Money Earner

Forgetting essential items at home, like your wallet or cell phone, may soon be a thing of the past, thanks to six women attending the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University in Canada. These students have developed a purse called the LadyBag that keeps track of its contents using RFID sensors.

The RFID sensors are small enough affix to anything you don’t want to leave behind, which the ladies assume would include your wallet, keys, and cell phone. If one of the tagged items is missing from the bag, a small icon that represents the missing object lights up on the outside of the purse to alert you before you walk out the door.

Another function of the LadyBag is its ability to display its owner’s emotional state, based on physical interaction with the bag. The bag has sensors throughout, so if its carrier wants to show the world she’s happy, she can hug the sides of the bag to produce a smiling emoticon. Fiddling with the zipper produces a nervous emoticon.

The LadyBag’s fun, young women creators created it with fun, young women in mind. So it’s perfect for those who wish to express themselves or just need a little help keeping track of their gear. I doubt it will be in stores anytime soon, since this bag is still in prototype form. But the ladies are working on making it available to all someday.

Happened at Tokyo - An unemployed man in Japan had an unexpected windfall in his mailbox when he found one million yen (10,000 dollars) in cash from an anonymous benefactor, police said Friday.

The 61-year-old man discovered the wad of cash last week along with a slip of paper with the message, "Please make use of this in your everyday life," written with a black ballpoint pen.

But instead of following the advice, the jobless man in the ancient capital of Nara in western Japan turned over the gift to police.

The sender has until June 27 to claim the money or the unemployed man will get it.

Along with the letter, the envelope contained a partial photocopy of a map of nearby Osaka without any address marked or further explanation.

"He has absolutely no clue who it is," a police official said.

Japan has seen a string of cases in which large sums of cash have been left anonymously in people’s mailboxes or public restrooms.

The largest single drop-off so far was in the city of Kyoto last year, astonishing a 67-year-old woman who found an envelope containing 10 million yen of stacked bills in her mailbox.

When little Victoria Marie Figueroa grows up and asks her parents how they met, she might be shocked to find out they were shooting at each other.

Luckily, they were using the virtual bullets of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Lockdown, according to a recent blog post on Xbox.com. That’s where Stacy and Mike first got to know one another, first as enemies, then as nightly teammates. Eventually they’d move their budding romance from the virtual battlefields of the game to the often scarier battlefield of the real-world dating scene, cultivating a relationship that would come to produce their very own pint-sized gaming baby.

"Funny thing is, we hated each other at first, but somehow ended up falling in love, said Stacy. "I was from Georgia and he was from the Bronx. On a leap of faith we met, and we have been together ever since. If it wasn’t for Xbox LIVE, our paths would have never crossed."

Born September 27, 2007, Victoria isn’t technically the first baby attributed to Microsoft online gaming service. That honor goes to Noah James Osmer Pitts, who was born in January of 2005. Incidentally, Noah’s parents met while playing Ghost Recon: Island Thunder - another Tom Clancy game.

Have you Image your self being on a Swat team, Anti-Terrorism unit? Well, wait no more!

In the new rainbow Six Vegas 2 game, you can actually put your face on your character, its like being on the real action and whats cool is that you can actually pimp your self, like putting a hat on, adding a charcoal or something on your face. Isn’t it cool?! Im looking forward on the next games who’ll be also doing this kind of stuff. So gamers, better update your selves!

Here’s a screenshot

And here are 5 reasons why you should bought this game

1. Face the Action

Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 ditches the previous game’s lead in favor of a new star: you. No matter what platform you’re playing on, you can snap pictures of your face and import them into the game, which will generate a 3D model of your noggin and drop you straight into the action. If you harbor secret fantasies of joining an elite counter-terrorism unit — and let’s face it, who doesn’t — it’s the perfect way to explore them without all that tedious training.

