The buy one, donate one initiatives are coming fast and furious. Hard on the heels of our stories about two such efforts targeting childrennamely, Happy Blankie and Whitten Grey's Project Little Grey Dresscomes news of one designed to help homeless pets.

Launched this spring, the Plus One Movement from Canadian pet food maker Darford International aims to provide fresh, quality food to abandoned dogs awaiting new homes. How it works: Attached to every Darford box of treats and food is an extra meal of the company's Zero/G dog food intended specifically for donation to a dog in need. Specially designed collection hampers have been placed in-store at the roughly 3,000 US and Canadian retailers that carry the Darford brand. Consumers can simply drop their donation meals into those hampers, and participating animal shelters will pick up and use the donated food for local homeless dogs. The video below explains the project:

Some 4 million dogs are euthanized each year in the US and Canada alone, primarily for lack of room and food, Darford notes. Other pet-friendly brands and retailers: time to step up and do your own generous part...?

Website: www.ilovealldogs.org
Contact: info@ilovealldogs.org

Spotted by: Peter von Hahn

We love good journalism and hate unchecked abuses of power, so we were excited and honored to collaborate with ProPublica on their website redesign.

Click to see the old ProPublica

In the absence of accountability, the powerful can exploit the weak, betray the public trust, and cause great harm that never comes to light. Although many people catch Bieber Fever sooner than they seek out investigative reporting, we live in a better world because reporters dig through heaps of data and pursue stories to their end, bringing wrongdoing to light.

The traditional newspaper business is in decline, all forms of publishing are in transition, so journalism needs new models and new forms.

ProPublica is one of those new formsan independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. They started in just 2008, and earlier this year they won a Pulitzer Prize, the first online-only source to do so.

The stated goals of the redesign were common to many of our projects: improve the overall experience, guide a diverse group of readers through the information, create a flexible structure for all of the different types of content, engage visitors in the mission.

The site had grown organically over its two year history, driven by traditional investigations and the development of innovative news applications. New visitors might come from anywhere and land on any page with no context and no knowledge of ProPublica. Our challenge lay in comprehending the operations of the organization, their vision for the future, and all of the myriad interwoven forms accountability journalism could take online. Establishing credibility and creating contextual paths were paramount.

The Process

We began our work in New York City on the coldest, shortest days of the year. We interviewed the leadership, the reporters, and many of the staff. We attended their holiday pizza party. We sat down with the core redesign team and analyzed every aspect of ProPublica's website and workings. We took a deep look at other organizations tackling traditional and new models of publishing and reporting. We spoke with representative readers, including policy advisors and community journalists.

We tried to extract everything ProPublica had learned through their work and we interrogated every decision they'd made, certain they would return the favor during later phases of the work.

Designers don't talk about this muchpossibly because we like to take all the credit when things go wellbut we've found again and again that the level of commitment and focus a client team brings to a project has a defining impact on the quality of the design work.

Everyone likes to talk about the iterative, collaborative process, producing ever better artifacts. To achieve this we need thoughtful input and feedback at every step. This is a lot of work, especially when you also have a day job. The ProPublica team was fully committed in this regard. We were privileged to have the highest level of engagement throughout the project, from people who also had a top-notch, totally innovative news organization to run.

Working closely with the ProPublica team, we identified the key story types and their constituent parts. In doing so, we unearthed a lot of complexity. Content types were defined as much by their relationship to one another as by their core elements. We defined a set of navigation systems based on context rather than hierarchy to orient readers in the stories, create the right expectations, and present opportunities for exploration.

Over the course of the project, we had a lot of the best sorts of argumentsthe arguments that arise when everyone wants to make sure we are moving towards the very best balance of business goals, audience needs, and aesthetic choices.

We looked at how investigations evolved, whether they started with an assertion or a dataset, so that we could create containers and paths that maintained contextual relationships for readers no matter at what point they first encountered the story. We moved away from broad topics that failed to reflect the true publishing priorities of the organization, despite their naive appeal as an organizing principle. We worked towards a more data-driven future, creating a home for interactive tools and infographics. This offers another way for concerned citizens and policy makers to explore evolving stories and a starting point for journalists and community members researching their own.

