By Jonathan Maple - Muze Staff Writer The problem is this. When using Facebook, you are generally surrounded by people you already know. Many of these “friends” are people you went to high school or college with, or lived next to 17 years ago.  Google + has a similar tendency but without the people.  So how do you find people you don’t know that live in your area? The answer is Badoo. The site is billed as ...

By Jonathan Maple - Muze Staff Writer The science and hype may not be on the same page when it comes to electronic cigarettes. The Pitch: Dave Keener, a 30 year old lifelong smoker, is nestled on his couch – in his Grafton, Massachusetts home – with his girlfriend curled up beside him. He explains that he loves smoking, but there are things missing from his house. The tell-tale odor of burnt tobacco and ash ...

By Jonathan Maple Muze Staff Writer Barring the standard apps you should already have on your phone or tablet - maps, email and games - here are five apps to make traveling smoother, fun and less costly. All of these apps can be used on Android and IOS devices. 1. Kayak Kayak, when used in advance of traveling, is a powerful tool for finding great travel deals. The site - www.kayak.com - has a simple interf ...

Google’s first foray into the hardware market is a streaming media device that anyone with an android phone or tablet can control.         You might also like: [SlideDeck2 id=6840]   Tags: google, google nexus Q, home entertainment, video, home audio, streaming media ...

By Jim Morrison on Smithsonian.com After Olympic officials banned the swimsuit that caused records to fall at the 2008 games, scientists are back with a new outfit that might break even more In 2009, Speedo’s research team began to brainstorm innovative ways to help swimmers go faster. The polyurethane bodysuits that contributed to an astonishing number of swimming world records over the previous 18 months ...

By Mark Strauss on Smithsonian On the outer boundaries of the Arctic Circle lies a massive construction project funded by Facebook: the future home of thousands of server farms With 900 million members worldwide and growing, Facebook is building its first European data storage facility—60 miles south of the Arctic Circle in Lulea, Sweden. The reason: natural air conditioning. Some Internet “server farms” sp ...

NASA's Curiosity rover is a 1-ton robot that will make an unprecedented Mars landing on Aug. 5, 2012. See how the risky maneuver will keep rover team members in suspense for 7 fateful minutes. Credit: NASA ...

By Tim Stevens on Engadget In 2008, when the Eee PC was revolutionizing the computing world and driving every manufacturer to make cheaper and smaller laptops, Sony washed its hands of the whole thing. The "race to the bottom," the company said, would profoundly impact the industry, killing profit margins and flooding the market with cheap, terrible machines. Sony was wrong, its stance lasting about a year ...

Originally found on: Kickstarter Why you need this: During the day, your body temperature fluctuates, moisture accumulates, odors develop, and you go through a wide range of motions -- nothing is constant. Currently, business clothing is unresponsive to a changing environment. We believe it needs to be. Recent Press: Bostinno, Trendy Gadget, Grist, Bike Blog NYC, Geek Alerts TechCrunch: With Tech From Space ...

By Joseph Flaherty on WIRED - Design Walt Disney never wanted his park to be completed. “It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world,” he said. Today the heirs to Disney’s legacy continue to push the limits of what is possible, redesigning the whole theme park experience from roller coasters to ice cream to tchotchkes. In 2012, this is the state of the imagination. While their ...

Found on Engadget Once a novelty for bleeding-edge types, e-book readers have finally started to break into the mainstream and begin to deliver on their promise to be a true, useable alternative to traditional books and newspapers. The watershed moment was undoubtedly the introduction of Amazon's first Kindle, but Sony and others are rapidly stepping up their games, and the future only promises to get more ...

By Darren Murph on Engadget "Made in America." For some reason, my parents -- and the parents of many of my peers -- take great pride in seeing that phrase. I've seen people buy inferior products just because the label on the back proclaimed that it was thrown together in one of our 50 great states instead of across some imaginary line in "another country." Part of me wonders if people actually check to see ...

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By Sean Ludwig on Venturebeat In one of the coolest uses of modern browser tech we’ve yet seen, Google and Lego have teamed up to create Build, a world where users can construct whatever they can imagine with Lego blocks. “Over the last few months we’ve been working with LEGO Australia, thinking about what would happen if we brought bricks to the browser,” Lockey McGrath, product marketing manager for Googl ...

By Vincent Nguyen on Slashgear Apple’s MacBook Air may have fallen into the shadow of the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display at their WWDC 2012 launch this past week, but the updated ultraportable has plenty going for it. A proven design favorite, and undoubtedly the inspiration for a legion of Windows-powered ultrabooks, the MacBook Air now gets a fresh batch of processors in the shape of Intel’s latest I ...

By Sunil Dhaliwal on Venturebeat I like reading academic papers. They are a glimpse into the minds of talented researchers and provide a great view of what’s next in the infrastructure startup world. A colleague recently forwarded me a tweet about a paper by Cormac Herley of Microsoft Research. It had one of the most attention-getting titles I’d seen in a while: Why do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Ni ...

By Sam Biddle on Gizmodo We all want to have sex with each other all the time, but we can't. So we transfer our screw-and-fondle energy into our smartphones—often with disastrous, humiliating results. It doesn't have to be this way. Here's how to sex-text like a champion. As stated when we groped this topic last summer, the pure, true definition of sexting is acting out your super-cool fantasies via SMS (or ...

By Chris Ziegler on The Verge Late last year, we told you just about everything you need to know to buy a smartphone: how to choose a carrier, form factor, operating system, data plan, and more. We gave you the tools to make an educated choice, but we still left the final decision — actually choosing a phone — up to you. What if you’re just looking for a specific recommendation, though? What’s the best phon ...