Mashable: Latest 6 News Updates - including “10 Classy Cocktail Apps for Your iPhone” |
- 10 Classy Cocktail Apps for Your iPhone
- HANDS ON: The Quietest (Powerful) Computer In The World [PICS]
- 40 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed
- “Anonymous” Issues Ultimatum To “Graceless Sociopaths” at Westboro Baptist Church [POLL]
- Top 10 Twitter Trends This Week [CHART]
- Internet Restored in Libya, Google Maps Shows Up-To-Date Info
- 10 Fascinating YouTube Facts That May Surprise You
| 10 Classy Cocktail Apps for Your iPhone Posted: 19 Feb 2011 03:42 PM PST If you’re passionate about crazy cocktails like the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, the Fuzzy Navel, or enjoy the odd Lady Godiva, then we have a treat for you. While the App Store is home to some pretty high-end cocktail recipe books aimed at bartending pros, we’ve found 10 free cocktail-themed iPhone apps that will have the average Jane or Joe making multi-colored liquor mixtures faster than they can drink them. We jest, of course. It goes without saying that you should enjoy alcohol in moderation, so take a temperate wobble through the gallery below. Let us know in the comments any other iPhone apps that you can recommend. 1. Drinkspiration By Absolut     As the name would suggest, this app is all about getting you out of your old beverage rut with a little inspiration. Created by Swedish vodka brand Absolut, suggestions are categorized around vodka, gin, rum, brandy, whisky and tequila based drinks. It's a good-looking app with some quality content. The methods of suggestion are fun -- you can get "Drinkspiration" by location, time of day and even by background noise, with the app analyzing the volume to suggest "quiet" or "loud" drinks. Great for: Suggestions for trying something new 2. Drinks & Cocktails by drinks999.co.uk 1,200 drinks and cocktail recipes for free ain't bad. This app is lovely to look at, with great graphics on a clean, white background. Functionality is basic -- in the main part of the app, the recipes are listed alphabetically. The "category" option only offers by glass shape or color but browsing the latter will send you into a haze of single-hued loveliness that might well inspire you to stick to that one color for an entire evening's imbibing. Great for: Good looks 3. 8,500+ Drink & Cocktail Recipes Free Boasting 8,500+ recipes, it could be argued that this app stands for quantity over quality. Much of the 8,500 options are variations. For example, there are three versions of an Afterburner and six of a Lemon Drop. The instructions are clear, and as a pocket reference, it's certainly more than comprehensive and worth the free download. Great for: Catching a bartender with an obscure request! 4. Top Martini Recipes If you're mad for martinis, this is a must-download. Essentially a list of the many variations of the classic cocktail, the app offers a nice photo, list of ingredients and detailed instructions on how to make each one. Like other apps here, Top Martini Recipes allows you to shake your phone for a random recipe. The retro cocktail shaker graphic shown on screen somehow makes it even more fun. Great for: Martini lovers! 5. Drink & Cocktail Pro Lite As a "Lite" version of the Pro app (which boasts more than 20,000 recipes!) this is a decent, free, well-rounded option with a nice bonus section on bartending info. There are two features that make it stand out for us, though. First off, the built-in unit converter is a fabulous addition and incredibly useful if you're referencing both U.S. and European recipes. Secondly, the ability to narrow down recipes by ingredient is useful if you want to use up that bottle of creme de menthe that's been lurking at the back of your drink cabinet for too long. Great for: Unit conversion and reference 6. Drinks and Cocktails This doesn't offer a lot more than the other apps we've featured, but its scroll wheel interface and competent search functionality means it stands up well to use in a bustling bar -- especially if you've already had a few. Great for: Going out on the town 7. Mixology: Drink Recipes (Free) Another app, another decent recipe database for free. Mixology also offers a particularly well done "Cabinet" function that lets you tick off the ingredients you have on hand in order to show you what cocktails you can create. Great for: Making cocktails with limited supplies 8. thebar.com From drink uber-brand Diageo, thebar.com is a slick corporate effort with good-looking graphics. What it does well is offer drink suggestions based on events. There are recipes for all kinds of gatherings, including tailgating, horse racing, award show night, board game night, toga parties and events you might not even assume would go hand-in-hand with alcohol, such as brunch and book clubs. Great for: The hostess-with-the-mostess! 