snowflakes
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ICYMI: Ford night riding, AI sphere that delivers and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-974841{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-974841, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-974841{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-974841").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Ford is testing self-driving cars on a completely dark night course, designed to be used without headlights. An automation company built a flying sphere that can pick up and deliver things with a very sphincter-like gripper system. And Schaft Inc. is showing off its new bipedal robot that can walk on rocky beaches easily. The physicist who is thrilled about his job specializing in snowflakes is a must-watch (post-Zombie fakeout, of course). As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
iPhone, macro lens take beautiful snowflake photos
Sometimes photography is all about capturing the moment quickly and not the expensive camera equipment you tote around in your bag. Wired has an excellent story about Ben Woodworth, who used an iPhone 5 and a $5 macro lens attachment to capture a series of stunning snowflake portraits. He locked the focus on his iPhone and steadied it by leaning on a backpack before he snapped the photos. You can see one example shot above and hop over to Wired to see the rest.
Sony applies next-gen snowflake tech to boost VAIO W's appeal
When Sony's VAIO W netbook was released, we said the company would "have to do better than put a pretty face on a vanilla set of innards to get our next five Benjamins." So what has the company done to raise the appeal of its little netbook? Boosted the processor? Added a big SSD? Lowered the price? Nah, it went ahead and painted some snowflakes on the lid. Pretty though they may be they still hide the same 10.1-inch, 1366 x 768 LCD, 1.6GHz Atom, and 1GB of RAM. There are some improvements: storage is upped a bit, a 250GB HDD instead of 160, and it now includes Windows 7 Starter instead of XP. And there are snowflakes. Still $499. Get yours before they melt!
New Winter Veil details revealed
This year's Feast of Winter Veil seasonal event will run from December 15 through January 2. It will include all that we've grown to love from Christmas in Azeroth: presents under the tree, snowball fights, Smokywood Pasture vendors, searching for the missing reindeer Metzen and waiting to talk to Greatfather Winter. But, just like Hallow's End, Blizzard is adding a few new twists to this year's festivities.The Preserved Holly used to temporarily transform your mount into a Reindeer will now work on flying mounts. We had a head's up on this a while ago when the models were discovered on the PTR.Also, /kissing any Winter Reveler NPC will grant you a new item called a Handful of Snowflakes. You can use this item to create a light snowfall around any other player.A new present will be available under the Winter Veil tree: a mechanotoy non-combat robot. Again, we saw this one coming courtesy of MMO-Champion.And finally, Blizzard released a list of bosses that will be putting on festive clothing to celebrate getting slaughtered by college kids home for the holidays. This year's Holiday-garbed piñatas are: Grand Warlock Netherkurse (Shattered Halls) Grandmaster Vorpil (Shadow Labyrinth) Exarch Maladaar (Auchenai Crypts) Captain Skarloc (Durnholde Keep) Nethermancer Sepethrea (Mechanar) High Botanists Freywinn (Botanica) The boss transformation only runs from December 25 to January 2. Don't forget that WoW Insider is in the festive mood as well. We're giving away Feast of Winter Veil TCG sets. If you want to enter to win, you better hurry. The give away ends at 3:00pm EST today.%Gallery-11481%
Halo snowflakes are all the rage
Over at HBO they've put on their creativity caps and got to work on creating some Halo inspired snowflakes (or as we call them, glistening treasures of joy). Look at that craftsmanship, that effort, and do I see Stuntmutt in one? Go check out all the snowflakes on HBO's forums and maybe you could create your very own Xbox 360 Fanboy inspired glistening treasure of joy. But be sure never to eat Halo inspired snowflakes, because they'll make you want to dance.
