This past June, the game of Tetris turned 25 years old.  And this guy’s extremely nerdy and tacky haircut has set the game back at least 1,000 years.  This hair cut is available in the catalog of Wip-Hairport.  Warning: do not get this type of hair cut when trying to attract a mate.

What’s the difference between the first and the second picture?  See the black guy in the first picture?  Notice how he suddenly becomes a white guy in the second picture?

Whoever designed the Microsoft Business Productivity Infrastructure superimposed a white person’s head onto the black guy’s body in the Polish version of the same website.

Why would they do that?  Perhaps this is because Poland has a very small population of people with African origin.  But to superimpose the body of an African man with that of a Caucasian male just seems racially awkward.  Regardless, Microsoft apologized for the mishap.

“We are looking into the details of this situation,” stated a Microsoft representative in an interview with CNET News. “We apologize and are in the process of pulling down the image.”

Google currently supports over 125 languages to make searching universal across everyone in the world.  They even have support for languages that are a twist on the English language such as “pirate” and “Elmer Fudd.”  But they did not have support for the Hawaiian language up until now.  Aloha Hawaiian language on Google!

Adding the Hawaiian language to the search engine has sentimental value too.  The United Nations said that the language is “critically endangered.”  Keola Donaghy, an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii-Hilo pushed to have the language added to the search engine.

“We’ve been doing this work for 18 years, simply trying to make it easier for people who speak Hawaiian to use these kinds of technologies,” stated Dongahy in an interview with CNN.

About three years ago, Google added the Maori language.  After that Donaghy decided to contact the search engine company to have Hawaii added.  After Donaghy did not get a response, he decided to put the project on hold.  The reason why Google did not respond was because the original language coordinator was no longer with the company and was replaced.

After the replacement was made, adding the Hawaiian language became a priority once again.  Donaghy himself said that he put in about 100 hours in getting the Hawaiian language added.

One of the bigger setbacks was choosing the context of the language.  The words “surfing the Internet” was an issue because there isn’t a native term for it.  However there was a native term for surfing the ocean.  They decided to use the native term that is often used for navigating a canoe.

Donaghy was also involved in translating the Netscape Navigator browser into Hawaiian around 1997.  He was able to use his work on that project for the Google project too.

TiVo Inc. launched one of the first digital video recorder (DVR) devices in 1999.  However TiVo has been facing competition from AT&T and Verizon, who provide DVR as a service through TV cable.  This is why TiVo has filed a lawsuit against both telecommunication companies at the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas.

TiVo is seeking damages and a permanent injunction from using the feature.  This complaint the same as the one made in a lawsuit against DISH/Echostar.  That complaint was made in 2004.  Initially TiVo was ruled to be awarded $105 million, but DISH/Echostar filed an appeal.  While the appeal was being made, DISH/Echostar designed new software that would replace the old video recording software.

TiVo claimed that DISH/Echostar was still infringing on their patent, but the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office dismissed a request from TiVo to have DISH/Echostar no longer have the ability to re-examine its patent.  DISH will be using the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office dismissal as part of their appeal in court.

DISH has about 14 million subscribers while AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FIOS cable services have a combined subscriber base of 4 million.

Taiwanese manufacturing company MSI has announced one of their latest desktops, the Wind Top- All-In-One AE2010.  The AE2010 desktop has a 20″ 1600×9000 touchscreen with an AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core CPU.  There is also an ATI Radeon 3200 graphics card, 320GB hard drive, 6 USB ports, 4-1 card reader, 4GB of DDRII and 533MHz SDRAM.  The desktop will have a starting price of $649.99 and will be available for purchase next month.

Considering that the Internet originated as a government and university project in the United States, I found it quite disheartening that the United States tends to have one of the slower network speeds in the world.

SpeedMatters.org found that the average U.S. download speed has only increased by nine-tenths from 4.2 mbps to 5.1 mbps between 2008 and 2009. This puts the United States at rank #28 in the world. South Korea enjoys 20.4 megabits per second while Japan has about 15.8. Sweden has 12.8 mbps and the Netherlands has 11.0 mbps.

“People in Japan can upload a high-definition video in 12 minutes, compared to a grueling 2.5 hours at the US average upload speed,” stated a report by SpeedMatters. The average individual in the U.S. living in the north-east parts of the country have the fastest speeds. Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming suffer from the slowest Internet speeds.

Qualcomm is working on a new device called the FLO TV according to a source with Gdgt. The FLO TV is a portable digital TV that will be introduced in the near future. The size of the device will be about the same size as an iPhone. The FLO TV will have the ability to tune into broadcasts from Qualcomm’s own terrestrial digital TV service.

The FLO TV service has already started appearing on several mobile devices manufactured by Samsung, Motorola, and LG. Qualcomm decided to pursue the design of a device using a terrestrial TV broadcasting service because it has the ability to stream better quality than a 3G connection would.

frog design in California helped create the idea behind FLO TV. Features will include a touchscreen with swipe and gesture driven user interface. The memory size will be 4GB. There will also be built-in speakers, 300 hour standby battery life, 5 hours of TV, and 15 hours of music. No word yet on price or availability.

Augmented reality is when content interacts with layers of information provided by the real world.  In this case, PresseLite designed an iPhone application that delivers information based on what the iPhone camera is staring at in the streets of Paris, France.

For example, when running the application, the camera reports to the GPS what you are looking at and the PresseLite application will report restaurants, taxi stands, retail stores, and coffee shops are near you.  PresseLite’s application is called Metro Paris Subway.

Surprisingly PresseLite is selling this application for only $0.99.  Based on first-hand experience, I can tell you that designing this type of application is extremely complex.  Had I created an application like this, I would definitely sell it for more than $0.99.

The augmented reality applications only work on the iPhone 3G S because it also needs the compass feature to determine your exact location in Paris.