9. inthespirit easy cocktails This app offers a sensible list of approximately 400 cocktail recipes with nice pics and plainly worded ingredients and instructions. A good choice for cocktail-creating beginners, you can sort recipes by difficulty level, as well as by taste (creamy, dry, fruity, etc.), which also makes it a nice option for those with more fussy palettes. Great for: Fussy drinkers and beginners 10. iSwig We're ending this list with something a little different from all the database apps previous. iSwig can be seen as a cocktail travel journal or a location-based social drinking game. With Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Flickr integration, you can check in, snap a pic, and tell all your fiends about the great grasshopper you just gulped in Greenwich Village. With push notifications, your friends can inform you likewise of their quaffing activities. If you like to imbibe in varied locations and have buddies with similar interests, we think this could be a fun app to record your beverage-based activities. Just don't get too competitive, for the sake of your liver. More iPhone Resources from Mashable:
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Spanishalex More About: app store, cocktails, drinks, foodie, iphone, iphone apps, List, Lists, Mobile 2.0, trending For more Mobile coverage:
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| HANDS ON: The Quietest (Powerful) Computer In The World [PICS] Posted: 19 Feb 2011 02:48 PM PST   Listen carefully to the sound your computer is making right now. Noisy? Most computers make noise, but we found one that’s tremendously powerful, yet it’s so quiet we couldn’t tell it was running. I can’t stand constant, droning noise. It’s distracting, stressful, and it might even make you sick. One day I got fed up with the constant fan noise from my PC. I was on a mission: to find a powerful PC that would be completely quiet. Little did I realize that there’s an Internet subculture devoted to silent PCs, and one of its proponents is the Silent PC Review (SPCR). The site has a special section of “SPCR Certified Silent PCs,” and the most silent computer those connoisseurs of quiet have ever found is a tower PC made by boutique computer assembler Puget Systems. The SPCR site calls Puget’s Serenity PC “the quietest computer system we have ever reviewed or even laid hands on, and probably quieter than any PC will ever be, short of one with no moving parts and zero electronic noise.” Concerned that Puget Systems is also one of the sponsors of that SPCR site, I vowed to test this quiet PC myself, and see if it lives up to its billing. When I contacted Puget Systems in hopes of testing such a silent system, its CEO told me he’s just put together a smaller system he calls the Serenity Mini that’s even quieter than its full-sized brother. In an anechoic chamber, the Serenity PC measured a super-quiet 11dB, and Puget says this mini system is 1dB quieter, at 10dB. I had to check this out. A few days later, the Serenity Mini arrived, with its “mini-tower” case that’s by no means miniature, measuring about 17″ tall. The object of this exercise was to find a PC with the fastest processors and finest components inside that can still scream without making a single sound. Of course, you can find other solid-state and fanless PCs with laptop processors inside that might match the quietude of these “silent PCs,” but you’d be missing out on all the power of Intel’s latest second-generation Core i7 tech embodied in its “Sandy Bridge” processing platform. So I tested a loaded PC with 8GB of RAM, a solid-state drive and the fastest Core i7 quad-core chip on board. When I first fired up this Serenity Mini, I quickly realized that Silent PC Review wasn’t kidding. Even when I transformed our Midwest Test Facility into a completely silent environment by shutting down everything that makes even the slightest noise, including the refrigerator and the heating system, I still could not hear a peep emanating from of this PC. How is this done? First of all, there’s that solid-state hard drive inside that makes no sound. There’s an almost equally quiet 1.5TB Caviar Green hard drive by Western Digital, a fanless PowerColor Radeon HD 5750 1GB graphics card, super-quiet Gelid Tranquillo CPU cooling , a Seasonic X-560 power supply that’s nearly silent, an Antec Mini P180 case, and then AcoustiPack foam padding lining the inside of the case. The result? State-of-the-art power with nearly complete silence. Just how state-of-the-art is this power? Its quad-core Intel Core i7 2600K 3.4GHz chip is the fastest Sandy Bridge processor available at this writing, and it scored 6.86 points on the cross-platform Maxon Cinebench Benchmark 11.5. While no match for the two six-core Intel Xeon Westmere EP X5680 3.33GHz processors inside that Z800 workstation (which scored 16.22 points on that same Cinebench 11.5 benchmark), it