Google Blue Dot Lets You Check Product Availability Locally

Thanks to Google, finding products in local stores will soon be much more convenient for on-the-go shoppers. According to the Official Google Blog, iPhone, Android and Palm WebOS owners can use a new feature on the site's Product Search that shows whether or not an item is in stock at nearby retail stores. You'll see a small blue dot next to the listing. So far, national chains like Best Buy, Sears, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm have signed on. To access, just visit Google, select the 'Shopping' tab or just view the 'Shopping Results' when performing a regular search.

This feature should save tech-savvy shoppers some gas money. Rather than driving all over town to find a hot product, you can just power up your mobile device's browser and look for the blue dot. Then again, you could just cut out the middleman and do all your shopping on the Web. [From: Google, via: CNET News]

Andy Baio Talks Motivating Real Life via Games at SXSW

Earlier this month, we saw the incredible Panic Status board, a real-time visualization of the Portland-based software company's activities and tasks. Running on a large high def screen mounted in the office, the Web-based board tracks the number of outstanding tech requests, creating a way for everyone at the company to quickly see what's happening. Panic found that the board, in effect, motivated people to attack the support queue like a game, aiming to get the outstanding requests number down to zero.

Programmer and journalist Andy Baio, of Waxy.org and Kickstarter, spoke at SXSW about games bleeding into real life, the workplace and the marketplace. Using games as psychological motivators isn't a far-fetched idea. Both the Ford Fusion and Honda Insight have dashboard graphics that show you how efficiently you're driving via growing leaves. The Obama team understood this and leveraged the power of a leader board and achievements during the presidential campaign. Nike realized this earlier with the hugely effective Nike+ where it used real world data and visualization to get people exercising, a notoriously difficult thing to get people to do regularly. Nike+ users can track their own performance, compare with friends, and even compete in virtual races and marathons.

Digg Teases New Design, Promises One-Click Diggs, Faster Site

Yesterday at SXSW's "Bigg Digg Shindigg" event at Stubb's BBQ, Digg announced that it had been working on a complete redesign of its popular social recommendation site. Digg CEO Jay Adelson told attendees that the project (involving more customizable and relevant home pages, faster site, and new user features) has been five years in the making.

The next version of Digg promises a significantly streamlined one-click story submission process -- it's still relatively involved, requiring diggers to add tags, headlines, and descriptions. The speed improvements, described by Digg's Steve French as "blazing," could be a huge improvement for regular users; the site hasn't seen many speed gains over the years. Adelson also detailed how users will no longer need to login to the site: "[for] Digg buttons, you no will longer have to log in to click that Digg button. There will be instant Digging. If you're on another Web site, you click that button, [and] there's no more waiting."

No word yet on when Digg 2.0 will be rolled out, but you can sign up for the alpha (hopefully opening soon) over at digg.com/news [From: DownloadSquad and Digg]

'Kick-Ass' Does Just That, Plus Confirms Nerd Dominance at SXSW

If 2009, with 'Zombieland,' 'The Hangover' and 'Year One,' was the year of the popular awkward guy, then 2010 confirms our suspicions: geeky, comic-book reading, 'Star Trek' quoting nerds are officially cooler than Vince Vaughn's suave in 'Couples Retreat.' At the start of South By Southwest's film festival on Friday, the block-long line forming outside of the premier of Mark Millar's comic-book 'Kick-Ass adaptation heralded the event's first big blockbuster. The premier at the festival suggested that the film's producers knew that the young, hip crowd that descends on Austin every March would take to the film fondly, and based on reviews, they made a good bet.
The story, which was signed as a movie nearly two years ago (as the first few issues of 'Kick-Ass' were being pressed), is a realistic look at a young boy who attempts to become a real superhero -- complete with bumps, bruises and the reality that he can't see through walls. Nicolas Cage is the main star power (though, 'Superbad's' McLovin' and 'Hot Tub Time Machine' nerd Clark Duke are also on screen), playing a loving but trigger-happy hero named 'Big Daddy.' The emerging reviews are positive, and the delightful parody is a smart, modern send-up to the traditional superhero flick.

Marty Cooper, Inventor of the Cell Phone, Wields a Droid

We can't ask George Washington Carver if he prefers crunchy or smooth peanut butter. We can't seek the consultation of the Wright Brothers on how to go about saving the airline industry. We can, though, pick the brain of the very much alive Marty Cooper, the man who invented the cell phone -- which is exactly what C-Span recently did. Over the course of a half hour interview, Cooper revealed that although he was once a proud iPhone owner, he's since switched over to the Motorola Droid, primarily because he wanted to get to know Android a little better. Somewhat surprisingly, he also admitted that he still carries around the comparatively rudimentary Jitterbug, for those rare moments when he wants to use a phone to actually make phone calls. Then again, though, he did co-found Jitterbug with his wife, so that probably explains a lot. [From: Engadget]

Bidding on Your Attention in Real-Time May Streamline Web Ads

It's an accepted fact of life in the Internet age that companies like Google will collect (supposedly) anonymous information about your browsing habits and serve up targeted ads relevant to your interests. Though, there is a problem with this model (beyond the privacy concerns): What good does showing you 50 ads for laptops in 30 minutes do?

Newer systems are coming into favor that let advertisers buy ads as their target audience is loading a specific page, instead of buying blocks of advertising from a network. eBay has been testing such a system from a company called AppNexus that uses not just browsing history, but leverages eBay's knowledge of location, searches and purchases. The whole process takes just milliseconds as eBay identifies and offers ad space to its clients, and advertisers must then decide whether or not to bid on the space in order to customize it to that particular visitor.

