Religious man ascends to sky in Brazil, then disappears

Brazilian priest Adelir de Carli is missing since sunday (20), when he tried to break a record by flying for 20 hours attached to one thousand party balloons.

The weather was considerably bad, with the wind blowing towards the ocean. The priest took off at 1pm (gmt -3) in the coast city of Porto de Paranaguá. Later that day Carli mentioned by radio that he didn't know how to operate his GPS device.

By yesterday, at 5pm (Gmt -3, brazilian time), the efforts to find Adelir de Carli has ceased, since it didn't give any result. The aircrafts abandoned the search work due the poor light conditions at noon, but will continue the search through the week. Many balloon pieces were found along the coast-line

Via G1

Solved: mysterious object found in Brazil is from space

People commenting on the blogosphere came out with the best explanation (to this moment) about the origin of this unusual object that was found in a farm in central Brazil this weekend.

 Many people are saying the object is a Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessels, or COPV.

Object found in Brazil

Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessels

COPV's are containers for storing inert gases throght a wide range of varying pressure during space missions.

Learn more about it

Can anyone indentify this object?

This sphere has 1 meter of diameter and was found in a farm in central Brazil this weekend.

According to Sebastião Marques da Costa, man who found the object, it was hot when he found it.

No one around could figure out what it is...

Maybe a space geek from Digg can give us some insight, if this is a known piece of space ship or satellite that has fallen down to earth.

From another perspective

Via G1

Apple releases Macbook Air in Brazil, breaks it on stage

In an attempt to keep the new Macbook Air turned on during a slide show, closed enough to fit in the manila envelope and opened enought to avoid hibernation mode, the brazilian Apple geniuses came out with a very ellegant solution:

"Why don't we put an object between the keyboard and the screen?"

While Apple hasn't revealed which iProduct they use to keep the laptop awake during it's presentation, it turns out the result was somewhat disastrous:

According with G1, the accident happened when someone applied some force in the "sandwich" formed by the laptop and the yet to be known object.

Via G1 (in portuguese)

Apple to Open 1st Brazilian Apple Store in March

Brazilians can now stop complaining about the lack of interest of Apple in their market.

According to Carlos Jereissati Filho, president of IESC (a major player in Sao Paulo's shopping mall market), Apple is about to open two official retail stores in Brazil within the next 6 months.

Now more brazilian models will be able to acquire Apple fashion pieces

While Apple has not commented wether this information is true, they have noticeably increased their attention to Brazil's market, cutting off prices and drastically expanding their distribution channels in a concise timeframe (over the last two months).

This country (in which I live) acquires over 10 million computers a year (2007 data), yet, Apple represents less than 1% of this volume, even though the brand is known and loved by its inhabitants.

Original Source: IDG Now!

Tom Yorke can now fix his teeth: in rainbows makes $10 million on it's 1st week!

Even thou most of the downloads of In Rainbows were made through pirate sites, the introspective musicians from england are now swimming in a green pool.

According to this source, their new album has been downloaded for 1.2 million times, and costumers agreed to pay within 8 bucks for this beautiful collection of tearful music... IN THE 1ST WEEK!!

Isn't it amazing?

Goodbye recording industry!

Second Life: The Hype is Cooling Down

Second Life maker Linden Lab, points out that they have over 8 million registered users - me included. A number like this looks quite impressive, if you don't notice the fact that only a small fraction of these people are using it frequently, according to Forbes Magazine.

But why is that that makes so many people try it, and so few of them come back? 

I know why I'll never get back to Second Life again. It's not immersive or captivating, it is very chaotic, and the characters looks like living corpses. It's not convincing. They do have an acceptable UI, but the "urbanism" of the game just won't make it. It's the price they'll have to pay by letting anyone create their own "virtual-estate" initiatives without a more rigid criteria.