held its own with its single quad-core chip. By the way, Puget acknowledged the recent complaints of bugs in the “6 series” chipset associated with the Sandy Bridge processing platform, and says that all its PCs will be equipped with the modified chipset that Intel will be releasing soon. Now you’re probably wondering, what’s the damage for such an unusually quiet and powerful machine? Puget is selling this one as tested for $2327, or if you’re a computer assembly expert and won’t need any help, you could put together this same group of components for a significantly lower price. And now for the bottom line: How quiet is this machine compared with that 12-core workstation, an everyday laptop, and an exceptionally quiet PC? The difference is noticeable. To measure the difference between the sound output of each machine, I used a $.99 iPhone app called Decibel, with my iPhone positioned precisely 1 foot away from each machine. Granted, it’s not as completely scientific as the Silent PC Review’s measurements in an anechoic chamber, but for the purposes of comparison it will give you an idea of what I mean by silence: Find the Serenity Mini’s components listed below, but first take a gander at the innards of this church-mouse-quiet PC: Inside the Puget Serenity Mini Front View It's a plain-looking enclosure on this PC, but its job is to be inconspicuous. Back View Plenty of I/O here, and there's two more USB ports and an eSATA port on the front, too. Storage There's a 120GB solid-state drive in there, as well as a 1.5TB spinning hard drive. Silent Fan This Tranquillo fan is aptly named -- I couldn't hear a peep out of it. Inputs and Outputs AMD Graphics This 1GB graphics card is fanless, completely silent Serenity Mini by Puget Systems Price: $2327.58 More About: hands-on, Puget Systems, Quiet PC, Quietest PC in the World, review, Silent PC, trending For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:
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| 40 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed Posted: 19 Feb 2011 01:14 PM PST   The long winter is almost over and as the weather gets ever better we at Mashable are hard at work bring you a list of tools and resources for your digital life. Here you’ll find stories on how a computer beat Jeopardy champions, pics of the latest toys from this year’s New York Toy Fair, and a load of hands-on demos and impressions from the Mobile World Congress. Looking for even more social media resources? This guide appears every weekend, and you can check out all the lists-gone-by here any time. Editors’ Picks
Social Media
For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. Tech & Mobile
For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. Business
For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. Image courtesy of Webtreats etc. More About: business, Features Week In Review, gadgets, List, Lists, Mobile 2.0, social media, tech, technology For more Social Media coverage:
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| “Anonymous” Issues Ultimatum To “Graceless Sociopaths” at Westboro Baptist Church [POLL] Posted: 19 Feb 2011 11:42 AM PST   Members of Westboro Baptist Church, known for protesting at funerals of fallen U.S. service men and women, might be facing a hacked website soon. The group of controversial protesters from Kansas, which responded to last month’s shooting rampage in Tucson with “thank God for the shooter — 6 dead,” has been threatened by the notorious collective of unnamed Internet-hacking activists calling itself “Anonymous,” which vows to inflict “irreversible” damage to the hate group’s website. You might remember Anonymous, the “hactivist” group that successfully disabled sites backed by the regime of former Egypt president Hosni Mubarak before he was swept from power by protesters, in addition to disrupting a number of websites in support of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The group has proven it’s capable of following through on its threats. In a sharply worded open letter, Anonymous called the small group of Westboro Baptist Church members “an assembly of graceless sociopaths and maniacal chauvinists and religious zealots,” citing the way the group has condemned men and women who have died in the armed forces, as well as “prayed for and celebrated the deaths of young children.” The Anonymous hackers continued with a warning: “Cease and desist your protest campaign in the year 2011, return to your homes in Kansas, & close your public websites.” The group states that “the damage incurred will be irreversible, and neither your institution nor your congregation will ever be able to fully recover.” What do you think, readers? Does the First Amendment allow the Westboro Baptist Church the right to express its views, however repugnant? Please vote in this poll, and then let’s discuss this in the comments.
