Cloud City
Hewlett Packard and Microsoft have announced a new partnership, pledging to spend $250 million over the next three years on cloud-based initiatives. That's a tidy sum, but there's not much information about where all that money's going, except that Microsoft hopes to compete with Oracle-Sun, IBM, and Cisco by getting its software into the machines that deliver cloud-based services. HP CEO Mark Hurd says, "These are two great companies that are lined up to make great things happen." We'll have to see if his forecast is right or if he's just blowing hot air. [Business Week]
Pedal Power
Presumably, to reconcile his love of XBox 360 with the weight gain it caused, this gamer rigged an exercise bike to control his console. The project, dubbed "Excite Bike," uses a sensor to meter how rapidly the rider is pedaling and maps that speed to the XBox controller's right trigger. Thus, the faster you pedal in real life, the faster you move in the game. Click through to see some videos of rig in action. Excite Bike controlling Forza 3: makes perfect sense. Excite Bike controlling Halo: not so much. [Geeky Gadgets]
WiMax Family Grows
The boy geniuses at Boy Genius Reports are reporting that Clear is offering two new WiMax modems. The Gemtek Series G Home Modem will be making its debut in Las Vegas while the Motorola CPEi 725 will pop up first in Portland, both available to new customers for $69.99 outright or $4.99 with monthly rental. Best of all, both modems have integrated ATA for VoIP support right out of the box. Though these modems aren't as useful to us as some of the WiMax hotspots we've had the chance to check out, whenever WiMax works, it's a beautiful thing. [Boy Genius Reports]
Lonely Planet
Peter Backus, a student at Warwick University, has completed a paper entitled, "Why I don't have a girlfriend: An application of the Drake Equation to love in the UK." His conclusion: he's only about 100 times more likely to find a suitable girlfriend in the UK than mankind is to finding intelligent life in the Universe. Like Drake's equation, there is definitely some guesswork involved in coming up with the likelihood of variables—"On? a? given? night? in? London,? there? is? greater? than? a? 1? in? 1000? chance? that? I? will? meet? an? attractive? woman? between? the? ages? of? 24? and? 34? with? a? university? degree"—but judging simply by the fact that he conceived of and completed this paper, I'd say Peter's depressing findings are probably pretty accurate. [Boing Boing]


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