The World Famous Capybara Caplin

Is it a cat? Is it a dog? Is it a hamster? These are just some of the questions Melanie Typaldos and her daughter Coral have to answer when they are seen with their pet. In fact, Caplin Rous is a capybara, the largest species of rodent in the world and closely related to the guinea pig. Capybara Caplin lives in Texas and he is the most famous capybara in the world. The capybara is the largest living rodent in the world. More images after the break...

Zarine Khan at Tennis Academy Event At Xavier's

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Maria Sharapova Breakfast in LA — Feb 6

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Windows XP Phone

Communicator xpPhone, developed by Chinese company ITG, very soon go on sale. Its development has been going on for seven months, and during this period was uncovered is absolutely all the information about it. All the programs that run on desktops, work fine and xpPhone, so that you can safely assume this unit is a full-fledged computer with phone features. More images after the break...

The most minimal equipment communicator ITG xpPhone includes energy-efficient processors from AMD, solid-state hard drive for 32 GB and 512 MB of RAM. On the front panel in this case will be installed touch-screen display with a diagonal of 4.8 inches and a resolution of 800x480 pixels. Communicator xpPhone endowed with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS-chipset and slot microSD, as well as support for cellular networks, GSM, TD-SCDMA, WCDMA and CDMA EVDO. The device will come in black, silver, white and red colors of the shell. In such a configuration xpPhone costs $ 440. More expensive versions are equipped with a larger diagonal screen and more capacious hard drive. The most expensive xpPhone can be purchased for $ 660.

Ryugyong Hotel — The world's biggest ruin

The construction of the 330 m tall tower in Pyongyang, North Korea began in 1987. It has a total 360,000 m² (3.9 million ft²) floor space and 105 stories. The building should have been opened in 1989, by that time it could have been the tallest hotel in the world and the 7th largest skyscraper. North Korea have spent ~$750 million or 2% of the country's GDP on the Ryugyong Hotel. The hotel was designed to have 3,000 rooms, 7 revolving restaurants, casinos(!), nightclubs(!) and Japanese lounges. In 1989 -the original completion date- they had several construction method and material problems therefore the opening was delayed, but in 1992 the construction came to a complete halt due to funding problems, electricity shortages, and the prevailing famine. More images after the break...

2008 Update: After 16 years Ryugyong Hotel is starting to get back to life. Egypt's Orascom group has recently begun refurbishing the top floors of the tower. The company has put glass panels into the concrete shell and installed telecommunications antennas. South Korean estimations say that it would cost $2 billion to finish the hotel and make it safe, that is the same as 10% annual GDP of North Korea.

In April 2008 Orascom group has started refurbishing the Ryugyong Tower, starting with the top floors. In late 2008 the work on cladding has been the main focus of construction. Works on the tower will be finished by 2012, the year of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, ex leader of North Korea. Orascom claimed that the main goal would mean to make the tower more attractive. Hopefully it does not mean finishing the cladding, yet the structure would be left unhabitable.  The Dubai based Emaar Properties developer company showed their interest in the construction of Ryugyong Hotel Tower. Emaar is one of the largest developer firms in the world and they are known for building the world's tallest tower, the Burj Dubai.

In 2006 the hotel was still not finished (it had reached its full structural height though) and left alone with a crane on the top. The building is completely empty, there is no facade on the tower either. The Ryugyong Hotel with the current structure will never be opened. The Government of North Korea was trying to find new investors to build a new structure, they would need ~$300 million for this. The tower is still by far the tallest in Pyongyang (the capital city) and in the whole of North Korea.

The Big Picture Photo Mosaic

The Big Picture is a project to create the biggest photo album in the West Midlands where the people there submitted over 110,000 photos. The photos are then used to create a huge record breaking photo mosaic the size of three tennis courts which was unveiled at Birmingham’s Thinktank at Millenium Point on 23rd August 2008. British artist Helen Marshall is the creative mind behind the project where she worked with photo mosaic specialists PollyTiles to realize the enormous image. 2 more pics of ‘The Big Picture’ photo mosaic after the jump.

Rabbit Becomes Herons Meal

Herons are not known for preying small mammals but these intelligent birds are known to adapt flexibility in their feeding habits and in this case the cutesy bunny just got unlucky. The little rabbit was drowned in the water which also makes the rabbit more slippery to down into the heron’s throat. It’s interesting to see the cycle of life in nature but its pretty disturbing to see birds that should be eating fish taking a taste of small land mammals. Perhaps the photographer should have rescued it instead of just observing but then again the heron would probably just look for another prey.3 more pics of the unlucky rabbit after the jump.