From a visual branding perspective, we knew that ProPublica wanted to stay with some key identity elements, the magnifying glass and the color blue. Working from these, we created a more sophisticated visual system that reflected the quality of the journalism, and that the ProPublica team could continue to apply and extend given their anticipated resources.

Typography is perhaps no more critical anywhere than in the publication of news, so we were very pleased that TypeKit had come along. The ProPublica site features Meta Serif.

Finally, we got down into the details, looking at every possible case, to ensure we were truly defining a system that would serve ProPublica long after our daily involvement concluded, rather than a series of appealing one-offs. Our work continued through the implementation, working with ProPublica's immensely talented internal technical team, and the excellent developers at Solspace.

In sum, the project was a complete pleasure and we are excited to see where ProPublica takes it from here.

Further reading:

• Take a Look at the New ProPublica.org ProPublica
• ProPublica's Website puts future of context ideas to work The Nieman Journalism Lab
• An Investigative News Site Gets a Web Facelift TIME

via http://ilovehotdogs.tumblr.com/page/3

E3's been put to bed and tucked in tight, and we've given you a pretty good taste of what we saw while we were there. Here's the thing, though: we only previewed games. Handy, sure, but isn't there, like, an entire industry surrounding this stuff? So consider this your preview of everything else. Trends, technologies, when we'll finally catch a glimpse of Half-Life 3 (answer: the day after Duke Nukem Forever comes out), and more!

1. Modern Warfare I never thought I'd say this, but I sort of miss World War II. Actually, no I don't, but after realizing that, by now, the number of fictional Middle Eastern countries invented to house fictional videogame terrorist groups probably outnumbers the actual Middle East, I've definitely started feeling some fatigue from constantly playing as the boys in fatigues. That, however, didn't stop E3 from proudly displaying Call of Duty: Black Ops, Spec Ops: The Line, Medal of Honor, and plenty of others cut from the same cloth as Infinity Ward's opus.

The Forecast: Modern Warfare's influence has already spread to the most disparate corners of the gaming universe and will continue to do so. Some games won't even try to dress up their influences (Medal of Honor, I'm looking at you. Oh, wait, is that you Modern Warfare 2? Sorry. Easy Mistake). Others, meanwhile, might try putting a personal spin on the proceedings like Spec Ops with its choice-based storyline. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. Every multiplayer game under the sun war-based or not is taking cues from Modern Warfare's addictive level-up system. Don't believe me? Try the latest Transformers game. Yeah.

2. Motion Control Is Everywhere If we think of the console war as an automotive arms race, Sony and Microsoft built faster, louder hotrods while Nintendo went ahead and slapped together a hovercraft. Long story short, Nintendo won by a few hundred-thousand miles, and now Sony and Microsoft have decided to enter the hovercraft business themselves. The result: it's all either console-maker could talk about during E3. Kinect. Move. Kinect. Move. Kinect. Move.

The Forecast: This will not end well. Sony and Microsoft have decided to fall in line behind Nintendo instead of forging their own paths into a brave, new motion-controlled world. And when we say behind, we mean it. Sony and Microsoft's E3 game line-ups greatly resembled Nintendo's way back when it first entered the casual market. No meat, no depth, no substance. Just glorified tech demos. You've got your sports compilations, your Nintendogs rip-off (Kinectimals), your Mario Kart clones, and a bunch of other embarrassing-to-play, painful-to-watch fare that's clearly designed to appeal to wider audiences. Except that, here's the thing: why buy a Wii when you already have one especially when said Wii Too costs about double the price for no discernibly better games?

3. E3: Now in 3D! The 3D craze was alive and well at E3, appearing in everything from bleeding-edge behemoths like Crysis 2 to Nintendo's itsy-bitsy marvel, the 3DS.

The Forecast: 3D is neat and all, but it raises a whole host of issues. For one, if your head starts throbbing like you're experiencing 30 simultaneous brain freezes after watching a two hour 3D movie, imagine what an eight hour gaming session will feel like. Also, there's the matter of cost versus effect. And I'm not just talking about how much you'll have to spend to nab a ticket for the 3D bandwagon, either. Rather, I'm referring to how much 3D taxes hardware, and how the resources used to make your games pop off the screen could instead be going into better graphics, physics, AI, etc you know, things that have a chance of changing the way we play games, and not just making us ooo and aww every once in a while. 3D's here to stay, no doubt, but at the end of the day, it's a gimmick. Problem is, this gimmick could actually stunt gaming's growth.

