Today’s Google Doodle barely resembles the usual company logo, as Google celebrates the 155th birthday of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz. The name Hertz is today familiar to practically everyone who’s in contact with computer technology. The processors that power today’s computers, smartphones and tablets all have their heartbeat expressed in hertz (Hz), or – more likely – megahertz or gigahertz. Hertz is a SI unit of frequency which measures the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. Germ...

Calling all supertaster space nerds: NASA wants your help to improve the bland food astronauts would have to eat while on a mission to Mars. The space agency is looking for applicants to eat astronaut food for four months during a simulated trip to the Red Planet. Participants will try instant foods, and ones with shelf-stable ingredients, and scientists will record their reactions. The goal of the experiment is to discover what foods people like to consume consistently. Cornell University and U...

The Perfect Palette, a wedding blog that explores “the color palette possibilities for your wedding” and serves as a resource for other wedding ideas, would seem to be a perfect match for Pinterest, and it is. The site is far and away the biggest brand on Pinterest with more than 240,000 followers, according to Zoomsphere. The rest of the list illustrates that media titles that cater to the nesting instinct have a definite advantage. (As do publications that write about Pinterest, including Mash...

Move over, Rebecca Black. Make room for Tommy Jordan. The heat-packing, tech-savvy dad who plugged nine rounds into his daughter’s laptop in a YouTube-broadcasted fit of parental retribution is rapidly blowing the pop star’s notorious “Friday” video out of the water in the 24/7 viral video derby. “Facebook Parenting: For the troubled teen,” uploaded exactly two weeks ago, has already amassed more than 28 million views on YouTube. That’s some 5 million more than the most recent re-uploaded versio...

The PlayStation Vita launches Wednesday with plenty of impressive features , but many may wonder if the system’s launch titles will be worth grab…

He’s back. DRINK! The college student — whose 2007 photo of himself as a freshman catapulted into meme territory last year — has mad…

Yelp is ready to hit the marketplace with a $100 million IPO on March 2, and both investors and the tech community will be watching to see how the location network will fare. While the numbers are certainly nowhere near Facebook IPO territory, Yelp has proven itself over the long haul with steady user and revenue growth since 2005. But despite the upward climb, Yelp has yet to turn a profit, posting a net loss of $16.8 million in 2011 — its biggest shortfall to date. It’s presumed public investm...

Rapportive, a startup that makes a Gmail add-on that displays social media info about contacts as you email them, confirmed on Wednesday that it had been purchased by LinkedIn. Rahul Vohra, CEO of Rapportive, confirmed the acquisition on the company’s blog. “In business, partnership is dating — and we went on a lot of dates with LinkedIn. Slowly, but surely, we fell in love,” Vohra wrote. Vohra wrote that despite the new ownership, Rapportive will continue building its product. “At LinkedIn, we ...