2. Co-op Flies the Coop

Were you frustrated when Rainbow Six: Vegas’s co-operative multiplayer mode left you without cut-scenes, mission briefings and other important plot content? Yeah, us too. Luckily, Vegas 2’s co-op campaign is just as good as it is on your own, complete with all the meat. If you’re the type to jump straight into a co-op campaign and skip the single-player altogether, it’ll be right up your alley.

3. Viva Las Vegas!

We know it, you know it, and obviously the Rainbow Six team knows it, too: Vegas is the perfect setting for a first-person shooter, and doubly so when it’s one as realistic as the Tom Clancy series. Vegas 2 promises to take its players further into the seedy side of the city, and if you’ve ever watched CSI, The Godfather, or just about any other Vegas movie ever, you’ll know there’s plenty of trouble to get into just off the Strip.

4. What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas

Vegas 2 is best described as "part sequel, part prequel." It takes place before, during and after the events depicted in the first Vegas game, so you’ll get extra insight into the game’s tale of Mexican shenanagins, double-crossing teammates, and strippers. Except the strippers - we made those up. You’ll have to play the game yourself to find out how it all turns out, but one nugget of information is already unclassified: this is the team’s final Vegas jaunt, so don’t expect any cliffhanger endings.

5. Aces! A New Character Upgrade System!

Although you still gain experience points and rank up in the classic fashion, Vegas 2 introduces a new way to develop your character. Wax a tango with a carefully-applied shotgun blast to the face from two feet away and you’ll receive Close-Quarters Battle points to spend on new up-close-and-personal kit. Drop one from range with a sniper rifle, and you’ll earn Marksmanship rewards. Finally - and this is our personal favorite - take out multiple bad guys at once and you’ll gain new Assault toys.

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese authorities on Tuesday arrested two sisters for allegedly hiding some 58 million dollars in cardboard boxes to evade tax on their inheritance, an official said.

It was the largest sum of inheritance money ever concealed from authorities in Japan, said the official from the National Tax Agency, which arrested the women in cooperation with police in the western city of Osaka.

Hatsue Shimizu, 64, and Yoshiko Ishii, 55, inherited money after their father, who was in the real estate and financial business, died three years ago.

"They concealed most of the money in cash" in a shed attached to Shimizu’s house, the Osaka tax official said.

"We have confiscated 50 cardboard boxes" packed with cash, he said.

The sisters, who hold South Korean nationality, allegedly failed to declare 5.9 billion yen (58 million dollars) out of a total of 7.5 billion yen they inherited from their father.

OK, the story I’m going to link to actually starts with the experts and eventually works its way down to the beginners, so if you’re new to digicam tweaks and advanced settings, try reading from the bottom up.

The most instantly useful tips are probably the three for beginners:

• Adjust white balance manually to account for lighting conditions (especially fluorescents)
• Use a higher ISO rating to account for lower light conditions
• Use Aperture and Shutter Priority modes to keep backgrounds in focus (aperture mode) or freeze fast-moving action shots (shutter priority)

Among the more useful tips from the two advanced sections:

• Use Full Manual Mode to set both aperture and shutter modes together (though this can get complicated)
• Try burst mode to capture a bunch of shots, rapid-fire (this is so easy it shouldn’t be in the advanced tips, I think)
• Use histogram displays to quickly check if you’ve overexposed a shot
• Use exposure bracketing to try the same shot at different exposure levels to find the one that ultimately looks best. 

I know these tweaks take time and patience to master, but next time you’re shooting pics, try giving just one of them a whirl. You might be surprised what a difference they make to your snaps!

In August 2007, scientists from the University of Minnesota published an astonishing finding in the Astrophysical Journal. The universe, they declared, had a hole in it — a hole far bigger than anything scientists have ever seen or expected. This "hole" spans almost one billion light years and is six to 10 billion light years from Earth, in the Eridanus constellation [source: Daily Tech]. (For reference, one light year measures about six trillion miles.)