4. Hardware Stagnation This one comes as a byproduct of motion control and 3D. See, Microsoft and Sony hope to extend their already creaky consoles' life cycles past the ten year mark by sprucing them up with Kinect, Move, and 3D. However, seeing as most PC games these days are developed with the Xbox 360 and PS3 in mind, games will take advantage of our beefy rigs' graphical muscle less and less.

The Forecast: Pretty much what I just said. Even though PC hardware will likely improve by Olympic-caliber leaps and bounds, don't expect games to play or look (at least, as far as realism goes) differently in any significant way. There is some hope, though. Like I said in a previous installment of this column, odds are, exotic new art styles will give us a healthy helping of eye candy to feast on during the famine. And if Rayman: Origins and Kirby's Epic Yarn are any indication, I doubt anyone's tank will be left on empty.

5. Nostalgia Every year, there's at least one or two requisite big-name remakes or franchise revivals. This year, though, the trickle evolved into a flood of Biblical proportions. Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Medal of Honor, Goldeneye, Donkey Country Returns, pretty much everything else in Nintendo's line-up, and whole host of other friendly faces -- to name a few banked on gamers' warm and fuzzies for the good old days.

The Forecast: This one's a mixed bag. On one hand, many of these love letters to gamers' collective inner child look pretty darn good. On the other hand, though, many of them look good precisely because they don't stray far from their source material. For instance, moving boxes in Deus Ex is a nice throwback and all, but if it was any other game, you'd probably be complaining about it. When you're stuck in the past, it's hard to move forward. Don't get me wrong: I love a good blast from the past every once in a while, but when it comprises the bulk of E3, I start to get worried.

6. E3: What Is It Good for? Absolutely Nothing? E3's a time-honored gaming tradition, but is it getting left behind? I know, I know -- pundits ask this question every year, but let's face the facts: plenty of publishers made their biggest announcements before the show this year (Activision's deal with Bungie, EA's thing with Respawn Entertainment, Portal 2's delay, etc, etc) and surprises were few and far-between.

The Forecast: I don't want to declare E3 dead, because the fact is, it's too useful. At no other time throughout the year is the entire gaming industry able to converge in a single location. However, I do think the convention's evolving into something far-removed from its original form and perhaps less important. Right now, it seems to be leaning back toward the flashier, more spectacle-driven side that it all but abandoned after downsizing a few years ago. After all, Microsoft's Kinect unveiling and Activision's star-studded $6 million party were perfect examples of glitzy, glamorous chest-thumping at its most impractical, as were the luchadores duking it out in a ring smack dab in the middle of the show floor. E3's also easier-to-follow from home now than ever before, with multiple websites and television channels providing round the clock video coverage. More and more, however, the business that goes on behind-the-scenes is what really counts, while the show is just that: an over-the-top depiction of the videogame industry put on for the benefit of those on the other side of the screen.

7. The Calm before The Storm Nearly as important as what was at this year's E3 is what wasn't. The seeds of things like Activision's deal with Bungie, EA's deal with Respawn Entertainment, and new hardware like the 3DS have only just been sown. Obviously, then, they're far from ready to bear fruit.

The Forecast: Expect next year's showing to be far less subdued. Also, in addition to the big-names above who for various reasons were sidelined this year, there's something else to take into account: many of the products we saw this year were conceived during a recession. So yeah, of course they shied away from innovation and took a more conservative approach. Of course they banked on nostalgia and one-trick pony gimmicks. When you're bleeding money, you don't hack off another arm and leg to launch something new and entirely untested. Fortunately, while not quite ideal, things are starting to look better for the economy, so I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to see a few boundary-pushing games next year.

It'd be a slanderous publication. Also included are Cats Love Swimming and 49 (More) Reasons Why Your Cat Hates You .

View Image

The Daily Mail is reporting that all it takes to have your very own Panda is:

- 1 grumpy-looking Chow Chow
- Black and White fur dyes
- A lot of free TIME!!

