-file uploading. Amit Agarwal shows us how to use a free tool to upload entire folders of documents or images to your Docs space. More »
We’ve featured quite a few Windows downloads throughout 2010. Here’s a look back at the most popular free applications to help you tweak, customize, and enhance your Windows experience More »
Saskatchewan Roughriders slotback Andy Fantuz was scheduled to participate in a workout Tuesday with the Pittsburgh Steelers and has another session booked Saturday with the Minnesota Vikings.
For the first time, a man has been declared officially cured of HIV. The remedy may nearly have killed him, but it opens a door—just a crack—to hope that we may someday kill off the scourge for good. More »
[Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech]
Voyager 1 will exit solar system soon, is so close to the void it can taste it originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
