This man, Jack Rossi, created a simulation proton pack + thrower so he can play the Wii version of Ghostbusters with as much realism as possible. This is the result.

I gotta admire him for his preference of playability over having this-gen graphics. And for finding a use for all that junk he had lying around his house. [GBFans via Destructoid via Nerd Aproved]

That's what this RBC/ChangeWave's surveys says. Back in April 2007, fewer people were interested in buying the original iPhone compared to those wanting to buy the iPad on February 2010. Does this mean the iPad would be a bigger success?

Not necessarily. It may mean that, but we don't really know for sure. First, back then the iPhone was completely unknown. A new, unproven product, with no user base whatsoever. Today, the iPhone and iPod are well known, so one could even argue that—given their massive popularity—a higher percentage of people would be interested in buying the iPad. In other words, who knows. Let's wait until Apple actually makes the iPad available on their site.

There are other interesting data points. One is the version people are most interested in: The lowest end and the highest end win, with 19% each. With the 64GB Wi-Fi getting only 8% and the 16GB Wi-Fi and 3G version getting 9% of the interest.

Another interesting one: 68% of the people interested in it want to surf the internet, 44% for email, 37% for eBooks, 28% for the reading magazines and other periodicals, and only 24% for watching video. [Digital Daily]

Ten 200 ton buoys—each measuring 150 feet by 40 feet—are being installed off the coast of Oregon to build America's first wave power farm. They'll power 400 homes by harnessing "the energy of wave motion." Worth $60 million?

Of course, of course. Clean, renewable energy is almost always worth it. The trouble with wave farms is that they haven't shown much success yet. They're currently about six times as costly as wind farms, are easily damaged by large waves, and the first ones didn't work out so well:

The world's first commercial wind wave farm opened in 2008 in Portugal, but power production was suspended due to financial difficulties. Moreover, two years ago, a Canadian-produced wave power device sank off Oregon's coast.

Yikes. I'm sure that in the long run we'll start seeing positive results, but it looks like the path there will be long and expensive. [USA Today via Good via Inhabitat—Thanks to GitEmSteveDave for catching the typo!]

Obama's anti-trust guy thinks Google has some monopoly in them, and now so does Europe. If you remember back just a few years, you'll recall that Europe was the big battleground that Microsoft had to fight in trying to prove that it wasn't a monopoly, so this could be the start of some legal bad-news for Google. Or, it could turn out to be nothing, as it's just a probe. [Business Insider]

Doing the right thing by exposing a company's shoddy product, customer service, or iffy privacy policy can have consequences. Our friends at Boing Boing just finished dealing with MagicJack and a groundless defamation suit because they were brutally honest.

You can read a full account of the events along with the post that started it all over at Boing Boing, but the ordeal boils down to this:

Boing Boing posted about MagicJack's "terms of service-which include the right to analyze customers' calls-and various iffy characteristics of its website" in April of 2008. According to Robert Beschizza:

The post was titled "MagicJack's EULA says it will spy on you and force you into arbitration." This EULA, or End-User Licensing Agreement, concerns what subscribers must agree to in order to use the service. I wrote that MagicJack's allows it to target ads at users based on their calls, was not linked to from its homepage or at sign-up, and has its users waive the right to sue in court. I also wrote that that MagicJack's website contained a visitor counter that incremented automatically; and that the website claimed to be able to detect MagicJacks, reporting that "Your MagicJack is functioning properly" even when none are present.

He also notes that "the post didn't criticize the service or the gadget itself, which works very well."

In March 2009, Boing Boing was notified that MagicJack was filing suit because "these statements were false, misleading, and had irreparably harmed MagicJack's reputation by exposing it to 'hate, ridicule and obloquy.'"

A great deal of back-and-forth followed until the suit was finally dismissed and MagicJack was ordered to pay Boing Boing "more than $50,000 in legal costs."

