“World’s Fastest Tractor” does 85km/hr…just in case you were wondering.

Like going fast and mowing grass? Then hop on in and take this 85km/hr tractor for a spin. Designed and built by a company called “Bison”, this tractor is quite the speed demon. 85km/hr may not sound fast (for all the standard people — roughly 54 MPH) but remember, the driver is only a couple feet off of the ground with nothing but sweet mother nature’s breath to shield him from the pavement below.

Sadly, you can’t really mow and go barreling down the yard at full speed as these tractors are special “racing tractors” — not mowing tractors. Even still, how cool would it be to pull up at your friends house and say: “Hey, check out my tractor…that does freeway speeds”?

GizmoWatch > Autoban (Google Translated)

Manchester United apparently doesn’t understand player/fan interaction in the digital age — clamps down on personal player profiles.

Usually when we talk about censorship, we talk about communist societies and governments which unfairly oppress those living within the boundaries. However, such environments aren’t the only places where humans are unfairly restricted. Real censorship and oppression comes a lot closer to home for many of us. This time, it’s professional athletes who are feeling the heat.

Within the last year or so, we’ve seen various professional sporting leagues such as the NBA and NFL decry personal social networking accounts for players in various forms. In the case of the NBA and NFL, it’s a simple blanket ban on any social networking by players within a set time limit before and after games. With several multi-million dollar news contracts and such, it’s easy to see why the ban stands. Though, that doesn’t make it right.

If you though the NBA and NFL were bad, think again. They’re nothing compared to the crackdown Manchester United is forcing upon their players. The fine professional athletes of MU would take a pre/post game ban with stride seeing their current situation — they aren’t allowed to have any personal social networking accounts. Those that did have personal accounts such as Twitter and Facebook have had said accounts taken over by the team.

At this point I’m sure you’re all wondering why MU would do this? While the team hasn’t come out and outright announced or stated anything, the general consensus is that the team is doing it solely to drive more traffic to their own webpages — a downright shitty move for sure.

Generally when some individual, organization, or government tries to limit ways in which citizens can simply live out their lives, the determined get to working on a work around. In this case there isn’t much the players themselves can do.

But it really begs the question: Why force people to come to your teams official webpage? If you have to force people to use your product, you aren’t doing something right.

It’s quite sad really. Hopefully those running MU will come to their senses…or at least remove their heads from their asses.

Tech Digest

Verizon stumbles upon a little thing called common sense. Removes dumb phones from “advanced devices/$350 ETF” list.

In the age of the smartphone, doing business with us consumers should be getting cheaper. That’s the way the capitalist economy generally works — as supply for increased demand increases, prices drop. So why Verizon felt it was necessary to jack up the ETF for “advanced devices” to a ridiculous $350 is still news to me. Even bigger news however was the inclusion of several dumb/feature phones on the “advanced devices” list — namely from the likes of LG and Motorola.

Whatever Verizon Wireless was smokin’ last month seems to have worn off (or they at least got something better) as the updated list of advanced devices is now void of any actual devices that aren’t smartphones or netbooks. A wise choice to say the least. But if you really want to get picky, we shouldn’t even be talking about $350 ETF’s…

Oh yeah, no official word from Verizon on this advanced devices list shake-up has been made known. Guess losing money isn’t that popular.

Wireless Week

[Image Source]

Printing all of Twitter on paper would consist of 104,860,000,000 words spread across 350,000,000 pages. Woah!

Every once in a while it’s nice to take a breather, sit back, relax and take in the more nerdy, completely useless though interesting facts of life. You’ve probably seen various articles, pictures, and posters comparing various amounts of incredibleness. For tonights super high number of awesomeness, we’re going to look at Twitter.

Seeing as how millions of people around the world use Twitter, it’s incredibly easy to assume that the numbers associated with Twitter — any numbers — are going to be pretty damn high. And astronomic they are.
If Twitter were printed in it’s entirety on paper…

• Using an average HP Inkjet printer, it would cost you $24,500,000 to print in black ink or $55,606,250 to include the Twitter blue.

• The total weight of the paper would weigh in at three and a half million pounds — the equivalent of 82 school buses fully loaded.

• Seven billion tweets to date consist of 104,860,000,000 words. That translates to roughly 133,000 copies of the the King James version of the Bible

…..and so on. Give the pics below a read. It’s pretty intriguing for this late at night. Sorry.

Mashable

[Image Source]

New Faceless Facebook Images: Be cool. Be anonymous. Be unique.

If you spend any amount of time online, whether it be in forums or social networking sites, you’ve at some point or another seen a gray avatar box. The little box would house a clever little picture or icon if the person on the other end took the time to create one. Many people still cherish their anonymity or simply don’t have enough time or want to create such a picture.

If you follow the former — not wanting to give up your faceless persona — why not give yourself a more unique, mysterious image. Instead of the default faceless head that we all see too often, these “Faceless Facebook” images while marketed for Facebook, can be applied anywhere a gravatar is warranted.

Go ahead and give the pics below a quick look. They’re clever, cool, and anonymous.

Give your Berry a little bit of that Nexus touch with “BeNexus”. [BlackBerry Theme]

Wield a BlackBerry but finding yourself taking a particular liking to the Nexus One’s pretty face? You’re now in luck! A rather slick and true to it’s roots Nexus One theme by JMal and Ahaz Designs dubbed “BeNexus” aims to make your BlackBerry go incognito, rockin’ an Android look.

There have been plenty of Android themes created and released for the BlackBerry platform since Android first launched. In my opinion however, BeNexus is one of if not the nicest BlackBerry themes yet .

Better than just a pretty face, there are all kinds of shortcuts and extra goodies packed in. For example, the Google Search bar is an actual working widget ala Android. The notification bar on the top is also functional, giving drop down options to read new messages.

Overall it’s not just a good Android theme but an awesome BlackBerry theme all things considered. Coupled with a $3.99 price until January 24th means you have to try it out. Get downloadin’!

BeNexus Walk-through video.

iPhone 4.0 details start trickling out.

Apple’s event for “exciting new devices” is just around the corner. While pretty much everyone is laser focused on any and all information pertaining to an “iTablet”, let us not forget that January is also the time in which we get to see up and coming info on new iPhone developments. A few of BGR’s ever impressive ninjas have done it again with iPhone OS 4.0. So what’s in store that we can now sorta kinda claim?

• Multi-tasking: Quoting BGR’s sources…”A few new ways” to run applications in the background. (Read: background process — soooo revolutionary, Isn’t it?) Still, I’m stoked.

• User Interface: Updated UI and navigation methods making the OS “easier and more efficient to navigate”.

• Sync: Some new syncing ability in regards to calendars and contacts. (Pretty vague)

• Multi-touch: Multi-touch gestures OS wide. Whoop whoop! Would you expect any less?

• Supported models: iPhone 3G/3GS/4 — We knew it was coming at some point. It looks like the original 1st gen iPhone will be left out of OS 4.0. It’s bittersweet really. If it’s significantly different enough to render the 1st gen iPhone inadequate for daily uses, it must have something worthwhile packed inside right?

Some pretty exciting stuff in deed. If this “new and exciting” way to run applications is nothing more than background permissions for all apps I’d be a happy camper. Even though my iPhone has been relegated to glorified iPod, I wouldn’t hesitate to slap 4.0 on it.

And I’ll admit, a small piece of me is hoping a CDMA iPhone variant is revealed/announced in the near future. Maybe now will be the time to dual wield a DROID/iPhone combo hmmm?

BGR