talkingDigital

You read it on the Internet, so it must be true. No, really, it was on TimeOnline.com, so it’s real!

By now this image has circulated through every blog (like this one) that is looking for a few hits to bring in some Google Adsense revenue. Even legitimate news sites are running the story without any confirmation.

We will be the first to call it a hoax, or a misidentified creature at best. What makes us jump to that conclusion? We’ve been there before.

Besides intuition and past experience, how do we know it’s a fake or a hoax?

Look at the rungs behind the creature. For some reason most of the bars mysteriously end before they go behind the creature.

Notice the strange focus along the creatures back. Everything in the foreground and background is in focus, but in the spots where the bars disappear and along the creatures back, it is mysteriously fuzzy.

There is no point of reference. The only way we know that this thing is the size of a bear is because that is what the story reports. It very likely is the size of a large rat or small Kangaroo.

No moving video has been posted. Oddly, there is a YouTube slide show (the moving kind) but it features still pictures of the animal and explains that China does not allow moving video to be uploaded. First, China has no idea whether the video being uploaded is video of an Oriental Yeti or a slide show containing still images of an Oriental Yeti.

Similar hoaxes from the past.

Montauk Monster – It turned out to be a partially decomposed raccoon.

Mermaid Corpses & Florida Mermaid – Read the attached for various explanations.

Dead Fairy – Yep – another fake.

Oh how we could go on with pig-human hybrids, chupacabra and so much more.

As we prepare to post this, it looks like someone else has gotten to the bottom of it. We love the Internet.

photo credit: AZAdam

Over the past few years there really haven’t been may new trends. Rather than announcing new kinds of devices, the trend seems to have been in making existing trends less expensive converged devices.

As we head into CES 2010 there are a number of trends we expect to see in 2010.

Year of the ebook – The long promised day of the ebook has come. While the Kindle is taking the US by storm, the rest of the world is wide open for the taking. Even the US is a potential market for a no.2 device. Sprint is planning on making an announcement for Skiff Newsstand – an e-reader technology. We aren’t sure what it is, but we will be at the press conference on January 7 to find out.

CES also announced in September that they had run out of exhibit space in their ebook TechZone.

Social media mayhem – Facebook has brought the social media into the mainstream. Now everybody wants a piece of the market. Keep an eye on talkingDigital.org during CES week (January 4-10) and we will be posting the best and the worst implementations of social media offerings.

Android (we hope) – The Motorola Droid campaign for Verizon has alerted geeks everywhere that the iPhone has a serious potential competitor. We are hoping to see a number of new Android phones and features announced at CES. While many of these announcements will happen in the months following CES at other technology expos.

Flip-like camcorders – Flip camcorders are to the home video industry what the iPhone is to the smartphone industry. Everyone from Sony to Sanyo has a competing product to the Flip video camera. We expect a barrage of new products that demonstrate how every other company just doesn’t get it. The simplicity, durability and video quality have made Flip a success. We expect to see companies announcing Flip-style cameras loaded with overly complex menus and layers of features. Flip is expected to add new HD products as well as wireless video transmission.

Keep an eye on talkingDigital.org for more CES trends leading up to our coverage in early January.

While reading up on all the new Apple announcements, we received the following email from Sprint. Should we get excited? Is it more than the Pixie? Is it ubiquitous WiMax? We are on the edge of our seats – kind of.

As it turns out, the big announcement was actually pretty big. Sprint is now allowing unlimited mobile to mobile calls to and from any mobile on any carrier if you pay for an unlimited data plan.