Google has admitted that their Buzz testing process was equivalent to mine: Click enable, then disable it ninety seconds later. They said to the BBC that their testing sucked donkey balls, which is why many people hate it. The excuse:

We’re very early in this space. This was one of our first big attempts. We’ve been testing Buzz internally at Google for a while. Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn’t quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild. If it becomes clear that people don’t think we’ve done enough, we’ll make more changes.

That’s what Todd Jackson, Buzz product manager, told BBC News. Google only tested this thing internally, and didn’t put the service through the Google Trusted Tester program, like they have done with other services in the past. He also admitted that tens of millions of Buzz users were “rightfully upset” and that Google was “very, very sorry.” Todd’s right, but I don’t think all those “tens of millions of Buzz” ex-users would care about the too late apologies. They do care about the privacy problems and the inbox spamming.

Would these users give Google another chance? I doubt it would be soon. And, personally, I doubt there’s enough interest for yet another Facebookish Tumblred Twitting clusterfuckassered online service. [BBC News]

Deep in my heart I always wanted a Snuggie or a Slanket, but my innate aversion to these naff devices from hell always stopped me. Not anymore, thanks to these cool full body blanket designs by Icelandic designers Vík Prjónsdóttir.

Yes, I can most definitely do this. I imagine myself in that red and yellow one, standing on my sofa, waxing lyrical on fate, love, and the tragedy that it is when I want to have cereal in the morning and there’s no milk left and I’m trapped in the house thanks to the snow blizzard fiercely blowing outside. [Vík Prjónsdóttir via Cool Hunting]

Oh Saturn, you keep being the prettiest planet of them all. Even while Cassini crosses your orbital plane, and your rings become proportionally thinner than a razor blade.

The photograph was discovered by Spanish amateur Fernando García Navarro, from the raw stream of images sent by the Cassini spacecraft in 2005. Awesome, in the actual meaning of the word.

With Windows Phone 7 out, everyone has forgotten about the other Microsoft handsets, the allegedly Sidekick-derived Turtle and Pure cellphones. Someone got a peek into the firmware, which confirms some of the rumors about these “not-so-dumb cellphones”.

• The user interface is done in Silverlight, which the cellphones will obviously support.
• Turtle—Pride in the CDMA version—will have a 320 x 240 resolution.
• Pure—Lion in the CDMA version—will have a 480 x 320 display.
• Both firmware are tied to Nvidia Tegra.
• They seem to run a Windows CE6 core.
• There are references to Premium Mobile Experiences all through the firmware.

With the strong push on social networks in Windows Phone 7, it feels like these are now outdated and out of place. [WMExperts]

It’s not the full thing, it doesn’t fly on anti-gravity engines, and it doesn’t include lots of wookie hair, but I definitely like this 11 by 8-inch Millennium Falcon released at Toy Fair. Why? Because the damn thing FLIES.

The remote-controlled Falcon comes with a charging controller, all for $50.

Ion chefs at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider—a 2.4-mile ring at the Brookhaven National Laboratory—have created a 4-trillion-degree Celsius quark soup, the highest temperature ever achieved in a laboratory. That’s 250,000 times the Sun core’s temperature.

Or 7.2 x 10^12 degrees Fahrenheit, whatever tickles you most. They achieved this by smashing gold ions against each other, traveling at nearly the speed of light. At this temperature, you can cook good old Galactus’ famous beef and pork chili or get protons and neutrons to melt into a tasty plasma of quarks and gluons—or QGP—”a freely flowing liquid that filled the universe a few microseconds after it came into existence 13.7 billion years ago.” According to Steven Vigdor, Brookhaven’s Associate Laboratory Director for Nuclear and Particle Physics:

These data provide the first measurement of the temperature of the quark-gluon plasma at RHIC. The temperature inferred from these new measurements at RHIC is considerably higher than the long-established maximum possible temperature attainable without the liberation of quarks and gluons from their normal confinement inside individual protons and neutrons. However, the quarks and gluons in the matter we see at RHIC behave much more cooperatively than the independent particles initially predicted for QGP.