Shared by phillip
Heard about this before.

Every World Cup runs into the problem of poor officiating, and after the absolutely baffling decisions made in Friday's games, it appears that this year is no different.

This complaint takes different forms every time. Sometimes, people clamor for instant replay to be introduced. Other times, the complaint takes the form of suggestions for higher-tech equipment. What most people agree on, however, is that it's faintly absurd that human error by the match officials still plays such a huge role in determining the outcome of a game.

Here at TheNextWeb, we've been watching the World Cup with baited breath and here is what we think should be done.

Instant Replay: The Wrong Way Forward

Instant replay has been implemented in many other sports already. However, football poses an interesting case for its implementation. While it has worked quite well in sports like American football and basketball, which feature frequent stoppages of play and limited situations for its use, implementing it in football would be a challenging proposition to say the least.

It's relatively easy to poke holes in the best arguments for instant replay in football. Its proponents claim that the sport could easily implement a NFL-style challenges system, where each team receives two chances to stop play for an instant replay ruling on the legality of the call in question.

Sports Illustrated (an American sports magazine), in particular, was a proponent of this system (for cases like the one shown above). They advocated for two challenges per team for a maximum of 60 seconds of review time for each challenge.

However, as is often the case with such calls, there's a whole host of questions. What calls are valid to be challenged? Can you overturn an offsides call? If you do, what happens when the offsides player breaks through on goal and scores because everyone stopped defending? What happens when challenging calls becomes a time-wasting tactic?

A large part of why football is so enjoyable to watch is the flow and pace of the game. Bringing proceedings to a screeching halt for an official to spend three or four minutes reviewing an offsides call up to four times a game could have disastrous effects and necessitate halves with ten minutes of stoppage time. While it's technically possible, it seems wildly impractical to implement.

Location, Location, Location

While the glut of location-based services brings to mind funny applications in football (Just checked in @ 17 yards from goal after rounding a defender or I just unlocked the Diving Scumbag' badge at Wembley Stadium), location could be the best possible way to solve many officiating problems.

By embedding computer chips in the players' kits and boots, as well as in the ball, the boundary lines of the pitch and across the goal line, FIFA could take much of the fudge factor out of many refereeing decisions.

By triangulating the exact position of the ball relative to the players on the pitch, FIFA could easily rule out poor offsides calls like the one which cost the United States the game on Friday. Such information could easily be relayed to the linesmen in the form of a flashing light or vibration in the handles of their flags, letting them know that they need to stop play since a player is offside.

Similarly, such technology could also remove any shadow of a doubt whether the ball stayed in or went out of bounds and who it went off of, ending complaints about whose throw or corner it was. But most importantly, this same tech could finally inform the referees that this was a goal and this was not.

This technology is entirely feasible, too. A company called Cairos Technologies has been developing a system like this for nearly 10 years and had even tested it at the 2005 FIFA U-17 World Cup and the 2007 FIFA Club World Cup. With a few tweaks, the company's Goal Line Technology (GLT) system could easily be implemented in time for the next major tournament. Alternatively, a new GPS and RFID system could be developed between now and then.

Fit As Butcher's Dogs

Despite the fact that concerns about referee fitness by fans and coaches are largely overblown, there is possibly a legitimate concern at the heart of this criticism. The breakneck pace of the modern game, aided by modern fitness techniques and those ugly purple and orange Nike boots, makes it difficult for some referees to keep up.

Given the widespread nature of tech in training for players, it's somewhat shocking that similar techniques haven't been used among referees. If AC Milan's physio staff are able to determine whether players will suffer leg injuries by filming their vertical leaps, and Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger is able to monitor his players' diets by looking at their bloodwork, is it too hard for the referees to receive immediate feedback on their work rate and fitness?

Hardly. Tracking these stats is pretty simple, too. Cairos Technologies, the same company that partnered with Adidas to create the GLT system, have created a real-time stats collection program. It tracks the position of all players on the pitch, as well as the ball. With a little bit of tweaking, the system could be used to give feedback about the referee's positioning and fitness.