More About: Activists, anonymous, First Amendment, Hacktivists, poll, protest, trending, westboro baptist church For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:
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| Top 10 Twitter Trends This Week [CHART] Posted: 19 Feb 2011 09:56 AM PST   The first rule of Twitter trends: Never underestimate the power of American awards shows. While we’ve consistently seen international sports, entertainment and politics beat out the biggest U.S. cultural trends on Twitter, American broadcasts like last weekend’s Grammys will almost always take the cake. Fueled by Esperanza Spalding’s surprise win as Best New Artist (a powerful sub-trend in its own right), the Grammys were number one this week in the Twitterverse. Holidays always amass enough trend power to make the chart, and it’s no surprise to see Valentine’s Day pop in at number two (the Muslim observance of Muhammad’s birth, Maulid Nabi, appears at number eight). Beyond that, take last week’s top entertainment trends, shuffle them around a bit, and you’ve got most of this week’s chart covered. For the full list of top trends, check out the chart below, compiled by our friends at What the Trend. Because this is a topical list, hashtag memes and games have been omitted from the chart. You can check past Twitter trends in our Top Twitter Topics section, and read more about this past week's trends on What The Trend. Top Twitter Trends This Week: 2/11 – 2/17 Image courtesy of iStockphoto, 123render More About: britney spears, grammy awards, justin bieber, Lady Gaga, soccer, Top Twitter Topics, twitter, twitter trends, valentine's day For more Social Media coverage:
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| Internet Restored in Libya, Google Maps Shows Up-To-Date Info Posted: 19 Feb 2011 08:57 AM PST   The Internet has been restored to Libya after the country shut down its network links to the outside world for six hours last night. Now that the Internet is back, protesters are making the most of their connectivity by mapping tweets using Google Maps. According to those trusty wire watchers at Renesys, “Two-thirds of Libyan routes came back to life at 6:01 UTC [1:01 a.m. Eastern], and the remainder were restored nine minutes later … and Libya is back on the Internet.” Now that the net is back, we can see brave people tweeting away, letting each other know what’s going on inside the troubled country. Beyond that, those tweets are being mapped in ways that are spectacularly useful. Take a look at this Google maps mashup, created by Twitter user @arasmus. It compiles Twitter messages and then places them on a map with an unmistakable legend attached each one. On the map, you can see police locations, protesters on the move, power outages, and the number of deaths that have occurred. A click on each icon shows more data, such as warnings where police are using live ammunition. And, @arasmus is regularly updating this map, saying it’s current to within a few minutes. This is just one of the powerful social networking tools the protesters can use to keep tabs on the situation. We’re wondering if Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi and his police force are also using this map for their own information. More About: Google Maps, libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Revolution, trending, twitter For more Social Media coverage:
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| 10 Fascinating YouTube Facts That May Surprise You Posted: 19 Feb 2011 07:32 AM PST   YouTube is huge. Humongous, even. More video content is uploaded to YouTube in a 60 day period than the three major U.S. television networks created in 60 years. The average YouTube user spends between 15 and 25 minutes a day on the site, but how much do we know about the world’s largest video sharing website? Do you know what the most watched YouTube clip is? Can you name all three founders? Do you know how many times per minute a YouTube link is tweeted? There is a ton of interesting data, info and stats to be learned about YouTube — we’ve delved deep to find 10 fascinating facts. Have a read and let us know which ones you didn’t know in the comments below. 1. PayPal’s Role in YouTube’s Creation YouTube was created by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim in 2005. The three founders knew each other from working together at another Internet start up, PayPal. In fact, Hurley designed the PayPal logo after reading a Wired article about the online payment company and e-mailing the startup in search of a job. YouTube was initially funded by bonuses received following the eBay buy-out of PayPal. You could argue that if there was no PayPal, there would be no YouTube. 