The atom smashers believe that this plasma is the primordial soup which transformed into the actual protons and neutrons that make up all the matter in the universe. These results will be complemented by the boffins at the Large Hadron Collider, who would be performing a similar experiment whenever they finish with their Gruyere and Appenzeller cheese fondue. [BNL]

I’m sorry, Cupertino, but Microsoft has nailed it. Windows Phone 7 feels like an iPhone from the future. The UI has the simplicity and elegance of Apple’s industrial design, while the iPhone’s UI still feels like a colorized Palm Pilot.

That doesn’t mean that the Windows Phone 7’s user experience would be better than Apple’s. The two user interface concepts—data-centric vs function-centric—are very different, and the former is quite a radical departure from what people are used to.

And if you’re not familiar with Windows Phone 7, check out our hands on and the post where we explain everything about it.

With the iPhone, Apple put together an extremely simple modal interface that works, one that people of all ages and backgrounds understand right away: “This is a device that adopts different functions and gives me access to different kinds of information depending on the icon I click on.”

It’s pretty simple idea, which made it a raging success. In fact, that success is the reason why this model is Apple’s bet not only for mobile phones, but for the future of computing. It is also the reason why the Androids, Palms, and Blackberries of this world are following them.

Clean slate

Microsoft’s approach is completely different. Instead of becoming another me-too cellphone, like Android and the rest, the Windows Phone 7 team came up their own vision of what the cellphone should be. In the process, they have created a beautiful user interface in which the data is at the center of user interaction. Not the apps—specific functions—but the information itself. At some points, in fact, it feels like the information is the interface itself.

Out of the box, this information is organized into areas called hubs, which follow the user’s areas of interest. Accessible through live tiles in the home screen, the Me (the user), people, pictures and video, music, and games—plus the omnipresent search—hubs give views into several data sources, connecting and presenting them into an interweaved panoramic stream. These hubs dig heavily into many databases, both locally and into the cloud.

Rather than accessing an app to get contact information and make a call to a person, open another app to get her Twitter updates, and then another app to get her Facebook updates, and another for her latest mails to you, and yet another one to watch her photos, the Windows Phone’s people hub offers a seamless view into all of it, presented in a very simple and logical way. On a function-centric model like the iPhone, when the user thinks “I want to make a call”, he puts the device in “calling mode” by clicking on an app, selects a contact, and calls. When the user thinks “What’s up with John Smith?” he puts the device in Facebook or Twitter or Mail mode, and so on.

Microsoft has organized the hubs into panoramas, by stitching groups of information as columns of a single landscape screen—bigger than the phone’s display—that can be scrolled with your finger. The solution—tied together with minimalist interface aesthetics and animations that are inviting, elegant, and never superfluous—works great.

What about other applications?

Instinctively, I like Microsoft’s approach to organizing the core of our digital lives—people+social+multimedia+communication all merged into the hubs. I like it better than the “it’s a phone, it’s a mail program, it’s a browser, it’s an iPod” Apple approach. It’s less rigid than the iPhone or Android’s model, offering a richer experience, inviting to explore, and offering data from many points of view in a quick, clearly organized way. It also seems more human, and that’s certainly something Apple—or their followers—have to worry about.

Does that mean that function-centric models are worse? Like I said before, not necessarily. Especially because the information-centric panoramas don’t fit every single task people expect their iPhones to perform now. And when I say every single task, I really mean the two gazillion apps populating the Apple store. Microsoft could dress the hub experience in any way they want, but if their devices don’t offer a rich application market, they will fail the same way the current competition is failing against Apple.

Fortunately for Microsoft, the Windows Phone model is not only information-centric, but also function-centric. According to Joe Belfiore, gran jefe of the Microsoft’s Windows Phone Program, applications are not required to plug into the hub metaphor or the panorama user interface. When the development toolkit comes out in a month, it will encourage applications just like the ones you have in the iPhone today. In other words, Microsoft understands that one approach is as important as the other.

They are just hoping that their hubs would be a better, funner, more intuitive way to access and cultivate our digital lives, which is mainly what most consumers want to do nowadays. Looking at what they have shown today, I think they may be in the right track. But, like the Zune HD, it just may be too late.