The referees should also examine this type of data for the teams that they are about to referee. Indeed, some of the more successful FIFA referees swear by this technique. Frank De Bleeckere, who has been slated to referee the crucial clash between the United States and Algeria, has been watching footage of both teams to help his positioning. With more aggressive data collection to create heat maps and similar tools, referees like De Bleeckere will have an even easier time calling their matches.

The Height of Fan Technology: The Vuvuzela Hat

No. Dear god, no!

So where does this leave us? Can technology solve every problem in football? No, not by a long shot. The game still requires an experience referee to call fouls correctly and to assess advantages. However, technology can certainly help with the more difficult calls.

Sure, Sepp Blatter and FIFA tried to shelf some of these technological reforms in early 2008, citing big costs. However, after a series of costly blunders on a world-wide stage, FIFA can't afford to wait any longer. They must help pare some of the human error out of the refereeing equation.

Thanks to Gizmodo for the Vuvuzela hat picture. Thanks to Engadget for the CNN Foursquare World Cup badge.

Original title and link for this post: Refereeing Howlers: Why Football Needs Tech

I'm not kidding.

As I write this, my two dogs are rolling around on the floor wrestling. After I finish this we are going for a walk in the woods. They suspect the ayatollah is just giving religious cover to national custom. They also think he probably is a damn cat lover.

Kat flavored water

iz ma favorit

Caption by: Costy

Recaption This!

View All Captions

Ummmmm There's hair in my food

iz no taste gud

Caption by: ptl4steph

Recaption This!

View All Captions

Nintendo rolled out some spiffy Wii games at their 12:00pm EDT E3 presentation, but let's face it: The big event was the 3DS. Nintendo did not disappoint: While we'll give Sony their chance to wow us at 3:00, I don't think it would be rash to say that there's a good chance this will be the thing that everyone talks about post-E3.

Though Nintendo hasn't given us a price or a release date for the 3DS, it did give us lots of information on what the new 3D handheld system that will change your life will be all about. Geekosystem breaks it down:

The 3D

As the name suggests, 3D is a central part of the 3DS experience. As has been previously reported, the 3DS is a glasses-free experience: Glasses-free 3D tech has actually been around for a while, but whereas it would be prohibitively expensive on a TV-sized screen, it could probably be produced relatively inexpensively for a handheld device like the 3DS. (I write probably because, again, pricing info hasn't been announced, but Nintendo is usually not a company for costly hardware compared to its competitors.)

As the above picture shows, there are 2 screens on the 3DS, similar to the DS: The top screen is a 3.5 3D display, and the bottom screen is a touchscreen. You can control 3D depth with a slider on the side of the handheld. Nintendo also said there have been graphics improvements in the 3DS: It didn't spec them, but they looked pretty spiffy in the demos, even Wii-like.

3DS as a 3D camera, 3D media player

But that's not all: While 3D gaming applications are a given, the 3DS also allows you to take 3D digital pictures using two cameras on its side. Moreover, this could be the first true entry-level 3D media player, albeit with a pretty small screen. You'll be able to watch 3D movies on the 3DS: No word of a 3DS Avatar, but Nintendo mentioned How to Train Your Dragon and Legends of the Guardians as titles on display at E3.

Launch titles

Nintendo promised a solid launch slate at E3, and they delivered. Kid Icarus Uprising was the big draw (check out its newly unveiled trailer below) but there's lots more coming. You can breathe easy: Nintendogs is finally coming in 3D.

Other titles mentioned (h/t Kotaku):

• DJ Hero 3D
• Kingdom Hearts 3D
• Saints Row
• Madden NFL
• Dead or Alive 3D
• Ninja Gaiden
• Street Fighter IV
• Riiiiidge Racer
• Metal Gear Solid
• Professor Layton
• Samurai Warriors.

We also know that Resident Evil is coming to the 3DS. At the risk of editorializing: This is a pretty amazing lineup.

Other things

• There's a motion sensor.
• There's a gyroscope.
• There's a slide pad (control stick) for analogizing
• It's WiFi accessible with no monthly fee, downloads new content on its own, and automatically detects WiFi connections and other 3DSes.

