Orange County has become a dominant location for Olympic athletes to live/train

There seems to be a competition between San Diego (who is sending 80 athletes) and Orange County, for the king of the Olympics:   If Orange County was a nation it would have ranked among the top 10 in gold medals at each of the past two Summer Olympics. At the 2004 Games in Athens, Orange …

Rockin Fig wins two NSSA Championship titles

What do Kelly Slater and Rick “Rockin’ Fig” Fignetti have in common? Both surfers seem to be getting better with age. Fig, as he’s known is the surf world, has been chasing after an NSSA Championship title for decades, and finally this week the 55-year-old was able to claim victory with not one, but two …

The nation’s original Surf Dog competition – June 16, San Diego, CA

See Spot surf at the Loews Dog Surfing Competition – the nation’s original surfing competition for man’s best friend. Dozens of dogs take to the waves in the small dog, large dog and tandem categories. The only event of its kind when first launched, it has grown incredibly with the 2011 contest drawing 65 competitors …

An explanation for the multi-million dollar books on Amazon – algorithmic pricing

At first I thought it was a joke – a graduate student with too much time on their hands. But there were TWO new copies for sale, each offered for well over a million dollars. And the two sellers seemed not only legit, but fairly big time (over 8,000 and 125,000 ratings in the last year …

College competition racing Baja off-road vehicles

A group of students in gray shirts file out of a cramped classroom onto the road. Shining flashlights to see through the darkness, they huddle around the frame of a short, black car. One yanks on the pull start. The engine roars to life, and the car takes off down the road, ready for competition. …

Infographic – 20 reasons to switch to Google+

Click for the full infographic.   Ok, this is a pure advertisement for Google+, but I do love the social network. Partially because competition is always good (Facebook needs a kick in the teeth sometimes) and because I’ve never like the blue boxes of Facebook. The design and flow of Google+ works better for me…it feels …

Do galaxies form like snowflakes? Winner of Space Lab competition to find out

The Space Lab competition from YouTube invited young scientists to submit an experiment for the chance to have it performed by NASA aboard the International Space Station. From among thousands of entrants, six regional winners have been chosen. In North America, Emerald Bresnahan of Plainville, Massachusetts, was chosen for her Snowflakes in Space experiment. Emerald …

Best Buy to close 50 stores in the U.S. and 11 in the U.K.

Selling consumer electronics isn’t as easy as it used to be for Best Buy. The big-box retailer is closing 50 stores and compensating employees based on customer service after its fiscal fourth-quarter sales fell short of expectations. The company today reported a fiscal fourth-quarter net loss of $1.7 billion, on revenue of $16.63 billion, up …

Say hello to OpenStreetMap – the Wikipedia of maps

In October 2011, Google finally revealed pricing for Google Maps services. Lightweight usage was still free…significant load volumes would begin to incur charges: basically, services and applications that generated more 25,000 map loads per day would be charged $10-$40 for every additional 1,000 map loads. For businesses put off by the new costs of Google Maps, …

An epic ping-pong battle – with visual FX

A short skit about friends playing ping-pong. With any competitive sport, winning is part of the satisfaction. As the game becomes more about who can smash harder, things start to get interesting with subtle VFX and anime style exaggeration.