At last, the Missile Defense Agency Airborne Laser has killed an actual ballistic missile in mid-air. The best part: They recorded it in video. This is not Star Wars pew-pew. It actually looks like the Enterprise’s phasers.

It happened February 11, 8:44 Pacific Standard Time, at the Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center-Weapons Division Sea Range off the central California coast. The missile—representing a SCUD—launched from a platform at sea. Second later, the Airborne Laser Test Bed‘s sensors—flying on a Boeing 747-400F—detected the launch, tracking its trajectory with a low-energy tracking laser. A second laser was focused ont he missile to measure the atmospheric disturbance, gathering data to achieve the perfect firing solution.

Seconds later, the ALTC unleashed its megawatt-class High Energy Laser, causing a massive structural failure in the missile as it was rising in the sky. In other words: Boom. The engagement took only two minutes, demonstrating that this weapon will be extremely useful in destroying waves of missiles, one after the other. Like Missile Command, but from the air. [Boeing and Lockheed Martin]

When Samsung first announced their Bada OS cellphone operating system I thought they were crazy. After seeing their flagship Bada OS phone—the Samsung Wave—in action, I don’t think they are crazy anymore. They are suicidal.

I will have to try it myself, but just looking at this hands on is making me cringe. [Mobile Review]

Last Wednesday I married the love of my life. This is the short story of some of the things I did before I met her, a guide on flirting using Twitter, Facebook, texting, and sexting face-to-face, in the real world.

Since I came to New York, my romantic life has been a rollercoaster. A very fast one, with 9G turns. If there is a city in the world to flirt and date anywhere and anytime, it’s NYC. You don’t need the web to meet people. Every cafe, every bar, every party seems like a huge playground for singles to engage in conversations and start love affairs. However, the web can help while you are meeting people and after, all in real time, and face to face.

If you have enough confidence and you are fearless—remember: you have nothing to lose, since you will always have the “no”—any city in the world should be open for the same games. Here are some tips to use technology while meeting people in the real world.

The basic rules

Technology hasn’t changed real world flirting. Much. At the end of the day, it all depends on you, how charming you can be, and how much the other person likes you (tip: not everyone has to like you). However, web-based social services like Facebook and Twitter open a door that didn’t exist before. They are an opportunity to take the flirting to a new level when you first meet someone in the flesh, all without getting too personal. For some reason, exchanging Twitter or Facebook usernames doesn’t seem to be perceived as threatening or serious as exchanging phone numbers or email addresses. After all, Twitter is open and Facebook’s friend requests can be denied—or accepted and then canceled.

The web-based flirting can happen right at the moment you meet the other person or later. I remember my first party in the city, hosted by Gawker.tv’s Richard Blakeley, a couple of weeks after my arrival. A girl with the most hypnotic cleavage I’ve ever seen approached me and started to talk. Within a few minutes things started to get fun. A few minutes later, we moved into more suggestive terrain. While this was happening, I saw her Blackberry in her hand. She had her Facebook page open. Without her noticing, I looked her name up in my iPhone’s Facebook app as we were talking, and sent her a friend request on the spot. We kept talking and minutes later, when she checked her Facebook again, she found the request, smiled maliciously, and clicked yes saying “I guess we are now friends.”

That night was fun.

But it’s not always that easy. The key in that example is that it happened naturally, and the move matched the rhythm of the conversation. Taking the step to add someone to Facebook in real time is a risky one, so you have to measure yourself and be ready to gamble. That is the basic rule: Never force things, and learn to read the signs that the other person is giving you. If the conversation is playful, wait until you think is appropriate to incorporate something like Facebook into it.

Tweeting your pants off

Asking for a Twitter name during the conversation is a lot easier than making that Facebook move. After all, Twitter is open to everyone, and direct messaging is a perfect way to flirt—at least for me: I find its 140-character limitation challenging and exciting, and I love when people can be concise and clever in just one single phrase.

Once again, the medium is not important except as a way to reach your counterpart, allowing you to snip casually, responding to the other person’s comments. Doing it publicly is a very fine art, which can easily end in disaster, especially if the other person already has a lover. If you have enough wit and you are sensitive to the other person’s needs and circumstances, chances are that he or she will be interested in you, and something may happen down the line, as the play factor increases in your exchanges. Sometimes, this game also happens in real time.