In sum

At the end of the presentation, Nintendo's spokesman said that something you thought you knew perfectly well will be perfectly transformed. We'll try to stifle our fanboyish urges towards hype here, but Nintendo had a very, very impressive presentation, and the 3DS could well transform both Nintendo and handheld gaming itself.

(title image via Kotaku)

I got a chance to play hands-on or maybe I should say hands-free with the new Kinect motion-sensing accessory for Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game console.

And the games are remarkably fun. They get your heart beating and get you off the couch in the same way that some of the best Nintendo Wii games do. I watched the faces of the journalists and others playing the games. They lit up with laughter. They get lost in the moment, not caring that they look absolutely ridiculous as they wave their arms around or jump up and down to make things happen in the game.

The new Kinect device unveiled on Sunday can recognize your face, respond to voice commands, and its camera detects the motion of your entire body. Your entire body thus replaces the controller, allowing for a more accessible user interface for games. Nintendo may say it's about time that Microsoft showed up to the motion-sensing party that the Wii started. But I give Microsoft's efforts so far two thumbs up.

Since Microsoft showed it off a year ago, a lot of questions have been dogging what was once code-named Project Natal. Would it be too slow? The answer to that is no. It can accurately detect your motion without a lot of annoying delays. What kinds of games would be made for it? Microsoft partially answered that question by showing off a handful of games in the past couple of days.

There's a lot at stake with Kinect. Microsoft hopes it will be a mid-life kicker for the Xbox 360. If it sells well enough, it can postpone the introduction of a next-generation video game console. And the company really wants to avoid introducing a new console because it involves billions of dollars in costs.

There are both hardcore and mass market games in the works. I drove the Forza Motorsport racing game (pictured top), as you can see in the first video below. In that game, the only thing you control is the steering wheel. The developers at Turn 10 decided that it was just too hard to pay attention to the gas pedal and brakes as well. It's also pretty hard to do footwork when you're standing. The steering wheel was pretty responsive to what I was doing. And for the short 2-minute race that I did, my arms didn't get tired. The Forza game isn't coming out until next year. But it's a prime example of how you can make a game of mass market audiences and still satisfy hardcore gamers. It's easy to learn, which is a must for the mass market.

At the same time, there is some depth to the game. You can go up to a car in a showcase mode and study every piece of it. You can walk around the car by leaning to one side. If you hold your hand out on a spot, you can make an information bubble pop out. You could thus use motion controls to learn everything there is to know about the car..

Kinectimals scored highest on the cute factor. In this game, you can play with more than 40 jungle animals, including fuzzy lion, tiger, or leopard cubs. You talk to them and call them by name. They recognize you and learn from you. You can pet them and they will come over to you and lick you (licking the camera face, that is). There are a bunch of activities you can do, like walk your pet through an obstacle course. To get your cub to walk over a balance beam, you have to hold your arms out and balance. It's a very physical game and you can bond with your animal, as in Nintendogs for the DS.

Kinect Sports was more than a pure copy of Wii Sports or Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics on the Wii. I got very tired trying to run the hurdles and jump on cue. It wasn't particularly difficult; but you definitely get tired and need breaks on that game. And yes, that's the whole point. Couch potatoes have to get into shape.

A good game to play with someone by your side is Kinect Adventures. I teamed up with Kotaku's Brian Crecente to play a few of the mini-games within this title. We jumped up and ducked or slid from side to side in one part. In a river-rafting adventure, we had to jump at the same time to make the raft go flying into the air. It's hard to get the timing right on some of those jumps. But you get used to it.

I watched others play Dance Central, a dancing game where you mimic what the dancers on screen do, as you can also see on the video at the bottom. That game, being made by MTV's Harmonix division, is a load of fun and it looks like it could be a pretty good way to learn how to dance. See the video at the bottom for a demo.

Ubisoft's Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, also uses the same style where you mimic the moves that a trainer is making on the screen. You can do cardio or you can do different kinds of stretches. The more accurately you mimic the poses, the better your score. You can do everything from pilates to martial arts. See the second video below for a demo of it.

There will be 15 game available at launch when Kinect goes on sale on Nov. 4. Of course, Microsoft didn't tell people what they really wanted to know about Kinect: its price. Presumably, Microsoft doesn't want to tip its hand to competitors Sony and Nintendo.