'Minima' Game Decimates Productivity, 10 Seconds at a Time

Netflix Settles Privacy Suit, Cancels Netflix Prize II

"We thought that it would generated some big interest among a couple hundred machine learning experts. It became a news-making machine." That's what Netflix spokesman, Steve Swasey, told Forbes following the announcement that the Netflix Prize II had been canceled and that the company had settled a lawsuit relating to the first Netflix Prize. The first contest awarded $1 million to the person, or persons, who could improve the accuracy of its recommendation engine by ten-percent.

The lawsuit was filed after a pair of Texas University researchers discovered that, by using information provided by Netflix and referencing it against third-party data like reviews from IMDB, they could figure out people's real identity, political leanings, and even sexual preference. Netflix Prize II would have opened up even more identifiable information, such as zip codes and gender, sending privacy advocates into a panic.

Gaga Loves Synergy, News Station for Sale on eBay

There's a load of great tech news happening out there every day, and, unfortunately, we just can't cover it all. Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web.
Lady Gaga's hotly anticipated 'Telephone' video with Beyoncé has, in the words of Jason Kottke, "more brands in it than Logorama." The Lady's last video was product-heavy, too -- but this time she's brought along tech giants Virgin Mobile and Polaroid (where she's now serving as creative director) to join her in this sapphic charade. Warholian pop or synergistic mishmash? Either way, entertaining. [From: Buzzfeed] In another amazing video, director Sam O'Hare created this brilliant, literally little movie showing Manhattan in time-lapse. His tilt-shift techniques make the city look merely pocket-sized. If a decent chunk of the Switched editorial team didn't already live here, we'd want to move with a quickness. New York never looked so adorable. [From: Kottke.org] The Economist's sister organization Economist Intelligence Unit has ranked the most expensive cities in a lovely infographic, with a handy comparison to the cost of living in New York. Apparently financial hard times have not hit Tokyo or Frankfurt, while Oslo was knocked down a peg from last year. In Paris they must be saying, "Quelle récession?" [From: The Economist] If you so happen to be one of our flush Parisian readers [Or our writer, Amar], perhaps you'd be interested in owning a small-time, middle-American television station? Owner Bud Kelley put a Muskegon, Michigan-based station up for sale on eBay for the bargain-basement price of only $700,000. Think of all the left-wing, pro-universal health care, baguette-munching propaganda you could spread! [From: Business Insider]Got a tip? Want to talk to us? In need of more choice links like these? Drop us a line on Twitter and check out our Tumblr blog.

British Researchers Claim They Can Read Minds Using Brain Scans

According to an AFP report on Yahoo! News, a team of British scientists claim they can read our memories and thoughts by simply studying patterns in brain scans. Eleanor Maguire, who led the research at University College London, told AFP that her team could differentiate between memories and thoughts by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). During the study, the scientists showed 10 participants three short films about daily life, and each starred a different actress. Then, the subjects were hooked up to an fMRI machine and were told to recall each film one at a time. Next, the team ran the subject's brain scans through a computer algorithm which distinguished patterns within the thoughts and memories of the subjects. Using these patterns, the scientists were able to predict which film a subject was thinking about.

Similar studies on the brain and memory have already been done. However, this research, which is similar to a study that used brain scan activity to communicate with patients in a vegetative state, is special because scientists were able to distinguish between specific episodes, or pinpoint episodic memory, rather than just look at spatial memory as a whole. [From: AFP/Yahoo! News]

Are Monitoring Devices Turning Your Health Into a Game?

Your mini pedometer will tell you how many steps you've taken today. Your BodyMedia Fit will keep close tabs on your heart rate. And the Zeo sleep system can let you know just how well you're really sleeping. Everywhere you look, there seems to be another gadget that can keep track of one of your vital signs. But has this mass mechanization of our anatomy turned us into glorified Tamagotchis? Wired executive editor Thomas Goetz seems to think so. According to Goetz, many of these devices have transformed personal health and hygiene into one giant game. Not only do personal monitors instantly collect and archive individual data, they've also turned self-monitoring into "something fun, something that we can play with and improve upon."

Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense. By streamlining something as infinitely complicated as the human body, and reducing it to absolute lowest common denominators, these kinds of tools can demystify health for many, and make it seem simple. The whole Tamagotchi metaphor that Goetz attempts to paint seems a bit watery, though. Sure, you're walking around with some sort of handheld device, and yeah, you may be pushing some buttons here and there. But at the end of the day, it's still up to the individual to take some sort of measurable action that goes beyond buttons and beeps. We may have incorporated the same, underlying system of incentives into our own personal health, and monitoring devices may force us to consider health as more of a game than we did before. But ultimate agency still rests with us, and the only way to "win" (or delay losing) is through real action.

'Wheelie' Butler Bot Serves Dinner, Lacks Witty Banter

A new robot prototype from Toshiba might relieve some of the stress of hosting a dinner party. According to DVICE, the bot, named Wheelie, is an autonomous two-wheel machine (complete with retractable wheels in the front and back in case of disaster) that's designed to assist around the house. Think of it as a shiny, mechanical butler, mixed with the balance of a Segway (check out the video after the break). Tech specs are slim, but Plastic Pals suspects Wheelie uses stereo vision and a laser range finder to get around and deliver food.

On the down side, you'll still have to prepare the menu, cook the food and place it on the robot's head. But when Wheelie rolls into the dining room, your dinner guests are sure to be impressed. Although robots may be getting smarter, Wheelie's lack of arms kills any chance of working together with this popcorn bot, much less taking over the world.[From: Plastic Pals, via: DVICE]