One night I met a very pretty—and delightfully nerdy—girl at Delmano, one of my favorite bars here in Williamsburg. She knew Gizmodo and recognized me, so the conversation quickly got into technology. She confessed that she followed me on Twitter, so I asked what her nickname was to add her later. Minutes later, in fact: When she excused herself to the bathroom I sent her the first direct message. After that, we spent the whole night having two conversations, one actually speaking out loud, and the other taunting each with secret tweets. That night was fun too.

For sure, that’s also an exception, but it’s an example on how Twitter can be a nice way to flirt in real time, as long as you keep it natural and in context, just like you would in a real world conversation.

The next level

Once you have established a Twitter or Facebook beachhead it’s time to move it to the next level. You may decide to keep it in the online world, flirting until you feel comfortable to ask for a date. The alternative is to be a little bit more daring, and use Twitter or Facebook to interact with someone you met before, like you may be doing now using text messages. The difference is that Twitter and Facebook are a lot more useful than text messages, because they give you context. For example, you can learn what the other person is doing without asking for it or without the other person explicitly telling you about it.

I used to do that when I was going through my worse digital exhibitionist phase. A couple of times I tweeted or changed my Facebook status saying where I was, and the girl I was flirting with—the nerdy pretty one—sent me messages saying that she was around, wondering if we could hook up for a drink in the most casual way. Likewise, I did the same thing with other people. Of course, this doesn’t always work. You or the other person may have other plans in mind. Again, the key here is not to force things, and be as playful and natural as you can.

If you pass the initial filters, and your flirting turns into something a bit more serious, you may get an instant messaging nickname or a telephone number. Instant messaging is not very useful for real time flirting situations. Unlike Twitter or texting which allow you to be cute and playful in a parallel line to the actual conversation, instant messaging runs at a faster pace and requires more attention.

It’s only good in two situations. One may be when you are instant messaging with someone else (cue in lots of trips to the bathroom, stress, and a lot of guilt). Two—which is the only one I’ve practiced—having a sexual conversations in public, in a crowded place in which you can talk into the ear of your lover. This may also happen with Twitter or text messages, but instant messaging—using your favorite program for your smartphone—is my favorite way to do it. But then again, I am really fast typist.

The time it happened it was by chance. She and I started to talk dirty, casually while having dinner in a crowded restaurant, the typical romantic place illuminated only by candlelight and which shall remain nameless because I want to go there again. As our conversation started to get naughtier, we noticed that some people were listening to us, but instead of shutting up, I took out my iPhone and sent her an even racier message using BeejiveIM. Her iPhone vibrated thanks to Beejive’s push, she took it out, smiled, and replied back. We kept on talking about other things, with increasing difficulty as the IM conversation got completely explicit and we had a harder time concentrating on actually making sense in our audible conversation. At one point I asked her for something which made her open her eyes wide, giving me that “are you out of your fucking mind?” look of pure disbelief. I grinned and sent her another message. Surprised, she stood up, turned around, and left.

The next time my iPhone buzzed—about a minute later—it didn’t have any text. I clicked on the incoming file and a photo of her bare breasts appeared. A few seconds later, another one of her black lace knickers downloaded completely, as she was returning to the table from the bathroom. It ended being another fun night.

That, sexting, could be considered the top level of all these games, but it’s not usual to find someone who may want to do it outside a relationship, much less in a real time, face-to-face situations. When it happens, like it did as part of a larger context and conversation, it can be really fun,

Keep your mind open

Of course, things don’t always happen in this way. The above is not the norm, but it’s not the exception. The fact is that, if the opportunity arises, Twitter, Facebook, IM, or texting could be used as part of the flirting and sexual game not only in the privacy of your home, looking at your computer screen, but anywhere in the “real” world. And I have to say that it’s a lot more fun that way.

The irony of all this is that, even while I met my amazing wife through the internet, we never used Facebook or Twitter to flirt. We exchanged a couple of emails, she invited me out for coffee, and the most technology-related thing I did after that was to send her a text message, written as I was running to take the subway:

“It was lovely to meet you. I’m sorry I had to run out so earlier, but I really enjoyed talking to you. Would you like to have a proper date next week?”

