This is no ordinary USB hub.  It is the only USB hub that I know of that will make you smile.  Not only will it make you smile, but it has 480mbps and LED light indication.  The hub’s head can rotate 360 degrees so he can smile at you from every direction.  The smiley USB hub is available in both blue and orange and it costs $14.

You can order this doohickey from gadget4all.com.

A Gizmodo commenter found this ridiculous set-up in a Starbucks.  The guy had decided to bring his Mac Mini, headphones, a 15 inch LCD, a T-Mobile G1, keyboard, mouse, mousepad, and external hard drive.  I can confidently say that this person is crazy.  I don’t even see any space on the table for a coffee here.

[via Gizmodo]

[via BBG]

Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) has gotten into the 8 megapixel camera game by introducing the N86.  The N-series slider phone (pictured) above has a Carl Zeiss lens, AutoFocus, dual-Led flash, and Symbian S60.  The LED display is 2.6″ and the internal memory is 8GB.  There is a 3.5 mm headphone jack, microUSB conenctor, and Share on Ovi integration.  Not word on price and availability yet.

It supports MP3, WMA, and AAC playback.  The weight is about 149g.  It also has Bluetooth and GPS support.  Additional details will be added to this post as they come in.

[Shamsi airbase in 2006]

[More recent picture of Shamsi]

The U.S. supposedly flew unmanned drone planes from the Shamsi airbase in Pakistan, around the southwestern province of Baluchistan since early 2006.  The image above shows the three Predator drones outside of a hangar on a runway in that vicinity.  The Times UK was able to snag the image before the planes were removed from view on Google Earth.

The CIA secretly uses these plans to observe and attack al-Qaeda and Taliban militants around the Afghanistan and Pakistan border.  The U.S. began to use this runway in 2001, when the U.S. began to invade Afghanistan.  The Pakistani government said that the U.S. left this location in 2006.  Pakistan and the U.S. have kept denying that the CIA is using runways to launch drones.  Pakistan has also demanded that the U.S. government cease using drones on their own tribal area.  This has especially picked up in the last year and has resulted in the killing of many citizens.

The image above also suggests that the U.S. government is launching drones from Shamsi, Kyrgyzstan for falconry purposes.

In the more recent picture of the airbase the drones are not showing, but you will notice that several new buildings have been constructed since the older picture.

Military experts that saw the images believe that the drones are MQ1 Predators that are often used to observe and strike militants at the Afghani border. The MQ1 Predator can carrier two laser-guided Hellfire missiles and can fly for up to about 454 miles at a speed of 135MPH with an altitude of 25,000 ft.

Google Earth, A Security Risk?
Google Earth uses extraordinary technology, but some believe that it can be a security risk.  If any layman can use Google Earth to find military planes, imagine if Taliban used the same software to launch an attack.  To prevent this from happening, the U.S. government asked Google Earth to remove sensitive locations including military bases, nuclear reactors, and other government buildings.

Last year, the government in India reported that terrorists possibly used Google Earth to become familiar with their targets.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is currently on their third CEO in two years.  Her name is Carol Bartz and she has loads of experience with a CAD company, but little experience with a digital media company.  Bartz may announce a major executive reorganization next week.

Kara Swisher of AllThingsD reported that Bartz sent out a memo to employees saying to “Get well-rested, because next week’s a biggie.”  Yahoo! is currently under pressure for turning down a $44 billion offer from Microsoft, a failed partnership with Google, and is rumored to take some sort of action with AOL.

The reorganization is expected to revolve around the COO, CTO, and the a new chief marketing officer all report to Bartz.  AllThingsD also believes that Bartz may abandon a recent restructuring that splits Yahoo! into four operating regions.  One executive would oversee the U.S. and another executive would handle all international regions.

A boy with down syndrome that was at the center of a lawsuit in a trial against several Google executives withdrew from a lawsuit.  He withdrew from the case this past Wednesday.  However the trial will continue as Judge Oscar Magi accepted the role of the plaintiff.  The judge will be representing the interests of people suffering from Down syndrome.

The Milan city council met for a second session on Wednesday.  The trial will be postponed until March 17 without hearing arguments.  The four Google executives involved in this case is David Drummond (Google SVP and chief legal officer), George Reyes (former Google CFO), Peter Fleischer (Google Global Privacy Counsel), and Arvind Desikan (former Google Video head in London).

The boy decided to withdraw from the lawsuit because it was not in his best interests to proceed.  Michela Malerba, Google’s lawyer also expressed regret about what happened.

“The decision to withdraw from the case has been taken because Google officials have not only expressed their solidarity over what happened but have also taken concrete actions that show their sensitivity to the problems of handicapped people and the grave problem of bullying,” stated Malerba.

The lawsuit is over a video that was uploaded to Google Video.  The video uploaded in 2006 had four kids making fun of a boy with Down’s syndrome.

“The agreement between the boy’s family and Google was a surprise to me,” stated Guido Camera, a lawyer that represents that Vivi Down association.  “No one knows the details of the agreement, but if the family of this unfortunate boy has received compensation, then I’m happy.”

[via PC World]

According to Verisign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN), about 24 million domain names were registered in 2008.  At the end of 2008, a total of 177 million domain name registrations across all top level domain names.

This is 16% growth over previous years.  In the fourth quarter of 2008, about 10.1 million new domain names were registered.   The top 5 most registered domain name suffixes are .com, .cn, .de, .net, and .org.

[via BizJournals]