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The year was full of scientific discoveries for us, with a host of discoveries that helped explain how our bodies work and branch. Among the more interesting of the nine, which focused on some of the things that are on our mind the most and might leave some folks in the forward red.
Men and Arousal
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We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Roland, who can’t wait to get his recently relocated sister some sort of phone with Skype capabilities.

“My sister recently moved to Belgium. She has access to WiFi at home, so I’d like to send her a mobile phone that can run a Skype client. Requirements are WiFi, can work on Belgian / European carriers, runs Skype, and has excellent battery life. Anyone have any suggestions?”

There’s nothing worse than not being able to communicate with someone when you desperately need to, so we’re hoping that our readers across the pond will be able to chime in here with a little advice. If you’ve got something productive to add, drop it down in comments below!

Ask Engadget: Best Skype phone for Europe? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re not even sure what category to file this story under. We’re utterly baffled by this one.

Earlier this year, the Crystal Palace Space Station went onto virtual auction in the Entropia Universe massive multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG). Entropia Universe is well known for its “real cash economy,” where $1 can buy you 10 PEDs (Project Entropia dollars) in the virtual world. The Crystal Palace is a huge virtual space station that orbits the Planet Calypso.

Well the auction just ended, and one “lucky” man (Buzz “Erik” Lightyear) has just won the Crystal Palace for 3,300,000 PED. If you haven’t figured it already, that translates to $330,000 USD.

We knew virtual worlds were huge; back in January 2009 nearly $600 million was invested in virtual worlds alone. Oh, and virtual currency in China is a $2 billion economy. Yet we still can’t fathom dropping $330,000 on a virtual space station in a virtual world. We’ll let you imagine what you could buy with that type of money.

Still, the purchase may be strategic — the owner stands to make money off the shops, transactions, and activities that occur on his virtual space station. And if online gaming and virtual currency continue their growth trends in 2010, the man could potentially make his money back. If we had that money though, we’d be sticking it into a couple of good tech stocks instead.

Here’s a video tour of the virtual space station, if you’re curious what the big deal is about. Let us know what you think in the comments.

[source: OMM, via Inquisitr]

Tags: entropia universe, space station, tech, trending, video games, virtual currency, virtual goods, virtual world

Is there still room in your heart for eight more unassuming bits of Xmas? We hoped you’d say yes. See, 8-bit Xmas 2009 is an all-new NES cart full of festive LEDs and an original multiplayer snowball fight NES game. It sells for $43, but for $5 more you can get a personalized title screen — which seems like a relatively cheap fulfillment of that decades long dream of yours to have your name up in pixelated lights on the home console that defined the home console. The cart should be compatible with all real NES systems and hopefully many fake ones, and while it can’t help you forgive your Aunt Samantha for giving you that Sudoku quilt, it might just do the insignificant task of teaching you the true meaning of Xmas.

‘8-bit Xmas’ breathes new life into your ‘Bah! Humbug!’ NES originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey, good news everybody! The Palm App Catalog, which has lagged far behind its peers, has reached the 1,000 app milestone as of this morning. Well, to be precise, it’s hit 946, as pointed out by Electronista, but still, it’s a nice little sign of growth for the webOS apps, whose development was hampered by very restricted initial access to its Mojo SDK. In comparison to contenders such as Android, whose catalog numbers around 20,000, and Apples iTunes store, which boasts over 100,000, Palm’s numbers are extremely modest — but progress is progress, especially considering it launched its App Catalog in June with just 30 apps. We look forward to hearing Palm’s CES keynote, that’s for sure.

Palm App catalog hits 1,000 apps… okay, 946 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Oxford Dictionary may have chosen “unfriend” as word of the year, but what else was in our collective lexicon in 2009? A Words of the Year list commissioned by the Oxford University Press included a number of words from our familiar technosocial corner, according to the Telegraph.

“Tweetup,” “hashtag,” “freemium,” “paywall,” “unfriend” and “tag cloud” all made the list, which was compiled by dictionary expert Susie Dent after poring over the two billion-word Oxford English Corpus database. One of the more “late to the party” terms included is “Slashdot effect,” which finally achieves its small measure of lexical legitimacy despite having already arguably had its heyday.

Regardless, it’s interesting to watch terms from Twitter, Facebook and social media creep into a more mainstream consciousness. Any conspicuous neologisms you see missing from this year’s list?

[via Switched]

[img credit: greeblie]

Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

Tags: facebook, hashtag, language, social media, Tweetup, twitter, unfriend, words