What makes this vast area of the universe a hole? The area shows almost no signs of cosmic matter, meaning no stars, planets, solar systems or clouds of cosmic dust. Researchers couldn’t even find dark matter, which is invisible but measurable by its gravitational pull. There were also no signs of black holes that might have gobbled up the matter once present in the region.

The hole was initially detected by a NASA program studying the spread of radiation emitted from the Big Bang, which scientists believe spawned our universe. It was then further examined using information gleaned from the Very Large Array (VLA) telescope, used in the NRAO VLA Sky Survey Project to study large sections of the visible sky.

One researcher described the find as "not normal," going against computer simulations and past studies [source: Yahoo News]. Other such holes, also known as voids, have been found before, but this find is by far the largest. Other voids amount to around 1/1000th the size of this one, while scientists once observed a void as close as two million light years away — practically down the street in cosmic terms [source: CNN.com].

Astronomer Brent Tully told the Associated Press that galactic voids in all likelihood develop because regions of space with high mass pull matter from less massive areas [source: CNN.com]. Over billions of years, a region can lose most of its mass to a massive neighbor. In the case of this giant void, further studies may reveal some matter in the region, but it would still be far less than what is found in "normal" parts of space.

Earlier we said that the void was first discovered through a NASA program examining radiation stemming from the Big Bang. On the next page, we’ll take a closer look at that program and how scientists can look far back into the universe’s history — almost to its beginnings — in order to make discoveries like this one.

America’s Next Top Model (often shortened to Top Model or abbreviated as ANTM) is a realit television show in which a number of girls compete for the title of America’s Next Top Model and a chance to start their career in the modeling industry.

The show was created and is hosted by television personality, former supermodel and current talk-show host, Tyra Banks, who also serves as the lead judge and executive producer of the show.

Whitney gets sexy, long, thick extensions transforming her into a power blonde.

Lauren gets a long blonde weave with red highlights that takes her from tomboy to sexy girl.

Katarzyna’s hair gets a dark dramatic makeover.

This year, the man has been fantastic, running one of the NBA’s most devastating offenses while regaining the defensive edge that he appeared to have lost last season. He put on a brilliant performance on national TV yesterday, registering 52 points (30 in the fourth quarter and overtime alone) and 11 rebounds while carrying the Lakers offensively in a win over Dallas.  

When Bryant went to the free throw line, the Staples Center crowd chanted, "M-V-P! M-V-P!"

And they should stop it.  

Actually, they can chant whatever they want. Chant it for Sasha Vujacic, see if he has a Slovenian sense of humor. My issue is in the incessant (in El Lay and on the national airwaves) proclamations of Kobe Bryant as the NBA’s best player.  

He isn’t. Sorry, but he isn’t. He’s awesome, but he’s not the game’s best player. He has the best chance of any NBA talent at dropping 75 points on your ass, and that’s impressive, but Allen Iverson, Carmelo Anthony and Wade (when he’s healthy) aren’t far behind. And "best scorer" doesn’t always mean "best player."  

And, while we’re at it, Kobe’s not even the best scorer any more. James is.

And, in this case, "best scorer" means "best player."

And, to anyone who takes the game seriously, "best player" should mean "M-V-P!"

It’s not a huge edge, but it’s decisive enough: James has Bryant licked in scoring per game (30.3 to 28.2), assists (7.5 to 5.4), rebounds (8.1 to 6.0) and shooting percentage (48.6 to 46.6). Bryant shoots better from long range (35 percent to 30), and has James’ number from the line, but so does Kyle Kolver. Otherwise, they’re even on steals and turnovers, and James blocks nearly twice as many shots.

James may play two more minutes per game, but he still owns a decisive edge in the per-minute numbers, and has to do his damage on a slow-down team (20th in the NBA in possessions). Kobe has a chance to pad his stats (not that he is, kindly read that carefully) with about five more possessions per game on the Lakers. That’s significant.