Why our ancestors couldn’t ape chimps

Study of climbing abilities disproves long-held belief that the earliest humans were able to scale trees as easily as primates

Humanity’s immediate predecessors may have had trouble climbing trees, research suggests – so they may not have been as ape-like as many experts believe.

Google Maps Typography

Twitter with your brain

UW-Madison Click for video: University of Wisconsin researcher Adam Wilson composes a Twitter message using a system that reads his brain waves. Click on the image to watch a video explaining how the message was sent.

Sneak a little office shut-eye with iNap@Work

 

                           

If ever an iPhone app was created for the George Costanzas of the world, it’s this one: iNap@Work simulates office sounds so you can snooze while the people around you think you’re working.

Twitter’s big day? Here comes Oprah

 

Updated 11:33 a.m. PDT with new @Oprah follower statistics.

The official answer is in regarding Twitter Chief Executive Evan Williams’ teasing tweet Thursday about Friday being a “very big day”: @Oprah.

Spanking ‘brings couples together’

 

                    

SPANKING is stressful at first, but it could bring consenting couples closer together. That’s the implication of two studies of hormonal changes associated with sadomasochistic (S&M) activities including spanking, bondage and flogging.

BakerTweet

 

Quite simply the most amazing golf hole on the planet

 

The brand-new golf course at the Legends Golf & Safari Resort in South Africa is an amazing stretch of 18 holes designed by 18 different top-flight golfers, including Padraig Harrington, Colin Montgomerie, K.J. Choi,Retief Goosen, Justin Rose, Trevor Immelman and Vijay Singh. And I’m sure each one of those 18 holes is a perfect mini-masterpiece of challenge and reward. Along with, apparently, a lion or two along the way, if we’re to believe the brochures.

Did Obama Violate Copyright Law With iPod Gift?

President Barack Obama gave Queen Elizabeth II an iPod on Thursday with some 40 Broadway songs from popular musicals like West Side Story and the King and I.

Yet convoluted U.S. copyright laws make it unclear whether the chief executive is a copyright scofflaw. Fred von Lohmann, a copyright expert at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, explains:

“You know your copyright laws are broken when there is no easy answer to this question,” he wrote.

Read his Thursday blog post here.

Sony Pictures Television unveils new iPhone games

                         

Sony Pictures Television (SPT) on Monday announced plans for several games for the iPhone and iPod touch coming in 2009.

 

Ghostbusters is a new game planned on the hit comedy movie with Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd; it’s being developed to tie in to a new Ghostbusters game coming out in June. New York City is facing an invasion of ghosts once again, and you have to save the day by catching them.

Twitter, the Friendly Ghost

                                                      

Following your favorite celebrity on Twitter? Maybe not! While the whole world is a ‘twitterin’…was it any wonder that a certain level of the elite twitterati would eventually find a way to game the system. The latest trend a foot is “Ghost Twittering.” The term was coined to describe when someone, usually a celebrity, politician, sport figure or a corporate brand pays another person or persons to update their Twitter account on their behalf. The use of ghostwriters has been around in the literary world since literature was first penned. Now,it appears it is prevalent in Twitterdom as well. But, while it may make sense for our busy world leaders to farm out their tweets, when celebrities engage in this practice it really seems to be defeating the purpose.

Twitter hitchhiker travels for free

  

 

Globetrotter Paul Smith has visited more cities in the last three weeks than most people see in a lifetime.

And he hasn’t spent a cent along the way.

The 33-year-old Englishman has made his way halfway around the world through the generosity of users of Twitter, an internet-based social networking service.

Optus Whale Song

Australian telecommunications company Optus asks the question, “What if you could write a love song for a whale, and an orchestra went out into the ocean to play it?” Film director David Denneen worked with composer Bruce Heald and a specially selected chamber music group to perform music that both whales and humans could appreciate.

   

 

An orchestra was placed on a barge with film crew and sent out to serenade the whales, emulating the sounds made by male humpback whales as they migrate along the coast of Queensland. “When it comes to communication, anything is possible.”