Is Microsoft abandoning Hotmail? 

Well its just something I heard on the grapevine at this stage, but so I hear Microsoft is giving up on Hotmail, with, I imagine, the likely result being an attempt to sell Hotmail, and a closure if that fails.

Readers may remember that Microsoft bought Hotmail for around US$400M in early 1998, with the plan to integrate it with MSN, Expedia and Carpoint. At that point Hotmail had 9 million users.

Hotmail offered users 2MB of online email storage, and for years was the leading free online email service.

Along the way Microsoft introduced…

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Pr0n King in a box

Iomega has just announced their latest home/small business NAS (Network Attached Storage) device, the StorCenter Wireless Network Storage 1TB, utilising Parallel ATA (PATA) hard disks.

Featuring wireless network as well as 10/100/1000 Mbps ethernet, it’s RAID 0 (more accurately:striped array), 1 and 5 capable. It even has 2 USB ports to connect other hard disks for backups of your backups, and can also function as a USB print server, or a UPnP Media device. 

It supports Windows, Mac and Linux users, and has an RRP of US$899.95 for the 1TB model and US$499.95 for the 500GB model.

But local Council wont have a baa of it.

Building on a concept first thought of by Andre Groen, a Dutch horse breeder, Hotels.nl a dutch hotel booking website has started advertising on sheep in paddocks near roadsides, for the grand sum of 1 Euro per sheep per day.

Drivers have been seen to hit the brakes and do u-turns to go look at the sheep, and bookings are up 15%, thanks to the cosy waterproof blankets adorning the local sheep.

Unfortunately local mayor, Bert Kuiper, who intially thought it was amusing retreated to the safety of bureaucracy and started fining Hotels.nl 1000 euro per day.

Chief Executive of Hotels.nl, Miechel Nagel, has said he will pay the fines but fight the council in court. In parallel with this, he is looking for flocks of sheep adjacent to traffic jams to boost his advertising coverage.

The scheme is being considered for expansion, into horses and cows.

Chief of Navy Personnel rules on tatts, brands, piercings, body art and dental ornaments…

In one of those wonderful bureaucratic moments, the Navy has released its latest word on what it deems "self mutilation".

Self mutilations can’t be discriminatory, obscene or prejudicial, which is fair enough, but why stop there?

 They now can not be visible through the white uniform, can not be on the head, face, neck or scalp regions. Self mutilatory (yes I made that word up) items on the lower arm can be no larger than the wearer’s hand, fingers closed. (Known to us landlubbers as a "fist"). 

And just so we are all sure, self mutilation is defined as radical alteration of the body, head, face or skin for the purpose of an abnormal appearance.

Dental ornamention is also prohibited.

For all existing self-mutilations waivers for pre-existing conditions will be considered. Interestingly you can be recommended for separation from the Navy if doctors decide that removal is not feasible, so I guess by waiver they probably mean laser.

Bunny survives 2 weeks in small underwater tube with 4 humans, until being drowned during a bizarre experiment on Easter Sunday.

3 NASA astronauts and one doctor from Cincinnati surfaced today after 18 days underwater, testing a variety of space medicine and moonwalking techniques.

Their home during the journey was a tiny 45 foot (13m) long, 13 foot (4m) wide tube, resting just over 60ft (20m) underwater.

Tests included tele-robotic surgery, akin to a 12 year old kid with pimples playing Playstation 2 with a scalpel….on you.

The bunny appears to have been drowned, tied to the NASA equivalent of a cinder block.

Their journals can be read here.

Note: stuffed bunny rabbits may have been harmed during the making of this NASA adventure. Its’N'Bits does not condone the torture of stuffed bunnies.

For the home theatre enthusiast with a serious habit…

The guys over at  Pass DIY have taken subwoofers to a whole new level of insanity, in their endeavours to hit a genuine useable 20Hz.

Each monster featuring twin 21 inch subbies rated to a whopping 800w each, 12 foot tubes, carefully measured in length to match the desired minimum frequency (and based on a whole bunch of math that I never knew about).

Of course what would a serious bass habit be without a way to get all amped up? How does 4000w per channel using a pair of amazing Pass X1000 amps sound?

I can only imagine…

 A 2.7g helicopter – ants of the world rejoice!

I dont quite know what possesses people to do this kind of thing (I’m the kind of guy who fumbles putting his keys in the ignition), but the people over at Proxflyer have created the worlds smallest and lightest radio controlled helicopter, called the Nanoflyer, weighing in at an amazing 2.7g including battery and control system.

Not happy with 1 minute of flying time, they then built the massively overweight Nanoflyer II, weighing a bloated 3g and with a 10 minute flight time.

Im not sure why they build these, but I do know that they would be great fun in the office, and I can only imagine the good times to be had once the army convinces them to put a Vulcan Chain Gun on one, although given the Gatling gun weighs 287kg, we may need to wait for the Nanoflyer III before we see that.

 Not exactly spy pics…

In what look suspiciously like purposefully leaked pictures, the new BMW 3 series coupe is exposed. Due to go on sale in Europe in late September, the model lineup includes the all-new 6 cylinder 3 litre twin turbo, with 306hp/228kW and 295 ft-lbs/400Nm of torque, said to be good for 5.5 seconds 0-60mph – not too shabby at all.

Although many BMW purists will cringe at the thought of the turbo model, it is likely to be quite a performer, and can only make you wonder as to what the upcoming new BMW M3 (said to be a V8, turning its back on the fantastic straight 6′s always in the M3) is likely to perform like.