Look, there's no question that Canada looks out for its own, but if you reckoned that it also let everything slide... well, think again. One D&R Electronics has apparently thrown a BlackBerry PlayBook into a Canadian Dodge Charger, signified by a red maple leaf and the oh-so-distinct use of the word "ayeouuut." Put simply, the 7-inch slate has been coded up to flip on the overhead / side lights, search police databases for names and faces, accept commands wirelessly from an in-car keyboard, and even be fully detachable for those times with mobility is of the utmost importance. You know, like playing Angry Birds while waiting in line to cross the border. Head on past the break to have a look, won't you?

[Thanks, Dan]

It's hard to even believe these words, but they're true: the last scheduled US space shuttle launch happens today. What started as a frenetic race to another world has ended as a program that will forever be remembered for sparking the interest of mere tykes, and if this so-called economy ever gets turned around -- heck, maybe we'll see the hiatus end. In all likelihood, it'll be Sir Richard Branson making the next moonwalk, but rather than sit around and mourn the quiet death of the space shuttle, we'd prefer to share a few of our fondest memories here. And by all means, please deliver any final words of your own in comments below.

So, Johnson & Johnson -- you're a male, right? If you've tried looping your business into Google+, you may have noticed that it's not exactly setup for that right now. In case you didn't, however, Goog's own Christian Oestlien has a bit of intel he'd like you to know. For now, Google+ remains a consumer-oriented affair, but he did say that there's a team of engineers toiling away on "an amazing Google+ experience for businesses." As for features? Mum's the word, really, but we are told that it'll "far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses." The company's asking for patience while the finishing touches are made, and Google's going to be testing the waters with a few marketing partners over the next few months. As for when your own LLC can take advantage? "Later this year."

Microbial fuel cells aren't exactly new, but microbial fuel cells scouring the ocean floor? Now that's an initiative we can get behind. The Naval Research Laboratory is currently toying around with a so-called Zero Power Ballast Control off the coast of Thailand, presumably looking for treasures dropped from the speedboat of one "Alan Garner." Purportedly, the newfangled hydrogen fuel cell relies on bacteria to provide variable buoyancy, which allows an autonomous ocean sensor to move up and down water columns with little to no effort. Furthermore, it's able to get its energy from microbial metabolism (yeah, we're talking about hot air), and while it's mostly being used to measure things like temperature and pressure, it could be repurposed for more seirous tasks -- like mine detection. There's no clear word yet on when America's Navy will have access to this stuff, but if we had to guess, they've probably be using it behind our backs for the better part of a score.

[Image courtesy of U.S. Navy Reserve / Tom Boyd]

It may not pay any taxes, but General Electric sure knows how to use an iPhone 4 to upload photos to Tumblr. Hit the source link for a boatload of other shots that probably are as old as they look. But, not at all.

Here's something you can curl up with after those long winter... photoshoots? Straight out of the there's something for everyone department comes a trio of plush toy camera lenses -- in Nikon 35mm, Canon 50mm and 24-105mm varieties -- for even the most discerning leisure connoisseur. These hand-crafted part fleece, part felt creations are the fruits of Plushtography's shutterbug-obsessed labor and come "pre-hugged by a team of koalas to ensure maximum huggability" -- we guess Olivia Newton-John was busy. The pillows range from amateur to expert, in keeping with their lens type and could lighten your wallet to the tune of $35 - $65 smackeroos. These lenses won't imbue you with any magical pro-photographic skill, but they should prove to be an interesting bedroom conversation piece.

How's hog-tying search terms sound as an alternative to plain old cut and paste? Well, according to Microsoft, it sounds mighty fine. The software giant just announced Lasso, a new touch-friendly search tool for the Bing iPad app that allows you to rope in your internet queries by circling a word or phrase. Once you've drawn the circle, Bing automatically generates a search using the selected words. No word on how this will work out for us chubby-fingered searchers, but if you've given it a go 'round the ole corral, let us know how it's treating you in the comments.

Sure, we've seen plenty of cool billboard features over the years, from facial recognition to interactive Pong games, but few have managed the dual feat of promoting a popular soft drink and making the world a slightly greener place. All of that fuzzy area you see surrounding the silhouette of the Coke bottle in the above 60 by 60 foot billboard is made up of a number of Fukien tea plants, each of which can soak up around 13 pounds of carbon dioxide per year, for a combined total of 46,800 pounds. The plants are housed in pots made from recycled Coke bottles and are watered via a drip irrigation system. The billboard is the product of a partnership between Coca-Cola Philippines and the World Wildlife Fund. No word on when it might be greening up more skylines around the world. Press release below.

Whoa, Nelly -- this one's not going to sit well with a certain sect. While the Chinese city of Chongqing has been planning this initiative for some time, we're just now starting to understand the sheer magnitude of what'll be built over the next two to three years. Cisco and HP -- two names that are no doubt familiar to those reading this page -- are apparently in cahoots with the nation in a way that overshoots prior expectations by some amount. According to figures gathered by The Wall Street Journal, a whopping half-million surveillance cameras are being shipped over to keep watch across the city, with the awkwardly-named Peaceful Chongqing project giving the government unprecedented views of its citizens.

Critics are wondering why Cisco and HP aren't being held responsible for whatever China ends up doing with this equipment, but the loophole here is a fairly obvious one; while it's definitely not kosher for US firms to ship fingerprinting equipment to China, shipping everyday technology like cameras isn't taboo. Yet, anyway. As you'd expect, both Cisco and HP seem confident that it's not their responsibility to pay attention to what happens to the devices they ship, and if it's something you'd like to immerse yourself in, those links below are there to help.

