SlashGear Week In Review- Week 33 2011
Sunday is here again along with the latest edition of the SlashGear Week in Review. A study released last week claims that too much Facebook is unhealthy for kids. The researcher behind the study claims that kids that use Facebook are ill more than kids that don't.
One small town in Texas has been so hard hit by the drought and the heat this summer that it has been forced to take extreme measures for water. The town is installing a recycling station that will filter urine for drinking water. The Droid Bionic was unveiled in some photos showing all the hardware. The device will support 4G and has a dual-core processor.
IBM/NCSA has abandoned the petascale supercomputer project that was in the works dubbed "Blue Waters." The reason for abandoning the project was unexpected costs and complexities. Sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 were blocked in Europe this week. The sales of the Samsung tablet were halted after Apple alleged that it was infringing on its IP rights.
A very cool and officially licensed Star Trek theme park is heading to Aqaba, Jordan. The theme park will be part of the Red Sea Astrarium and the King of Jordan is investing $1.5 billion of his own loot into the project. Anonymous vowed to destroy Facebook on November 5th early in the week. Facebook declined to comment on the threat.
Facebook launched a group messaging app this week called Facebook Messenger. The app allows the user to chat with all their friends and access the Facebook inbox. Apple hit a major milestone this week becoming the world's largest company. Apple passed Exxon Mobile as the largest market value company.
Amazon launched a new Kindle web app this week that is aimed at the iPad user. The app is web based rather than a traditional app to get Amazon around sharing money with Apple. The cool Sifteo interactive blocks are now up for pre-order. The digital blocks are used for all sorts of games and sell for $145 for a three-cube starter pack.
Windows Phone 7 Mango is coming on September 1 according to reports from supposed inside sources. The only hint that Microsoft has given for the official launch was this fall. Anonymous has disavowed the Facebook attach threat. Some details surfaced that claim Anonymous wants to fight for users not against them. Seriously?
A new hack using Kinect surfaced that has the motion detecting sensor controlling a stuffed monkey. The monkey makes the same moves the person in front of the sensor makes. A lot of people were not happy to find out this week that their phone numbers are being shared. In fact, the feature is not new and your phone number has been shared by Facebook for a long time.
A new robot satellite with the ability to toss space junk down into the atmosphere where it will burn up has been announced. The robot would help to clean up the space around our planet to remove all the junk that could threaten satellites that are in use. A letter that leaked from inside AT&T may hurt the chances of the company completing its merger with T-Mobile. The leaked letter shows that AT&T plans to cover 80% of the country with its LTE network and covering more was too costly but the T-Mobile purchase is more expensive than just building out its own network. Thanks for reading this week's edition, see you next time!