As GPS devices are becoming more accessible on mobile phones and in box-shaped devices, humans are becoming a lot more dependent on them, including myself.  I spent Memorial Day in Chicago and it was especially useful having a GPS to determine what road I was on when driving around downtown and Lake Shore Drive.

Col. Dave Buckman stated that there is a potential risk with GPS satellites becoming degraded, but the issue is under control by the government.  “The issue is under control. We are working hard to get out the word. The issue is not whether GPS will stop working. There’s only a small risk we will not continue to exceed our performance standard,” stated Buckman on Twitter.

“We have 30+ satellites on orbit now. We’ll launch another in Aug 09, and again early 10. Going below 24 won’t happen,” stated the Air Force from the Twitter account.

The last time I wrote about the Air Force and Twitter was when the government agency used the micro-blogging platform for recruitment purposes.

[via PCW]

Nikesh Arora and Tim Armstrong were the two of the top sales leaders at Google when Armstrong was still on board.  Both of them would compete with each other on how well their sales organization was.  Armstrong was the head of U.S. sales and Arora was the head of Europe.  Since then Armstrong quit Google to become CEO and Chairman of AOL.

Now that Tim Armstrong is gone and Arora has stepped up as the President of Global Sales Ops and Business Development at Google, there has been some shuffling around.  Arora hired Dennis Woodside to replace Armstrong.  Woodside is a former analyst at McKinsey that has strength in analytics and data.

Here are some of the additional changes:
Company-Wide:
- The East, West, and Central sales organizations for Google AdWords will be dissolved and they will be focusing on vertical industries.
- Print related jobs will be eliminated and will be given the opportunity to apply for other jobs within the company.

Personnel:
- Penry Price has become VP of agency and industry relations.
- Jon McAteer will be responsible for retail and technology clients.
- Jim Lecinski is working with B2B, consumer-packaged goods businesses, local, and healthcare clients
- Bonita Stewart is responsible for automotive, financial, media, travel, and entertainment

[via BusinessInsider]

Digital Sky Technologies (DST) is a Russian investment company that has just bought $200 million worth of Facebook stock based on a $10 billion valuation.  Last week Digital Sky also made an offer to buy $100 million-$150 million worth of common stock at $6.5 billion valuation.

The common stock offer would be used to buy stock from employees as long as they are willing to cash out.  Digital Sky is owned by Russian businessman Yuri Milner.  DST also has ownership in major online mailing system Mail.ru.

The $200 million investment made in Facebook today is for 1.96% equity.  This deal is very similar to the $240 million investment Microsoft made in Facebook.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) CTO Ari Balogh stated last Wednesday to expect further acquisitions from the search engine company.  They are looking for acquisitions that will enable them to become more involved in social networking.

According to Balogh, the company has been talking to various companies about partnerships in the social networking space.  “I can guarantee you there will be some acquisitions and we will do some stuff in house,” stated Balogh.

[via Reuters]

Gibbs Technologies and Lockheed Martin are working on a new type of military vehicle that will work on both land and water.  This is why they named it the Amphibious Combat Craft.  On water the vehicle will be able to travel at 45MPH and on land it could travel at 100MPH.

The vehicles will come in three models:
1. The Amphibious Combat Craft Expeditionary (ACC-E) is a 20 foot sized vehicle with capabilities to go up to 45MPH on water and 80MPH on land. (8 occupants)
2. The Amphibious Combat Craft Expeditionary (ACC-R) is a 35 foot sized vehicle with capabilities to go up to 40MPH on water. (20 occupants)
3. The Terraquad is capable of over 55MPH on water and 50MPH on land. (2 occupants)

More pictures after the jump:

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! was one of the most addictive games on the original NES.  The game has been recreated for the highest selling Nintendo console, the Wii.

To play Punch-Out!! for the Wii, the Nunchuk and Wii remote to punch other characters.  To duck from being punched, users can also play with the Nintendo balance board.  You may remember the above character as King Hippo.

On the Punch Out website there is also opponent who doesn’t have a profile yet.  I’m assuming that they’ll add a current famous boxer since Mike Tyson’s career has faded.

LG Electronics announced a new line of TV sets that are 5.9mm thick and come in 42″ and 47″ models.  The 42″ weighs 13 pounds and the 47″ weighs 16 pounds.   The TVs use an edge-lit LED backlight system with a Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp scheme.

“The development of the world’s slimmest LCD TV panel demonstrates our leading edge-lit LED backlight technology that enables thinner designs in addition to our direct-lit type LED backlight assembly which delivers superior picture quality,”stated LG Display CTO and EVP Chung In-Jae.

Both TVs have an HD resolution of 1920×1080 and is 10-bit with a brightness level of 450 cd/ms.  The viewing angles are 178/178.  The 42″ uses 100 watts of power and the 47″ uses 130 watts.

[via Tom's Hardware]

Rumor has it that the HTC Touch Pro2 may hit the retail shelves in the middle of June.  This may be bad timing since the Pre is arriving on June 6th so Sprint customers may be more inclined to pick up that multi-touch device with their own app store.

The Touch Pro2 has a 3.6″ TFT-LCD touch screen display with 480×800 WVGA resolution, an adjustable tilt screen, WinMo 6.1 O/S,  Qualcomm MSM7200A processor, a zoom bar and TouchFLO 3D device controls, slide out 5 row QWERTY keyboard,  Bluetooth and WiFi, and 3.2 megapixel camera.

[via Engadget]