In Japan, the swine flu has spread rather quickly. It has become such a major concern that many people walk around with face masks on. And now a textiles company is producing a suit that is resistant to the disease. The swine flu is also known as H1N1 influenza. The company behind the swine flu resistant suit is the Haruyama Trading Company. The suit is covered with titanium dioxide which reacts in sunlight and kills off the virus if it is exposed. The suit is available in Japan and retails for about the equivalent of $580.
I’m adding this as another odd picture that was captured by Google Street View cars. To find out some of the funny and useful pictures that was found Street View cars, check out our gallery.
When the Google Street View was driving around on Robinglade Rd. in Toronto, Ontario a picture was caught of a van on fire. The Toronto Star newspaper company investigated the situation after discovering the photo. The guy that owns the red van that is shown in the background was able to move his car in time before the fire spread to his own car. Nobody was hurt and the explosion was just limited to the white van itself.
Top GPS company Garmin is now shipping one of their newest devices, the nüvi 1690. The 1690 is selling for $499.99 and has real-time access to Google.com, traffic and flight status updates, and the white pages. Here’s the catch: the service only lasts for 2 years for free.
One of my pet-peeves is missing a phone call while I’m in the shower. However the Bathphone will prevent this from happening in the near future. Yoon Ungnoh, a South Korean designer put together the Bathphone to let anyone in the shower make or take phonecalls without worrying about an electric shock. The Bathphone can connect to your mobile phone wirelessly using Bluetooth. The Bathphone has a speaker built in and has a status LED light. For those that want to use the device to listen to MP3s, there is an SD card slot.
About 20,000 people have signed a petition to have the Indian flag added to Zynga’s Farmville game. Farmville is a popular game on social networks that allows users to manage and build a farm in a similar fashion as Sim City. After building a farm, players will be able to mark their farm by adding a flag. The United Kingdom and United States have flags available for planting, but nothing for India yet.
Indian people on forums and blogs said that they were disappointed that their flag was not available. One user said that they were even willing to pay to have the option. The petition even inspired people of different origins to start their own petitions to have their own flags added.
Farmville has about 56 million users. By adding a link to another Zynga game called Café World, about 10 million people have joined that game in a week.
One of Intel Corporation’s most recent advertisements features an Indian guy by the name of Ajay Bhatt strolling across the company floor, winking, and doing a “you’re the man” finger point. The theme of the ad was that “our rockstars are different from yours.” The Intel advertisement used an actor of Ajay Bhatt rather than the actual guy.
So Conan O’Brien came up with the idea of interviewing Bhatt himself as Intel is a sponsor of his show. The video is embedded above of Bhatt being interviewed. Spoiler: the best part is at the end.
In the United States, AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is subsidizing the iPhone substantially. Even though AT&T charges $50 for a basic minute plan, $30 for data, and $5-$15 per month for text message, the company is still struggling to profit from the iPhone. Without a minute plan, the iPhone retails for about $599 and AT&T sells the iPhone for $199 with a 2 year contract. By breaking the contract the cost is about $175-$200. So even if you buy an iPhone with AT&T and break the contract, the company loses about $200.
According to a report by the Yankee Group, AT&T does not actually start seeing any sort of profit from the subsidies until the 17th month of a 2 year contract. Although AT&T has been benefiting from a surge in customer base by subsidizing the iPhone, the company is still spending billions of dollars to pay for the data that is being consumed by smartphones. And this majorly affects margins and the bottom line.
Ralph de la Vega, the CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets said wireless data usage has increased by about 5,000% between 2006 to 2009. Many iPhone users have complained about shoddy connections as a result and AT&T has had to ramp up their wireless infrastructure.
The report by the Yankee Group was put together by Andy Castonguay, an analyst at the company. The report was titled The Golden Subsidy Egg’s Goose is Cooked: Welcome to the Brave New Subsidy-Free World.
For those of you that use Twitter-related applications on your iPhone, BlackBerry, or other smartphone you can tweet your exact location with a link to Google Maps. For example, last night I tweeted that I was at The Comedy House watching Chris Tucker’s brother Dexter doing stand-up and posted a link to the location using the Tweetie iPhone App.
Lufthansa took a similar approach of this service by allowing passengers to tweet their exact location even at 33,000 feet above sea level. The new Lufthansa service is called MySkyStatus and many Twitter users are already activating tweeting where they are in the air. I first read about the service on Mashable.
Below is a screenshot of some Twitter users that are currently using the service:
The way it works is by adding what flight you are traveling on beforehand. When you go to MySkyStatus.com, the website asks you to add the carrier, departure date, flight number, and departure/arrival cities. After that you add your Twitter or Facebook account information and your status is automatically updated.
The way it works is by adding what flight you are traveling on beforehand. You start by adding the carrier, departure date, flight number, and departure/arrival cities. After that you add your Twitter or Facebook account information and your status is automatically updated. After adding your flight, you can select whether to update as you’re flying or update just the departure/arrival. After accepting the Terms of Use you can select Facebook, Twitter, or both.
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