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viyh writes "Wikipedia will be adding a video option within two or three months, according to the MIT Technology Review. '... a person editing a Wikipedia article will find a new button labeled "Add Media." Clicking it will bring up an interface allowing her to search for video — initially from three repositories containing copyright-free material — and drag chosen portions into the article, without having to install any video-editing software or do any conversions herself. The results will appear as a clickable video clip embedded within the article.' They will be requiring all video to use open-source formats. This is in hopes of getting content providers to open up their material to gain wider exposure on the Wikipedia website. There is also an in-browser editor that removes a lot of the headache often associated with any kind of video editing. With the new Wikipedia system, 'people will be able to easily inject media into pages, in a way that wasn't possible before,' says Michael Dale, a software engineer from Kaltura, the company assisting with development of the tools."

viyh sends word that new downloadable content will be coming to Grand Theft Auto IV this fall, called The Ballad of Gay Tony. They also announced that this bit of DLC, as well as the previous pack, The Lost and Damned, will be released together on a compilation disc later this year. The interesting part is that players won't need to buy the original game to play the two expansions. Rockstar's Sam Houser said, "This episode's focus on high-end night life contrasts with the biker gangs portrayed in The Lost and Damned, whilst giving us a lot of new gameplay possibilities." The press release describes the plot thus: "As Luis Lopez, part-time hoodlum and full-time assistant to legendary nightclub impresario Tony Prince (aka 'Gay Tony'), players will struggle with the competing loyalties of family and friends, and with the uncertainty about who is real and who is fake in a world in which everyone has a price."

viyh writes to mention that six German states have mandated pulling Red Bull Cola energy drinks off the shelves after testing found trace amounts of cocaine in the drink. "Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment said Monday that the cocaine level was too low to pose a health risk. It planned to produce a more detailed report Wednesday. Red Bull said its cola is 'harmless and marketable in both the US and Europe.' It said similar coca leaf extracts are used worldwide as flavoring, and a test it commissioned itself found no cocaine traces."

viyh writes "North Korea conducted a nuclear test on Monday, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted a ruling party official as saying. A magnitude 4.7 earthquake was recorded by the USGS in North Korea. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has called an emergency meeting of cabinet ministers over the test, Yonhap said."

viyh writes with coverage on MSNBC of the discovery of ancient microbes fossilized in the gut of a termite. "One hundred million years ago a termite was wounded and its abdomen split open. The resin of a pine tree slowly enveloped its body and the contents of its gut. In what is now the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar, the resin fossilized and was buried until it was chipped out of an amber mine. The resin had seeped into the termite's wound and preserved even the microscopic organisms in its gut. These microbes are the forebears of the microbes that live in the guts of today's termites and help them digest wood. ... The amber preserved the microbes with exquisite detail, including internal features like the nuclei. ... Termites are related to cockroaches and split from them in evolutionary time at about the same time the termite in the amber was trapped."

viyh writes with an update to the ongoing legal troubles faced by Craigslist over their adult-services ads. According to CNN, a South Carolina judge has told the office of the state's Attorney General, Henry McMaster, to cease their efforts to bring criminal charges against the operators of Craigslist. "On Friday, Judge Weston Houck granted Craigslist's request for a temporary restraining order preventing McMaster and his employees from 'initiating or pursuing [any] prosecution against Craigslist or its officers and employees in relation to content posted by third parties on Craigslist's Web site' until the court rules on the merits of the site's lawsuit. Craigslist's lawsuit cites an interview McMaster gave to Fox News on Monday, in which he likened the site 'to a hotel or motel owner that knows prostitution is going on on their premises and fails to do anything about it especially after having been told.'"

viyh notes that President Obama has named former astronaut Charles F. Bolden Jr. as NASA administrator. Obama's campaign space adviser, Lori Garver, will be Bolden's deputy. Bolden flew four shuttle missions, two as commander, as well as 100 combat missions over Viet Nam. If confirmed, Bolden will take over an agency uncertain of its direction. The shuttle Atlantis's landing will mark the end of the servicing era — it was the last planned mission to repair any satellite. Some inside the agency are less than happy about how NASA's future looks from here.