Tags: Kinect

Companies: Harmonix, microsoft, MTV, nintendo, Sony, Ubisoft

Says the Daily Mail, "The Chinese are always quick to embrace bizarre trends, and it is not unusual for owners to take their dogs to grooming parlours where they are not only given a shampoo and trim, but a multi-coloured dye job as well."

Well, I don't know if it's just "The Chinese" who've embraced this "bizarre trend" - it's funny that they don't remember their own article on this happening in the U.S. as well - but apparently a trend it is!

This particular tiger dog, actually a Golden Retriever in tiger dye, was exhibited in Zhengzhou City alongside four buddies made to look like pandas (we've reported on panda dogs before). Says Nanchang Evening News, many dogs are dyed to resemble the animals they may bear a resemblance to: Chow Chows tend to get the panda treatment, since they have round faces and burly bodies. Pomeranians will be made to look like squirrels since they're small and cute. And a popular choice for poodles and huskies are... donkey?

A white Chow Chow's dye job into a panda will normally cost around 300RMB and last for three months. If it's not a naturally white dog though, dyes could cost up to 3000RMB. I don't know... is this better or worse than buying Tibetan Mastiffs just for the heck of it?

PhotoFast makes iPad work with a Microsoft webcam, cats and dogs live together originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Jun 2010 10:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A well-thought logo is the one that successfully communicate ideas to people. Logos have great importance in creating brand identity that's why designers compete to be creative to deliver their message in a unique way.
Today, we focused on logos that use creative methods to represent the brand through color, shapes, and typography. In this post we'll feature 30 clever logos for your design inspiration.

- Diamond Bookstore by Malik Joanna

- Killed Productions by ethereal

- Lochness by Navy Blue Design

- DODO by Dalibor Novk

- Evolution X by Felipe Rojas

- Code Fish by Mabu

- Animal Rescue Sofia by Milena

- Peeled by uneekGrafix

- 83 Studios by uneekGrafix

- helium

- talkmore by nido

- Pause by volkan ek?i

- Bob's House For Dogs

- Six Pixels of Separation

- subber by !mude

- fly v2 by HitByReindeer

- labrat by Mikeymike

- Totem Media

- Cloud Corner

- GoMusic by uneekGrafix

- Seven Sparrows

- Coffee Cup

- get wired.

- MonKey

- Denshu Sushi by tomhuveners

- Broken Goggles

- African Film Club

- Oil

- Page fold

- Swing Studios

Dearest Media,

My name is Leroy Stick and I am the man behind @BPGlobalPR. First, let me begin by explaining my name.

When I was growing up, there was a dog that lived on my block named Leroy. Leroy was a big dog with a disdain for leashes and a thirst for blood. He made a habit of running around our block attacking anything he saw, biting my dad and my dogs basically whenever he had the chance. He chased me a few times, but I always escaped because I was/am an amazing tree climber.

Anyhoos, after Leroy's second or third attack on my dogs, it became clear that the police and Leroy's owner weren't going to do anything to stop him, so my dad took matters into his own hands and came up with a brilliant invention: the Leroy stick.

The Leroy stick was, you guessed it, a stick. My dad carried an axe handle and I carried a plunger handle. My dad told me two things about carrying the Leroy stick. First, if Leroy came near me or the dogs, I should hit him. Second, if I hit Leroy with my stick, I would not get in trouble. Was it legal? Probably not. Was it right? It sure felt like it. We set the example and soon a lot of our neighbors started carrying Leroy sticks as well. Soon enough, Leroy and his owner saw everyone carrying sticks and Leroy didn't run free anymore.

If you think the point of this story is to beat dogs with sticks, then I'm guessing you probably still think I work for BP as well.

The point of this story is that if someone is terrorizing your neighborhood, sometimes it's alright to grab a stick and take a swing. Social media, and in this particular case Twitter, has given average people like me the ability to use and invent all sorts of brand new sticks.

Dogs may be able to sniff out the smell of chemicals released into urine by prostate tumors, setting the stage for a new means of early prostate cancer detection.

Filed under: Humor, Videos, Movies

• link:// War Pigs

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments