Facebook boss takes to killing his own food; paying via your mobile phone might be happening soon; analyzing Angry Birds from a physics perspective; and how much do online digital photos reveal about you? Read on...Mark Zuckerberg, the man behind Facebook, is known for many things: creating the most popular social networking site on the planet, being the subject of a critically-acclaimed movie, and generating controversy over privacy issues. But here's something most people don't know: Zuckerberg is now only eating meat from animals that he has killed, reports Forbes:
"The only meat I'm eating is from animals I've killed myself," says the Facebook founder and CEO. "It's easy to take the food we eat for granted when we can eat good things every day." Zuckerberg's new goal came to light, not surprisingly, on Facebook. On May 4, Zuckerberg posted a note to the 847 friends on his private page: "I just killed a pig and a goat."
>>> Wondering how long it will be until you can use your mobile phone as a digital wallet and pay for things on the go? Your wait just got shorter, according to CBSNews:
Search giant Google announced Google Wallet today. With the slogan, "make your phone your wallet," the new mobile technology similar to Sqaure, enables consumers to tap, pay and save. Sounds so easy, right? Here are the terms: in order to use the service (once it launches, that is), you have to have a Citi MasterCard, Google Prepaid Card or gift cards at participating stores.
>>> Angry Birds has become one of the most popular video games of all time - for mobile phones and touch-screen devices, that is. It's been downloaded more than 200 million times (in various formats), and it requires players to launch wingless birds via slingshot at green pigs that have stolen the birds' eggs. OK, so it may not be the most realistic video game ever - but do the slingshot-fired birds follow the rules of physics? Rhett Alain offers some detailed (OK, complicated) analysis over at Wired, including this:
If the bird is indeed shot from an elastic cord, then technically the bird should go faster when shot horizontally than when it is shot straight up. Why? Physics. Let me draw a diagram for a bird that is shot straight up. Also, let me assume that this sling shot is just a spring. Let me assume a spring with a spring constant k and a bird mass of m. How do I find an expression for how fast it will be when it leaves the sling shot? Yes, use the work-energy principle. Why? Because I know the starting and ending positions, but I don't know the time. Since work-energy doesn't use time, it is a perfect fit. I will let the Earth + bird + slingshot be my system and it will start at y1 = 0 meters and end at y2 = s. Since I have the Earth and the slingshot both in my system, I can have both gravitational potential energy and spring potential energy.
>>> On "The Early Show" Thursday, CBS News Consumer Correspondent Susan Koeppen discussed one aspect of sharing digital photos online that most people don't know about. Such pictures may reveal information you don't necessarily want to share - like the exact location of where you live, work, play and go on vacation Here's how:
Most smartphones have a GPS chip built into them. So when you're taking a picture, it actually takes your location and stores it on that photo...and the same technology that helps people see real-time traffic updates and find directions on their phones also leads to GPS coordinates being attached to pictures. Koeppen decided to see just how easy it really is. A producer took pictures of just her face at several locations around Los Angeles. They posted them on my Koeppen's Twitter account, and asked Rettinger to figure out where she was. Within seconds, Rettinger told Koeppen she was shopping on Rodeo Drive, at Griffith Park and Grauman's Chinese Theater. Just by right-clicking on all of the photos, Rettinger was able to pinpoint her exact locations using GPS coordinates
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