Call of Duty: Black Ops Sells $360 Million on Launch Day, Is New 'Biggest Entertainment Launch Ever'

Call of Duty: Black Ops sold-through an estimated $360 million in the first 24 hours in North America and the UK alone, Activision has announced, leading the publisher to declare the November 9 launch the new “biggest entertainment launch ever.” It had previously bestowed the title upon Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Treyarch’s Cold War-era shooter sold through approximately 5.6 million copies in North America and the United Kingdom, according to Activis…

Giant Mystery Space Bubbles Discovered

Space_bubbles.jpg

Space. It’s an expansive cold place full of giant scary
things–huge terrifying object like these space bubbles. There are two of them,
jutting out on either side of the Milky Galaxy, north and south. The two
objects, taken together, measure 50,000 light years.

The giant space bubbles weren’t discovered until recently,
when astronomer Doug Finkbeiner happened upon them at the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, thanks to NASA’s Fermi
Gamma-Ray Telescope.

So, what are they? Who knows? Not  Finkbeiner. He told the press, "We don't fully
understand their nature or origin." We do know that they're big, however–they take
up roughly half of the visible sky. Apparently we've haven't seen them until
now, thanks to all of the gamma radiation in the sky. 

Jolibook is the official netbook of Jolicloud, coming this month?

Just a few weeks ago, we got word (by way of a few Tweets) that Jolicloud was seemingly — if the images were any indication — in the final stages of developing a netbook of its own. Well, we’ve just gotten some official news on just that topic. The Jolibook, as it’s going to be known, is of mostly unknown specifications at this point, but here’s what we do know: the Jolicloud 1.1-powered laptop will boast an Atom N550 CPU, and a 250GB hard drive. Jolicloud also says that the netbook’s display will boast a “gorgeous” screen and an affordable price. Sadly, that’s all we know for now, though the company is promising that all this is going down this month, so we’re going to keep our eyes peeled for you.

Jolibook is the official netbook of Jolicloud, coming this month? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 10:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How to Create a Wiki without any Technical Know-How Using Google Sites

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Wikis are a great way to communicate and work on a project with other people, but hosting your own wiki can be complicated to work with. Today we’ll show you how to setup your own Wiki page with Google Sites.

Note: naturally this post is meant for beginners, so the more advanced users should probably skip this one.

Create Your Wiki

We need to sign up for an account in Google before we can create a Wiki with Google Sites. Once you have your Google account, go to Google Sites and click the ‘Create Site’ button to start creating your own Wiki.

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Google Sites has different templates that we can choose from for our website. Select ‘Project Wiki’ to start creating your wiki.

Specify a name that best describe the purpose of your wiki.

We can even make a visually engaging wiki with a selection of themes.

Google gives us the option to publicly share our wiki or share the wiki with a group of people that we are working with.

Adding collaborators and members in the wiki is quite simple. Select “Share this site” from the more actions dropdown and enter the email address(s) of collaborators you want to add.

You can invite people to collaborate on your wiki by sending email invitations.

We can even give different permissions to each person who we invite to edit our wiki.

Changing the Wiki’s Appearance

There is a lot of customization that we can do with our Wiki. Start by accessing the site management editor by clicking the ‘Manage Site’ menu.

The site editor let us customize the site layout, color, fonts, and theme.

Click the ‘Color and Fonts’ menu to change the site background, header, image, and fonts colors.

Inserting other Page Elements

Google Sites is tightly integrated with other Google products such as Picasa, Spreadsheet, Document, Presentation, etc. To begin inserting these elements into your Wiki, begin with clicking the ‘Edit Page’ or ‘Create Page’ button.

Click on the ‘Insert’ menu and choose the Google product that we want to incorporate into our wiki.

The great thing about Google Sites is that we can put our Google documents (spreadsheet, presentation) or Picasa photo album into any sites that we create in Google Sites.

Google Sites makes it easy for us to create Wikis without any technical know-how. It has a user friendly interface that allows us to create visually appealing and easy to use Wiki, just take a look at this Wiki site.

Now you can use Google Sites to create your own Wiki and use them in your work.

Google Sites

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Discover Card Motiva Application

Latest Features How-To Geek ETC

Five new themes

Posted by Manu Cornet, Software Engineer

Manu: Hey, how would you fancy some new Gmail themes?
Jake: Sure, I would love that! How usable are they?
Manu: Huh, usable? Well, there’s a flishy-flashy theme that blinks every…
Jake: What? I don’t want things to flash, I want to read my email.
Manu: No? Well then, what about this fluorescent pink theme that will make your screen look very special when your friends are looking at…
Jake: No pink please!
Manu: Oh. Then maybe this hyper dynamic and playful theme that makes all links on the page jump away each time you try to click on…
Jake: Are you insane? Please, just give me something usable. If I want flashy game-like graphics, I can use High Score. If I want something dapper for my friends to look at, I can use Shiny. If I want cartoon characters hanging out here and there in my Gmail, I can use Zoozimps. I just want something dead simple.
Manu: What about stripping the Gmail interface to the bare bones, like these two new themes, Basic Black and Basic White?


Jake: That’s better. The dark one may be good for my eyes.
Manu: Great! Do you have an Android phone?
Jake: Yes.
Manu: Then you may like this Android theme too. How about that?


Jake: Nice! Some graphics but still subtle. Give me more.
Manu: Relaxing tree tops? This one ain’t blinking.


Jake: Not bad! What about something that would feel more handmade?
Manu: You’re in luck, sir. I have this cool Marker theme in store for you. Very unprofessional.


Jake: Nice — I’m gonna stick with this one for now.
Manu: Good choice! See you next time for some more.

New Retinal Chip Temporarily Restores Vision for Blind Man

Retinal Chip Restores VisionResearchers at University Eye Clinic in Tübingen, Germany have begun testing a new retinal implant designed to restore sight to the blind. Previous experiments like this have employed external cameras, but the new device uses the patient's eye itself to help collect and process visual data. A small chip is implanted in the rear of the eye, where it converts light into electronic impulses. These impulses are then fed to the optic nerve; patients are trained to interpret the flashes as images. The resulting images were detailed enough for patients to recognize large letters and navigate a room filled with obstacles.

The most successful results came with Miikka Terho, of Finland, who was — within days of receiving the implant — able to read his own name, which had been intentionally misspelled to ensure that he was actually reading the word. Terho was also able to tell time on a clock, as well as identify and locate cutlery and dishes on a table. His prototype implant has since been removed, but he has been promised an upgraded model soon.

Continue reading New Retinal Chip Temporarily Restores Vision for Blind Man

New Retinal Chip Temporarily Restores Vision for Blind Man originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 15:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Star Wars-style 3D Holograms in the Works

 princess_leia_hologram.jpg

It looks like we might finally be catching up with a long,
long time ago in a galaxy far, far away–in a couple of years, at least Researchers at the University
of Arizona have reportedly designed
an almost 360 degree hologram that updates at a rate of two seconds–not quite
animation-level, but a step in the right direction, perhaps.

Said researcher Nasser Peyghambarian, “We foresee many
applications, including for example, car or airplane manufacturing. They can
look at the hologram and design the system they have in real-time and look at
the model and make changes on it as they go.”

He didn’t mention anything about messages from the Rebel
Alliance, but we all know he was thinking it.

The group has been working on the technology for some time.
Back in 2008, they created a black and white 3D projection that updated every
four minutes. The new technology updates more than 100 times faster than that.

Just don’t expect the thing to land in your living room any
time soon. Says Peyghambarian, “I don’t think you can see these in our
houses in less than seven to 10 years.”