If you haven’t heard by now the trucks or buses in Pakistan are given special treatment. All sorts of decorations and colorful paintings are applied no matter if it’s on the interior or at the exterior.

The result? Artists turned the streets of Pakistan into a national gallery without walls, an exhibition with something new every few minutes. They are against of mass production and this is how they fight it. Almost every truck or bus that gets out of their hands screams uniqueness.

Curious to know how much you’d have to pay to get your truck painted? It starts from $500 and goes above $1,000. If you need the body adjusted and then the truck painted then the price climbs up to $2,500 which is what a driver makes in two years. For special requests it even goes up to $13,000. Art is expensive …

If you have the time and want to read a small story about truck & bus paintings in Pakistan there’s a good one. Here is a small gallery. Let us know if you like them.

Pictures copyright : AutoMen, dibopics, iancowe, Khalid Bin Ismail, P Donovan, noorkhan, go2net, Suh@il , Raja Islam, Bobulix

This is a home made solar oven that was built using a pizza box, black construction paper, aluminum foil, tape and glue. You can get all these materials for just a few bucks and the result is an oven that uses sunlight to heat up to 150 degrees F. Though it may take twice as long as a classic oven it won’t cost anything to operate and it’s totally “green”.

I’m not sure if you use it just to make your food warm or if you can really cook, because if you can I don’t want to be the guy to clean it up when the meal is ready. Here are detailed instructions on how to build it yourself.

Not quite a gadget but I’m sure for many of us it would be an option just as good. Here we have an Idaho snowboarder that invented the record breaking two-people board. I’m not sure it the guys from JackAss tried or did it but it’s still a good concept if the slopes aren’t too steep.

I like skiing rather than boarding and that is because I can’t balance well with my legs stuck into the binders but I think I’d do good on the two-man snowboard. Oh and funny thing, there seems to be a three-man board, too? Crazy!

A record fine of $1.3 billion has been issued today by the European Union to Microsoft because the company “charged unreasonable prices” for software information to developers that wanted to build Windows compatible products. If we were to make the total amount for the fines Microsoft has to pay we’ll end up with about $2.5 billion.

Though Microsoft had taken measure to make sure the company is meeting the anti-trust regulations in Europe, said that the issues for which they’re fined today have been taken care of.

Just to bring a smile on Bill’s face, EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said “We could have gone as high as 1.5 billion euros ($2.23 billion). The maximum amount is higher than what we did at the end of the day”. They are still skeptical and have all their eyes on Microsoft to see their next steps.

Dell has a passion of releasing gaming desktop solutions and the latest addition is their XPS 630 model. It’s dubbed “the new challenger” and is a more affordable gaming rig in the XPS line, that supports dual graphics and some of the latest processors. But enough talk, here are the basic specs:

• Supports Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme and Intel Core 2 Quad processors that are overclockable
• supports NVIDIA nForce650 SLI Chipset
• graphics options : NVIDIA SLI Single/Dual (8800 GT or 8800 GTX) or ATI Crossfire Single/Dual (2900 XT)
• up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM (Overclockable Corsair DOMINATOR Memory, 800 MHz)
• up to 2TB hard drives (Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 16 MB Cache, 7200rpm, SATA II)
• 4 internal HDD bays
• two PCIe X16 Graphic slots
• 750 Watt MAX model DT50E power supply unit
• 48X Combo Drive, Optional 16X DVD+/-RW Drive and Optional Blu-ray Disc Drive
• Light FX 2.0 (4 lighting zones)
• AGEIA PhysX™ Accelerator option
• Red and Black Bezel Color Choice

The price starts from $1,249 and you could get yours right now because it’s as good as you read above. The money you spend will offer a great gaming experience. Here’s a more detailed review.

So the store was down for a reason.

The new MacBook Pro models will run on Intel Core 2 Duo Penryn processors up to 2.6 GHz that can feature NVIDIA’s GeForce 8600M GT with 512 MB of DDR3 RAM and Apple’s Multi-Touch trackpad. The same trackpad is going to be featured in the new MacBook Air.

Both 15-inch MacBook Pro models feature power-saving, LED backlit widescreen displays. And now you can even configure the 17-inch model with the ultimate creative canvas - 1920 by 1200 pixels with LED backlighting.

