Common Paradox Tech Blog

If you live anywhere on the East Coast and are at all interested in cool stuff that happens in the sky, you’d be remiss not to stay up late tonight to watch for the last ever nighttime shuttle launch.

Or you could wake up early, that works too. Either way, at 4:39 A.M. early tomorrow morning NASA will launch the Endeavor space shuttle, and it will be the last time it does so at night.

On its way up to the International Space Station, the shuttle will fly parallel to America’s eastern seaboard and the shuttle’s rockets will thus be visible to a surprisingly huge area, weather permitting. Here’s a map of where the rocket will be in the first ten minutes after launch and what areas of the country will be able to see it:

I told you it was a surprisingly huge area! To find out more about what you’re looking for and where exactly you should be looking for it, check out Space.com’s comprehensive rundown of the late night launch. [Space.com]

I never realized we were such pillow fans: iPhone icon pillows, pillow blankets, TV pattern pillows, laptop pillows, pillow rings, extra-terrestrial pillows, wiimote pillows… it never stops. Until now. Here’s the pillow to rule them all: The Condom Pillow.

Hand silk-screened, the Condom Pillow has a small pocket to put real condoms inside. Genius? I think so. It’s a great reminder, in any case. You don’t really want to have to use the undo pillows one day. [Etsy]

A quick reminder to interested parties: Palm announces its second quarter financial results today at 1 PM Pacific, 4PM Eastern. 

There’s been a lot of analyst noise leading up today, with predictions ranging from Palm’s eminent demise, results that will be inline with their Q1 guidance, and results that will pleasantly beat above expectations.  This afternoon we’ll see which analysts are worth their weight and, get get some insight on how well the Pre and Pixi have been selling, and some of Palm’s plans going forward.

For those interested in getting down on the nitty gritty (or those looking to be lulled to sleep by financial babble), the live webcast of the call can be found at investor.palm.com.  Be sure to check back here after the call for our in-depth breakdown and analysis of the results.

Join Rene and special Round Robin guest Matt Miller of NokiaExperts.com, for a look at how the Symbian S60 N97-mini and Maemo N900 compare to TiPb’s own iPhone. Plus all the week’s news, views, and rants. If you have any questions, leave a comment below, hit us up on Twitter @theiphoneblog, or better still — [...]

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iPhone Live! with NokiaExpert’s Matt Miller! iPhone Live! Tonight at 8pm ET/5pm PT (1am GMT)

Join Rene and Chad, and welcome Georgia, for all the week’s news, views, and rants. If you have any questions, leave a comment below, hit us up on Twitter @theiphoneblog, or better still — join us live in the chat room via http://www.tipb.com/live

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This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone Live! Tonight at 8pm ET/5pm PT (1am GMT)

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What is this thing? Glad you asked.

Just a quick reminder that today is the last day to submit your nominations for our third annual Crunchies Awards. We’ve received over 100,000 nominations so far, but just in case you’ve forgotten, go here right now and add some more. You have until midnight PT tonight.

Once all the nominations are in, the Crunchies Committee will choose five finalists per award category. From there, the popular voting will begin on December 21 and run through January 6, leading up to the live ceremony Friday, January 8, 2010 at 7:30 pm PT the Herbst Theater in San Francisco which we’re pleased to be co-hosting with GigaOm and VentureBeat. The full rules are here.

Have you ever come home from running errands, only realized that the one thing you forgot to put on your list was available at a store near where you were already shopping? If you’re like me, chances are you’ve done that more than once, and it really gets old after a while. PreCentral forum member and developer of the popular homebrew app Music Player (Remix) is coming to our collective rescue with a new original app called GeoStrings.

GeoStrings is a cross between a task list and a GPS tracker. As the video above demonstrates, one operates the app by entering a reminder item, such as picking up the new Star Trek DVD, and then adding a location (or locations) at which to accomplish that activity, thus making a ‘GeoString.’ When you’re in the area, GeoStrings puts up an alert on your phone so that you can go and take care of the task.

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Yesterday we got new stats from Facebook, including the passing of the 350 million user milestone. Another interesting tidbit that came out in a UK press event on Tuesday, where a Facebook exec pointed out that there are apparently more active users in the Facebook app FarmVille than on all of Twitter.

The popular casual game boasts a current 69 million monthly active players, making it the largest Facebook application by a factor of more than 2 to 1 over the next highest competitor. Their daily active players count is now up to 26.5 million, up from 11 million just 3 months ago. That’s an astonishing growth rate almost any company would be drooling over.

While Twitter hasn’t itself released official user stats, research puts the figure close to 18 million by the end of the year. It might be a bit of a pot shot, but the “Farmville vs. Twitter” statistic is a telling reminder of the magnitude size difference between the two services.

Can there really be more virtual farmers inside Facebook than total Twitterers? Let us know your thoughts on what this means for the fate of the social networking industry, and of civilization, in the comments.

Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

Tags: facebook, farmville, social networking, twitter, Zynga

Join Chad and Rene for all the week’s news, views, and rants. If you have any questions, leave a comment below, hit us up on Twitter @theiphoneblog, or better still — join us live in the chat room via http://www.tipb.com/live

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This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone Live! Tonight at 8pm ET/5pm PT (1am GMT)