A zombie infestation has broken out beyond the halls of the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con at nearby Petco Park and horror fans are invited to see if they can survive it. The experience is called The Walking Dead Escape, named for the popular comic book (and subsequent AMC TV series) “The Walking Dead.” In celebration of the comic’s 100th issue, participants can immerse themselves in what’s both an exhaustive and exhausting adventure that puts survival skills to the test.
The Walking Dead Escape not only requires a love for all things zombie, but also the stamina to make it through a grueling obstacle course while avoiding each walker’s touch and infection. Much like a real zombie apocalypse might be, this course is no easy task. Those who take on the challenge can expect commotion, panic, and startles. Moreover, survivors are expected to run, climb, slide, jump, dodge, duck, crawl nearly non-stop for at least 20-30 minutes. It may sound like a lot to expect out of paying participants – and it is – but as soon as the first zombie breaks loose and begins its hunt, survival instincts kick in and there’s no looking back.
NBC Sports and Adobe Systems have teamed up to give fans two apps that stream the Olympics live on mobile devices, record footage for playback, and share the experience through social media.
The apps — a live-streaming app for the more than 3,500 hours of content, and a companion app loaded with additional content launched today. The apps are now available for the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch via Apple’s App Store, and select Android handset and tablet devices within Google Play. (For Apple users, the apps seems a bit hard to find in iTunes. Get them here and here).
The NBC Olympics Live Extra app features the streaming of all 32 athletic competitions and the awarding of all 302 medals, while the NBC Olympics app provides content like interviews, news stories, highlight videos and live results, according to a joint press release from NBC and Adobe. (It may be confusing because the “Extra” app is actually the live streaming app, while the one with the extras is call the “NBC Olympics” app.)
I’m sitting here at Comic-con and I keep hearing about these Mondo posters. They are beautiful and the web is buzzing about them, but I can’t find out where they come from. The Mondo website is empty and the Twitter account gives only a few details away. Yet here they are and they are beautiful.
But now Amazon has a new game. Now that it has agreed to collect sales taxes, the company can legally set up warehouses right inside some of the largest metropolitan areas in the nation. Why would it want to do that? Because Amazon’s new goal is to get stuff to you immediately—as soon as a few hours after you hit Buy.
It’s hard to overstate how thoroughly this move will shake up the retail industry. Same-day delivery has long been the holy grail of Internet retailers, something that dozens of startups have tried and failed to accomplish. (Remember Kozmo.com?) But Amazon is investing billions to make next-day delivery standard, and same-day delivery an option for lots of customers. If it can pull that off, the company will permanently alter how we shop. To put it more bluntly: Physical retailers will be hosed.
Can Amazon pull it off? It’s sure spending a lot of money to try…Amazon is investing $130 million in new facilities in New Jersey that will bring it into the backyard of New York City; another $135 million to build two centers in Virginia that will allow it to service much of the mid-Atlantic; $200 million in Texas; and more than $150 million in Tennessee and $150 million in Indiana to serve the middle of the country. Its plans for California are the grandest of all. This year, Amazon will open two huge distribution centers near Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, and over the next three years it might open as many as 10 more in the state. In total, Amazon will spend $500 million and hire 10,000 people at its new California warehouses.
People sometimes say that the United Nations doesn’t do enough to solve the big problems of the world. I’ve never really agreed with that point of view, but if anyone is looking for evidence of the UN’s impact, a good place to start is the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
They were agreed to in 2000 by all 193 UN member countries and 23 international organizations. Creating that kind of consensus is—by itself—a significant achievement.
The great thing about the MDGs is that they provide clear targets and indicators of progress in key areas, including:
Ending poverty and hunger
Universal education
Gender equality
Child and maternal health
Combatting HIV/AIDS
Environmental sustainability
Global development
Although a number of countries won’t be able to achieve all of the goals by the target date of 2015, the MDGs have been helpful in getting everyone to really think about their part, the progress they’re making, and what they can learn from others. The goals have focused political attention in developing countries, encouraged UN groups to work together, and inspired wealthy and fast-growing donor countries to coordinate their efforts.
Back in 2010 we added biking directions for users of Google Maps in the US and Canada. Helping cyclists navigate the bike trails throughout those countries proved hugely popular, so we’re wheelie excited to announce that starting today, we’ve also added extensive biking data to Google Maps for Austria, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In many of these countries we are also enabling biking directions in beta mode.
We know how popular cycling is in many parts of the world, so we wanted to include as much bike trail data as possible to provide efficient routes, allow riders to customize their trips, make use of bike lanes, calculate rider-friendly routes that avoid big hills and busy roads and to customize the look of the cycling map to encourage people to hop on their bikes. So that’s exactly what we’ve done.
If you’re keen to start riding into work, or maybe just do your bit for the environment by swapping your car for a bike a couple of days a week, biking directions can help you find a convenient route that makes use of dedicated bike lanes and avoids hills whenever possible.
If you’re looking for new ways to get around for fun or to work, or might be trying to live a greener lifestyle in 2012, why not try biking? In March 2010 we introduced biking directions and since then Google Maps has been sharing biking directions with cyclists across the U.S and Canada.
Since no bike path is the same, many users have requested an easier way to differentiate the different types of bike routes that are available. Starting today, a new legend feature can help you understand what the different colors on the bike maps symbolize.
Dark green is for dedicated trails and paths
Light green is for roads with dedicated lanes
Dotted green is for roads that are friendly for cyclists
Look for the biking legend in the upper right hand corner of the map.
You can view this legend by clicking on the widget in upper right corner of Google Maps and selecting the Bicycling layer. You can also access biking directions on your Android device or by going to maps.google.com on your mobile browser.
Hauling trash-bags full of coffee grounds and kitchen scraps, two three-wheeled rickshaw bicycles raced past campus foot traffic.
The fleet had just finished their first compost pickup.
The owner of the cafe, Devon Jackson-Kali, met the students near the cafe to give them leftover coffee grounds…he also gave them pounds of cabbage heads, carrot peelings, celery and other scraps leftover from his kitchen operations.
Leaders of an undergraduate environmental research team known as Waste Watchers drove the custom-built, electric and pedal-operated bikes – or rickshaws – on an extended campus route for the first time. Using the rickshaws for transport, the team collects and recycles leftover scraps at their own compost site located in Sunset Canyon Recreation Center.
Chloe Green, the Weyburn project coordinator and a graduate student in urban planning, excitedly greeted the team on the street outside her apartment Wednesday.
Green said it felt “unnatural” not to compost at her Weyburn apartment. She grew up composting and said she has since learned the technique through trial and error.