All Mac notebooks are getting a built-in video camera and a built-in 802.11n Wireless. From what I’ve heard the MacBook is going to be upgraded, too, but no sign of a multi-touch trackpad. That’s too bad. Oh, one last “bad thing” is that the Apple Remote is now optional and the cost is $19.

Here are the prices of the new announced models
The 2.1 GHz, 13-inch white MacBook $1,099 (US)
The 2.4 GHz, 13-inch white MacBook $1,299 (US)
The 2.4 GHz, 13-inch black MacBook $1,499 (US)
The 2.4 GHz, 15-inch MacBook Pro $1,999 (US)
The 2.5 GHz, 15-inch MacBook Pro $2,499 (US)
The 2.5 GHz, 17-inch MacBook Pro, for a suggested retail price of $2,799 (US)

AppleStore

After Microsoft’s offer of acquiring Yahoo, here comes the real buzz story. Yahoo releases a social bookmarking extension called Yahoo Buzz. It looks like a Digg clone, but more than rating news and articles, Yahoo Buzz combines the search relevancy with users voting to give a story a Buzz Score.

Social networking success has attracted Yahoo in the business. The company didn’t end too well last year, but now after rejecting Microsoft proposal, its name has gained popularity and sympathy. Currently Yahoo Buzz is in beta and includes content from nearly 100 publishers, each of which has a “badge” that lets readers vote and submit stories to Buzz in real-time. The users will generate a “BuzzScore” while rating the news stories, videos, images, or blog posts on the Web. The company said, the algorithm will include the top stories in a good placement on Yahoo.com. As an additional option, Yahoo Buzz will also allow users to submit Buzz stories to social new sites such as Digg, Facebook, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.

Yahoo plans to develop a new ecosystem based on Yahoo Buzz. It will develop new syndication and monetization tools for publishers who share relevant content and advertisers. I like this new idea and I am sure Yahoo will certainly create some buzz.

via Yahoo News

The device was built from in wood, copper, pipes and other industrial materials to be given a steampunk look. The artist who created the mouse has used a theme based on a furnace. He actually used fake coal and orange LEDs to create the impression of hot coals. The amazing aesthetics resulted from the combination of copper pipes and wooden case.

This mouse fits perfect in Steampunk Laptop’s USB, otherwise it would look weird next to a high-tech laptop, like MacBook Air for example.

via Dvice

Arizona is one of the sunniest states in the US and this is why Abengoa Solar decided to partner with Arizona Public Service Company (APS) to build the largest solar plant in the world. The 1900 acre plant located 70 miles southwest of Phoenix, near Gila Bend will be named Solona (”sunny place” in Spanish) and should be ready by 2011.

Here are a few specs of Solona:

• building cost is $1 billion
• 280 MegaWatts of power
• 70,000 to 84,000 homes will benefit from the solar energy
• average price APS will pay per kilowatt-hour electricity from Solona is 14 cents
• average price APS pays for kilowatt-hour electricity today (nuclear, coal, natural gas or renewable sources) is 9 cents

This is an example that we’re able to do it if we want to. The whole concept of Solona needs just one more thing: the US Congress to pass the clean energy tax credit that’s set to expire at the end of 2008.

I hope it passes.

via Inhabitat

There’s been a lot of rumors lately about Lenovo’s ThinkPad X300 but no one managed to find the real (official) price it’s going to sell for and though we’re waiting for new MacBooks today you should know that if you want to own a ThinkPad X300 it’s starting from $2,404. Here are the full specs.

Lenovo ThinkPad X300
13 inch widescreen with integrated graphics and DVDRW
Price: $2,488.80

- Intel Core 2 Duo SL7100 @ 1.2GHz, 4MB L2 and 800MHz FSB
- 13.3 WXGA+ TFT (LED backlight) 3×3 UltraConnect II
- 1 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory (1 DIMM)
- 64 GB Solid State Drive
- Ultrathin DVD-RW
- Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AG (supporting Centrino Pro)
- ThinkPad X300 Series 3 Cell LiPolymer Battery

Lenovo ThinkPad X300
13 inch widescreen with integrated graphics but no DVD-RW
Price: $2,404.80

via Gizmodo