We may think that all's well that ends well and that the truth prevailed, but it took a great deal of time and legal costs. Perhaps a site smaller than Boing Boing could not have handled the effects of a defamation suit like this—justified or not—and would've given in to a company's demands. And that's more terrifying than some wonky EULA. [Boing Boing]

Everyone, including Apple, knows that the next logical step in making the Apple TV set-top product is embedding that technology into a TV. It'd be like all the Korean TV manufacturers putting Netflix in theirs. But Apple says no.

COO Tim Cook says:

Today, the go-to-market model for Apple TV is very difficult. Because it would seem that that go-to-market model would lead to the TV. And we have no interest in being in the TV market.

Which leaves them in a weird limbo, because they don't want to move forward, yet they don't want to discontinue the product.

...There's people — and I'm one of those — that they're avid Apple TV users, and so, because their gut says something there, we're continuing to invest in this. But today it's just a hobby.

Unfortunately in business, you've got the mindset that if you're not moving forward you're falling behind, so if they can't figure out what to do with the Apple TV brand, they might just kill it altogether rather than continue to support it without much new development. [Business Insider]

If you have a pair of hard-soled shoes, two pressure-sensitive LED tiles, and some baby mama drama from which you need to extricate yourself, let this Instructable be your guide and recreate the special-FX steps from Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean."

Admittedly, I'm not sure how easy it would be to do any sort of dancing with a gigantic LED tile attached to each foot. But when you're standing still, and being viewed from the knee down, you will be the spitting image of the King of Pop.

The Instructable covers all the bases, from assembling the light-up squares to spray-painting the shoes just so. Be forewarned, though, these imitation shoes will make you just as irresistible to women as Jackson was (circa 1983):

You will get a lot of attention from people, people will dance around you on the dance floor, and you will feel a bit shallow, but you love it!

The best chat up line possible is to ask someone to join you on your dance floor so they stand/dance on your tiles, which puts them basically on top of you. Enjoy! Do not use these shoes for evil!

So there it is, plain and simple: don't go around breaking young girls' hearts. [Instructables]

Every time I see any Cylon-themed object, I get nostalgia of those perfect nights watching the series in bed, and I want to see it again. This Cylon Teddy Bear is the last straw. Starbuck, here I go. [Instructables]

During a Goldman Sachs tech conference today, Apple COO Tim Cook revealed Apple's secret to success: High standards, and a low tolerance for half-assed proposals. Except, that wasn't the question.

Tim was responding to a question about complacency and hubris—specifically, how a company that's been right on so many big issues can avoid it, and stay clearheaded. Said Tim:

Yeah, that is a great question. The executive team of the company spends a lot of time thinking and discussing how to retain and recruit the best talent in the world, because at the end of the day—I know it's a cliche—but people are our most important asset by far, and it's people that deliver innovation, which is key to us. And so what else do we do other than that? Well, we are the most focused company that I know of, or have read of, or have any knowledge of. We say no to good ideas every day; we say no to great ideas in order to keep the amount of things we focus on very small in number, so that we can put enormous energy behind the ones we do choose, so that we can deliver the best products in the world. In fact, the table that each of you are sitting at today, you could probably put every product on it that Apple makes, and yet Apple's revenue last year was over $40bn. I think the only other company that could say that is an oil company.

And that is not from just saying "yes" to the right product which gets a lot of focus—it's saying no to many products that are good ideas, but just not nearly as good as the other ones. I think that this is so ingrained in our company that this hubris that you talk about, that happens to companies that are successful but then decide that their sole role in life is to get bigger, and they start adding this and that and this and that, I can tell you the management team of Apple would never let that happen. That's not what we're about. So, focus on people, and ensuring that it's a small list of things to work on and putting all of our wood behind those things, that's the magic behind us.

Question: How do you avoid hubris, Apple?
Answer: WE'RE JUST THAT GOOD. [SAI]

This inflatable sleeping coat would be perfect for the millions of homeless people in the world—though as it's but a concept, the wearable sleeping bag won't be warming anyone up anytime soon, sadly. [Reddot via LikeCool]