2. YouTube’s Origins as a Dating Site The founding trio didn’t come up with the YouTube concept straight away. Legend has it that YouTube began life as a video dating site dubbed “Tune In Hook Up,” said to be influenced by HotorNot. The three ultimately decided not to go that route. The inspiration for YouTube as we know it today is credited to two different events. The first was Karim’s inability to find footage online of Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction,” and the second when Hurley and Chen were unable to share video footage of a dinner party due to e-mail attachment limitations. 3. YouTube Caused Problems For Utube The domain name YouTube.com was registered on Valentine’s Day in 2005. This, however, caused a huge misunderstanding for Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment based in Perrysburg, Ohio. Its company domain, “utube.com,” was overwhelmed with traffic from people that tried to spell the video site’s name phonetically. The manufacturing company sued YouTube claiming its business was damaged by the video site, but the claims were dismissed. Nowadays, it seems Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment has bowed to the inevitable — its business site has been moved to utubeonline.com and the original utube.com is a video-themed landing page for bad spellers. 4. The First Ever YouTube VideoThe first video to ever be uploaded to YouTube isn’t a classic by any means. Shot by Yakov Lapitsky at the San Diego Zoo it shows co-founder Jawed Karim in front of the elephant enclosure going on about long trunks. It has, nonetheless, racked up a very healthy 4,282,497 views since its online debut on April 23, 2005. 5. The First Rickroll The first instance of a “Rickroll” appeared on YouTube way back in 2007. Apparently, it is the evolution of a 4chan prank that originally “duckrolled” users via links that led to a duck on wheels. Now a classic in its own right, the Rickroll has become what must be the most common online practical joke. Back in 2008, at the height of the phenomenon, a SurveyUSA poll suggested over 18 million U.S. adults had been Rickrolled — perhaps more, given that Rick Astley himself participated in a mass-Rickrolling in that year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Although Rickrolling has perhaps now had its day, we imagine that figure has easily doubled. 6. YouTube’s Annual April Fools Pranks For the last three years YouTube has pranked its millions of users every April Fools Day. The first was a classic — every video on the site’s homepage was actually a Rickroll. In 2009 YouTube turned the site upside down and in 2010 an attempt to reduce bandwidth costs saw a “TEXTp” mode introduced, which translated colors in the videos into text. We can’t wait to see what YouTube has in store for 2011. 7. Some Jaw-Dropping YouTube Statistics As of February 2011, YouTube has 490 million unique users worldwide per month, who rack up an estimated 92 billion page views each month. We spend around 2.9 billion hours on YouTube in a month — over 325,000 years. And those stats are just for the main YouTube website — they don’t incorporate embedded videos or video watched on mobile devices. 8. YouTube’s Social Stats Social media-related YouTube stats are just as impressive. YouTube says that on average there are more than 400 tweets per minute containing a YouTube link. Meanwhile, over on Facebook over 150 years worth of YouTube videos are watched every single day. 9. The Most Viewed, Liked and Favorited Video Not counting music videos (which due to licensing restrictions are often shown only in the U.S. on YouTube), the most viewed video of all time is the classic “Charlie bit my finger,” with an astounding 282,151,886 (at the time of writing). When you include music videos from the U.S.-only VEVO site, then the crown goes to Justin Beiber, whose “Baby” video has over 466 million views and counting. Did you know you can view the “YouTube Charts” at any time to see continually updated info about what’s popular? 10. The YouTube “Snake” Easter Egg GameYouTube has a fun Easter egg that will let you play a Snake-esque game within the video window. The clip above will give you a demo, but it’s simple to execute if you’re keen to try it out. Head over to YouTube, click on a recent video from any category, pause it and then hit the left and up arrow keys at the same time. Enjoy! More Fun Facts from Mashable:
Image courtesy of codenamecueball More About: facts, Google, Lists, paypal, trending, vevo, video, youtube For more Video coverage:
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