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• App Delivers 'Virtual Placebo' to Improve Your Health May 18, 2013
  Researchers from PlaceboEffect.com are raising funds through Indiegogo to create an app that administers a virtual placebo. No pills, no doctors — just pictures. Here's how it works: You begin the experience by choosing which lifestyle aspect you'd like to change — say, quitting smoking or decreasing stress — before scheduling an alarm-like reminde […]
  Eric Larson
• Learn About Overfishing With This Interactive Web Aquarium May 18, 2013
  The human race has had a profound effect on the planet. Unfortunately, it hasn't always been positive. One of the overlooked issues we've caused is overfishing. By fishing too much, we have diminished the population of fish in a way that, according to many scientists, can even threaten oceanic ecosystems To highlight this issue, which is often poor […]
  Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
• Manager Uses Urban Dictionary to Defend UFC Fighter's Gay Twitter Slur May 18, 2013
  This isn't exactly your textbook bit of damage control PR UFC fighter Nate Diaz (above) was suspended by the mixed martial arts body on Thursday night for earlier in the week using a gay slur against another fighter. That's typically where a manager or someone else would step in and get the athlete to apologize and talk about the perils of using in […]
  Sam Laird
• Report: Yahoo Board to Meet Sunday to Mull $1.1 Billion Tumblr Purchase May 18, 2013
  Yahoo looks to be very seriously eyeing a Tumblr acquisition, according to a report from AllThingsD The tech blog is reporting that the Yahoo board plans to meet Sunday to mull a $1.1 billion all-cash bid for TumblrATD cautions that the deal could fall apart, but was on track as of Friday evening. If the board votes in favor of the deal, it could be announce […]
  Todd Wasserman
• Nintendo Will Get Revenue From All YouTube Videos Featuring its IP May 17, 2013
  Nintendo will collect revenue from fan-made YouTube videos that feature content from its games, according to a statement by the company. That means any time someone uploads a walkthrough or "let's play" video — a popular format where players demo the first 10 to 30 minutes of a game — Nintendo will be able to collect royalties on it. "For […]
  Chelsea Stark
• Wi-Fi Network Breaks Speed Record May 17, 2013
  Think your network is fast? Getting a gigagbyte-sized movie over your local wireless network to your hard drive in a few seconds is old hat. Now there's a network that can push a 2-hour, high-definition movie to a computer a mile away in less time than it takes to read a single word. At the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, a new record has […]
  Discovery News
• 'Bang With Friends' Gets Booted From App Store May 17, 2013
  We might need to call it "Banned With Friends." A week after debuting the new mobile client for anonymous friend banging, the iOS version of Bang With Friends (BWF) was removed from the App Store by Apple. Bang With Friends debuted in January and quickly took off in popularity. The concept is simple: Users log in with Facebook and select what frien […]
  Christina Warren
• Robot Alarm Clock Dances by Your Bedside May 17, 2013
  If you've tried every alarm clock app and gadget under the sun but waking up on time still proves difficult, a beside companion that dances and talks might do the trick. No, it's not a human, it's a robot. Southern California-based Nuts and Voltz has developed a working prototype for an iPhone- and iPod-compatible robot alarm clock that wakes […]
  Vignesh Ramachandran
• Does Tumblr Lose Its Cool If It's Acquired? May 17, 2013
  In the news business, when you start seeing enough reports about something, it usually means that at least part of those reports are true. That's why the media and tech worlds are in such a tizzy today, with multiple reports surfacing that Yahoo is close to acquiring Tumblr for as much as $1 billion. Now even more reports are starting to suggest that Go […]
  Christina Warren
• Google Glass Stole the Show at Google I/O 2013 May 17, 2013
  Google made a lot of announcements in its marathon keynote to kick off Google I/O on Wednesday, but its most buzzed-about product was almost a no-show at the eventGoogle Glass barely got a mention, even though this is the first I/O where the tiny wearable computer is actually in developers' hands. The glaring omission didn't stop Glass from stealin […]
  Pete Pachal