3D has become an industry buzzword du jour. Tack that little epithet onto a consumer-facing product and voila!, you get to charge higher prices for its virtual premium. Well, it looks like a bunch of folks across the pond caught on and decided to throw a little cocoa powder into the mix. Funded by the Research Councils UK's Digital Economy program with oversight by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, as well as being led by the University of Exeter, the University of Brunel and software developer Delcam -- talk about too many cooks -- the tech that previously brought metal and plastic products to life is getting a chocoholic makeover. Using specially designed temperature and heating controls, the printer takes uploaded 3D CAD designs and turns them into the stuff of your sweet toothed dreams. Although you won't be seeing this printer at a boutique near you, there are plans for a made-to-order retail site that'll let you contribute homemade creations or modify someone else's. We understand if this gets your Valentine's anticipating heart all aflutter, but please don't make any actual chocolate hearts -- that's just gross.

This Monday marked the 15th anniversary of the birth of Hotmail. That July 4th launch date is no coincidence -- the service's founders intended its release to highlight the symbolism of its independence from more traditional e-mail models. The following year, the service would be snatched up by Microsoft and housed under the software giant's MSN umbrella. The subsequent years haven't always been easy for the brand, thanks in part to competition from Yahoo and Google-owned services. In 2007, the service fired back, revamping and rebranding itself as Windows Live Hotmail. It's been a decade and a half of ups and downs, but the webmail service continues to be one of the most widely used in the world. Got any Hotmail-related memories? Please share them in the comments below.

Google's reportedly trying to put all of its product eggs into one self-branded basket. According to Mashable, two of its most popular services -- Picasa and Blogger -- may go under the branding knife and come out the other side looking like 'Google Photos' and 'Google Blogs.' With the exception of the latter's planned UI overhaul, both services should function exactly the same. The move -- alleged to take place within the next six weeks -- would unify the search king's user offerings ahead of the public launch of Google+. And if that social service's rumored July 31st launch date pans out, we could be seeing this overhaul very soon. But don't expect crown jewel YouTube to receive similar treatment, that site's brand equity already sent its ugly step-sister -- Google Video -- to the grave.

When it wanted to increase its search market share in the US, Microsoft sought out a partnership, resulting in a Yahoo-branded engine with Bing-flavored results. So, it seems natural that the company would look for a similar deal in China, the world's largest market, where the company only manages a presence of around one-percent of search. This time, however, Microsoft's managed a deal with the number one search engine, Baidu, which currently lays claim to three-quarters of the Chinese market -- far greater than Google's 20-percent or so. Baidu and MS announced a deal this week that will put Redmond in charge of English searches on the site. No money changed hands with the deal -- Baidu gets advertising revenue, Microsoft gets a larger slice of China's search pie, and we get an excuse to do an image search for Steve Ballmer on a Chinese search engine.

Since October of 2009, we have had an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results through a special feed, and that agreement expired on July 2. While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that's publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google.

Come on down! You can be the next contestant on the Prizes site. That was overkill, we know, but it's a necessary introduction into a new world of online solution-based social gaming pioneered by the Slide team. Acquired by the Goog back in 2010, the low profile entertainment-driven app developer has been hard at work making the web 'more social' and filling its Big Daddy's pockets. Debuting in classic Google beta form, Prizes takes your Twitter or Facebook accounts and signs you up for cash prize-winning, user-created contest shenanigans. In case you missed that fine point, we'll reiterate -- users design the challenges, you post a solution (or vice versa). Like the $40 "Give my Dad a makeover!" competition we're completely unqualified to enter, or the $30 "Comprehensive 'get healthy' plan for living in a large, polluted city" game we're sure Al Gore could win in his sleep. It's a kooky idea, but we can definitely see the service having widespread appeal. Let's be frank here: Google + social gaming + prize money = solid user gold.

China's control over the rare earths market hasn't faced too many challenges over the past few years, but that may be changing, thanks to a major discovery in Japan. Geologists say they've uncovered expansive new deposits of rare earth minerals, buried within a seabed some 20,000 feet below the Pacific Ocean surface. Research leader Yasuhiro Kato estimates that the deposits contain anywhere from 80 to 100 billion metric tons of rare earths, which, if commercially viable, could pose a serious threat to China's global hegemony. Supply shortages and aggressive Chinese export controls have combined to raise global prices in recent years, much to the chagrin of manufacturers who rely upon the metals to produce smartphones, tablets and a wide variety of other gadgets. But with analysts predicting a rare earth surplus within the next few years and Japan's mining industry now poised for a potential resurgence, the outlook is certainly looking a lot brighter.

Have a bad case of Google+ envy? Here's a little something that should help hold you over until the site fully opens its flood gates. Circle Hack is a self-described "one-night experiment with Javascript" created by a few Facebook engineers in a non-affiliated capacity, which unofficially brings Google Circles-like functionality to the top social network. The creators of the Facebook plug-in have borrowed liberally from Google on this one (turnabout is fair play, perhaps). Once you log in with your Facebook account, you can drag and drop rectangles of your friends from that site into circles at the bottom of your page -- a quick method for curating your Facebook lists. Given the short development of the plug-in, the functionality of the site is, not surprisingly, a bit limited. Certain things like, say, deleting circles, are absent at present -- perhaps its creators are too busy working on the Facebook Hangouts hack.