She asked me to marry her two months later. And we will live happily ever after.

Someone in our virtual bullpen said: “It’s a cockpit erection.” The truth is harder than that.

The roof of one of the small jets hangars at Dulles International Airport collapsed, pushing the tails of the airplanes down and the cockpits up. Apparently because the structure wasn’t able to hold under the massive pressure of the snow accumulated during the storm that took over Washington a few days ago. [Flyer Forums]

It takes someone as amazingly talented and knowledgeable as Philip Bloom—the guy who shot Prague and the Skywalker Ranch—to make Dubai to look this amazing using a Canon 7D, two 5D MkII, and one Panasonic GF1. [Philip Bloom]

Not only does the 10.1-inch HP Compaq Airlife 100 look like an scaled-down MacBook Pro, but it runs Android and has a touchscreen and a webcam and an SD slot. In other words, an iPad for the Apple haters.

HP Spain—the only country when it would be released for now—says that it will last 12 hours per charge, with a 10-day standby time. It comes with a 16GB SSD, Wi-Fi, and 3G connection, which will be tied to the Telefónica network. [Slashgear]

The Russian Space Agency has released this speeded up video of a Soyuz spacecraft approaching and docking in the International Space Station. It’s like Battlestar Galactica, but without phasers. Or Cylons. Or Vipers. Or Starbuck. Actually, it’s nothing like BSG.

I like it anyway, although it makes me sad: Soon, they will be the only ones doing this. [Flight Global]

The human race continues its free fall into extinction. Good.

A Radio Shack just exploded with a big ball of fire in Manhattan. It happened on 6th avenue, in between 19th and 20th streets. According to Fox NY, it was a “manhole explosion” that “sparked a transformer fire.”

A) I hope nobody is injured. B) I’m glad is not the only worthy Shack (Shake Shack). [New York Magazine via MyFox]

One of my favorite things to do in Manhattan is stopping by the real state agencies’ windows, to see the homes I will never buy. It’s property porn. This is the airplane equivalent.

It’s the latest and bestest luxury first class cabin from British Airways, which makes it the latest and bestest of them all until Emirates installs something else. The first units have been installed in the Boeing 777s covering the London Heathrow-Chicago O’Hare line, and they include their own 15-inch screens, USB ports, RCA jacks, electronic blinds—and huge windows, it seems—noise-cancelling headsets, ambient and mood lighting, and leather bound writing tables. British Airways says the design is inspired by the interiors of Jaguar and Aston Martin.

Sadly, neither Rachel Weisz nor Runway Girl Mary Kirby are included. [Runway Girl]

Like Darth Vader’s underpants, the new Intel Core i7 and i5-based Digital Storm BlackOPS PCs are made of lusty black aluminum. Also like Darth Vader’s underpants, they are liquid cooled.

There are three models available, starting at $1,709 with the 2.66GHz Core i5-750 and ending with the 3.2GHz Core i7-960. They can pack up to 6GB DDR3 of RAM, and NVIDIA GTX 275 or ATI Radeon HD 5860 1GB graphic cards, maxing out at $3,100. [Digital Storm via Slashgear]

I haven’t had my cereal with funny colored powder yet and I’m already tripping: Here’s a trip into fractal down to a e.214 magnifying factor. If it existed in the real world, it would be trillions larger than the Universe.

The final magnification is e.214. Want some perspective? A magnification of e.12 would increase the size of a particle to the same as the earths orbit! e.21 would make a particle look the same size as the milky way and e.42 would be equal to the universe. This zoom smashes all of them all away. If you were “actually” travelling into the fractal your speed would be faster than the speed of light.

I played it at full screen and my brain started to hurt three minutes into it. Two minutes later, starting to lose my peripheral vision. Five minutes later, cerebral activity went into emergency shut down. [Vimeo via The Nerdcore via Forgetomori via The Presurfer]

This sleek fire red mouse may be a perfect Valentine’s gift. Smooth and beautiful. Until you see the whole thing from above.

See what I mean? [Yanko Design]

Bad Valentine is our own special take on the beauty—and awkwardness—of geek love.