As the Red Bull press release states, "Mission Accomplished."

About 7.3 milion people were watching Sunday as Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner reattempted and nailed the Red Bull Stratos extreme skyjump, freefalling more than 128,000 feet to Earth at 1,342.8 kilometers per hour. He broke the sound barrier but no bones, and garnered congratulatory tweets from NASA and fellow daredevil Richard Branson, and an amusing tribute from Nestle's KitKat. (Update: YouTube reported more than 8 million concurrent livestreams, smashing all previous records, resulting in about 12.6 million viewers including Discovery Channel.)

Red Bull summed up its record-breaking, and latest, extreme sports stunt:Continue reading...

Neil Armstrong was a private guy. You never heard stories about him playing naked billiards in Vegas with a few young women he just met. He never got carried into an awards ceremony in an egg-shaped pod. He wasn’t out spreading his name, selling products with his name plastered all over them (or even products that didn’t have his name on them).

Yet he has one of the most memorable names in American culture.

According to Armstrong, there wasn’t a grand master plan for him to be first man to walk on the moon. “I wasn't chosen to be first,” he said. “I was just chosen to command that flight. Circumstance put me in that particular role. That wasn't planned by anyone.” 

He, of course, ended up being a brilliant pick. He got the job done and threw in some memorable lines that have embedded themselves in our culture to boot: “The Eagle has landed” and, of course, the completely brilliant “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”Continue reading...

The Curiosity Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) captured the rover's descent to the surface of the Red Planet, as it survived a potentially perilous landing dubbed the 'seven minutes of terror,' capping a decade of work by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (more commonly known as JPL) in California.

The world was watching as Curiosity, NASA's latest contribution to the Martian landscape, landed at 10:32 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5 near the foot of a three-mile tall mountain inside Gale Crater, which is 96 miles in diameter.

First-person updates on NASA's official @MarsCuriosity Twitter account include the historic touchdown tweet — "I'm safely on the surface of Mars. GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!! #MSL” — which has been retweeted to date more than 71,000 times.Continue reading...

P&G sees results boosted by sale of snacks division as its Tide brand turns to Betty White for advertising help.

Sony attributes weak financials to PlayStation sales slump.

Chick-fil-A braces for GLAAD's Friday "kiss-in" protest.

ABC and Good Morning America finally overtake NBC and The Today Show in key demographic.

ADM profits slide on higher corn costs.

Amtrak losses examined by Congress.

Apple requests sanction for Samsung as court battle heats up.

AT&T to acquire NextWave Wireless.

Beyonce plans to direct and star in film about her life.Continue reading...

In a bid to show how Google Maps' Street View function can map interiors (such as the White House and any business that meets the criteria for a virtual tour), the search giant today released this promo for its NASA guided tour of the Kennedy Space Center. The description:

Google Maps in collaboration with NASA is enabling people around the world to take a trip to the doorway to outer space. This location is our largest special collection of Street View imagery to date, totaling 6,000 panoramic views of the facilities, and expanding our mission to document the world's most amazing places. Among the images you can now explore online with the click of your mouse are the space shuttle launch pad, Vehicle Assembly Building and Launch Firing Room #4. Gaze down from the top of the enormous launch pad, peer up at the towering ceiling of the Vehicle Assembly Building (taller than the Statue of Liberty) and get up close to one of the space shuttle's main engines, which is powerful enough to generate 400,000 lbs of thrust. From these vantage points, anyone can live out his or her childhood dream of becoming an astronaut.

Toyota tops Interbrand's 2012 Best Global Green Brands report.

News Corp. considers splitting company in two, spinning off publishing assets, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft acquires Yammer for $1.2 billion to take on Oracle and Salesforce with new cloud-based services.

Nissan rises on fast recovery from disasters and plans $1B China auto plant as CEO Ghosn remains Japan's highest paid exec and automaker turns to Facebook to launch five new models.

Facebook names first woman to board — COO Sheryl Sandberg — and pulls so-called stalker app while creating uproar by changing all users' email addresses to facebook.com.

Google I/O news on Wednesday expected to reveal Google and Sony taking on cable and satellite operators with voice-controlled YouTube TV box, as Google prepares to battle Apple with discount tablet.Continue reading...

If Travie McCoy really wanted to be a billionaire, he might have thought about going into inventing a powdered drink that was used by early astronauts rather than songwriting. 

It’s not clear how much the inventor of Tang, General Foods scientist William Mitchell, ever made from the 54-year-old brand (he also dreamed up Pop Rocks and Cool Whip), but the owner of Tang, Kraft Foods, now reports that Tang is pulling in $1 billion in revenue annually.

That makes it Kraft’s 12th billion-dollar brand, joining Oreo cookies, Trident gum, Maxwell House coffee, and eight others in the revered category.

Five years ago, it wouldn’t have been easy to predict that Tang would join the elite tier of Kraft brands, which collectively generated $49.2 billion in sales last year.Continue reading...

Above, meet the winners of last year's Random Hacks of Kindness from Lusaka, Zambia, who describe their enthusiasm for the program, co-founded and co-funded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, HP, NASA and the World Bank.

At the heart of the idea is how technology can and should be used for good. So RHoK brings subject experts, volunteer software developers and designers together to create open source and technology agnostic software solutions addressing major human challenges.

Now, on June 4-5, the third Random Hacks of Kindness global hackathon convenes in the US and internationally, including Nairobi, Bangalore, Silicon Valley and Toronto.Continue reading...