Towlebooth

Brought to you by Team Instructables is the hilariously clever Romance Pants project. The zipper being pulled down triggers the room lights dimming and the stereo volume going up. When the waist button is undone, the candles automatically light.

Read the full article on MAKE

Where does that extra square of chocolate come from? Try to come up with an explanation, and when you think you’ve figured it out, hit this link.

[Via]

Presented without comment.

[Source: Caldwell Tanner - College Humor]

Over the past few years, we’ve become accustomed to the tech world presenting plenty of April Fool’s Day gags, many of which involve brilliant-sounding products that turn out to be too good to be true. This year thought, it seems many firms have decided Facebook advertising is the best way to spread the gags.

It’s certainly a strategy that makes some sense. Some people who see a funny April Fool’s gag on a website or in a newspaper might go to the effort of copying and pasting the address or page reference into an e-mail or status update, but with Facebook it’s just a click to “like” or share the gag, and people are already in the mindset of doing so.

With that in place, and with me still battling my way through the various options of the new-style newsfeeds on Facebook (“All Friends” seems to be what I want), I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to see a whole stream of gags today including the following.

BMW launching the Postnatal Royal Auto Mobile (pram), a limited edition vehicle for the forthcoming child of Prince William.

Google Nose, a new search tool that uses sound waves to temporary align molecules near your computer to simulate scents:

Google Maps replacing default images with pirate-style treasure maps.

Google finally closing its video competition “Youtube” and preparing to select a winner from the millions of entries.

NOW TV running a prize draw to win the actual air guitars from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

IKEA’s UK branches offering a flat pack lawnmower, GRASSAX, to save space in your garden.

The liberal-leaning Guardian newspaper launching its own version of Google Glasses, which will provide the newspaper’s reviews when you look at a movie theater, rate foods in the grocery store for ethical sourcing, and automatically black out any columns by right-wing writers.

Of course, traditional media still has plenty to offer. Perhaps my favorite so far is the BBC’s radio show Today claiming that a railway company was to put barcodes on the side of trains so that trainspotters could simply scan them with a smartphone and upload the sighting rather than use a pencil and notebook.

And from new media, Twitter has announced that from now on you’ll have to pay $5 a month to use vowels on the site. If you want to post free of charge, you’ll have to switch to the basic Twttr service, which includes complimentary use of “y”.

I'm just saying.

If you’re a certain kind of person, with a certain kind of circle of friends, you are completely aware that a whole lot of Facebook users changed their profile picture this week.

That’s the result of a very effective viral push, kicked off by the Human Rights Campaign, to show support for gay marriage as the issue came before the Supreme Court.

But just how effective? Facebook has taken a stab at crunching some numbers, and come to this conclusion: On Tuesday, the day after the campaign started, an extra 2.7 million U.S. Facebook users changed their profile. That’s about 120 percent more than you’d see on an average day.

Other data points, via Facebook researcher Eytan Bakshy:

• Your age influenced how likely you were to change your profile picture, and 30-year-olds were most likely to swap out images — perhaps as many as 3.5 percent of them.
• Women (2.3 percent) were slightly more likely to change their profile pictures then men (2.1 percent).
• Not surprisingly, people in college towns and in many urban areas were more likely to make the switch. But not every big city: Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City showed lower switch rates than San Francisco and Washington D.C.

Here’s a map that gives you a sense of Facebook’s best guess of how this broke down geographically, by county: The brighter the color, the more switchers. (And if you’re wondering about the bright mark in northern Minnesota, that’s likely because St. Louis County is lightly populated except for Duluth, which is both a college town and a city that likes to refer to itself as “the little San Francisco.“)

Click to enlarge:

The Pyramids of Giza close to tourists at 4:00 pm. Recently, a group of Russians managed to hide out at the site after closing time and scramble up the Great Pyramid of Cheops in the fading light. Naturally, they took photos. (Because if there is one thing the Internet has taught me about Russians, it's that they like to climb to dangerous heights and then take photos.)

These shots are kind of fabulous, not just for the thrill of "yeah, somebody broke the rules!", but because of the perspective you get from on high that isn't visible in the many ground-level shots I've seen. From on top of the Pyramid, you can see how the stone is pockmarked and carved — it really looks like something humans cut out of the Earth. You can also see the graffiti left by generations of tourists in multiple languages; English, Arabic, French, and more. And you can see the edge of the modern city, shimmering just at the horizon. I don't think I'd previously had such a profound sense of how closely modern Egyptians lived and worked to the Great Pyramid, before. What a fascinating view!

Thanks to Steve Silberman for the link!

Way back in December, I first told you about the line of “Game of Thrones” beers that HBO and Ommegang Brewery out of Cooperstown, New York were creating.

Well, the first one — the Iron Throne Blonde Ale — is hitting shelves now, just in time for the season 3 premiere on March 31!

Three other beers will be released as the show seasons progress.

[Via Daily Mail]

An interesting infographic listing some of the most influential scientists of 2012. Would YOU add anyone to this list? Let us know in the comments section below!

Source: Best College Reviews