Google announced on Wednesday that the company has acquired reCAPTCHA, a company with an online product used for providing a test that humans can pass and computers generally cannot. A CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) tool is used in many places on the internet and often when submitting information to ensure that it is a human submitting the information and not some bot software filling out forms automatically on the internet.

A CAPTCHA program would provide text that is not easily and usually impossible for a automated character recognition program to decipher, but easy enough that a human could identify the letters in the text. The person submitting the information would then enter the text they see to “prove” that they are human and not a machine.

On Monday Google released a new online service to the public called Fast Flip on the companies experimental Google Labs site. The new tool is designed to allow users to see full pages of different magazines and newspapers more as if they were physically viewing them by allowing them to flip through the pages, which it kind of does.

The Fast Flip page is laid out into into sections of popularity, topics and even some particular sources. Static images of the pages of different articles are then shown for the section you are looking for that you can click on. Clicking them shows a larger static image on the page, but not necessarily all of it. You can then move back and forth to static pages of other articles on the subject, or click the source you are viewing again to actually get the web page.

Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile and France Telcom’s Orange have announced Tuesday that they plan to merge the two mobile phone carriers, making them the largest carrier in the U.K. once combined. Currently T-Mobile and Orange are the 3rd and 4th largest mobile operations in Britain behind O2 and Vodafone. The merger would launch the combined companies into the number one spot with 28.4 million mobile phone users and a 37 percent market share, leaving O2 trailing with 27 percent and Vodafone 3rd with 25 percent of the mobile market in Britain.

The merger involves plans to maintain their own distinct brands for the first year and a half and then agree on one common brand which could be one of the two existing or something completely new. The two companies will also start streamlining their operations by eliminating overlapping administration, retail stores and base stations with lay-offs likely in the near future.

A bunch of folks at Stanford are set to “reinvent digital photography” with an open-source digital camera. The idea is that it would give programmers the power to come up with new software that would have cameras doing some new tricks, and hopefully eliminate software limits that exist right now.

They’ve already developed a prototype, with the Frankencamera. In the future owners will be able to download apps to their devices and constantly improve performance, much like with your iPhone. Pretty awesome if you ask us.

And you thought that the velcro on your jacket was impressive. These Velcro fasteners were made by German engineers and can withstand 35 tons of force. Needless to say, these aren’t for your clothes. One side has spikes and the other has steel brushes, so it’s just like real velcro. It can also withstand heat of up to 800 degrees Celsius.

And if you tear these Velcro strips vertically, where it’s stronger, it can hold up to 7 tons. We aren’t sure how much of this stuff it actually takes to support that much weight, but it’s pretty amazing anyway. Especially when you consider that just like everyday Velcro, it can be opened up without specialized tools and used again.

Women are always so concerned about what their butt looks like in new clothes. Rightly so. After all, us guys do our fair share of checking them out. Well now women have the Buttcam to help them out in dressing rooms, so they won’t have to ask “Do these pants make my butt look big?” At least in Australia, where the Buttcam has made it’s debut.

Aussie retailer Jeans West took simple video camera technology and created a way to let shoppers decide for themselves just how big that butt looks in pants. It’s a simple solution to a common woman problem.

We’ve seen many devices to help the blind, but this is one of the coolest. BrainPort was first introduced in 2006. The idea was that it would allow users to regain some vision via a camera and electrical impulses sent to the tongue. Now we learn that the device may actually be available commercially very soon.

The BrainPort decodes signals from a camera on your head and transforms them into electrical impulses that hit your tongue, but gently, not joltingly. The impulses are then experienced as spatial awareness and even give one the ability to read text. Pretty amazing stuff.

A U.S. district court judge in Texas ruled against Microsoft on Wednesday in a law suit over a patent infringement in the companies software product Word. The ruling takes affect in 60 days and would ban sales of Microsoft Word versions 2003 and 2007. It also hits the software giant with a $290 million fine in damages.

These versions of the Word product contain particular use of XML which infringes on a patent filed by i4i Ltd, a small firm in Canada. Microsoft states that they plan to appeal the patent citing that they “do not infringe” and that the i4i patent is not valid. Microsoft also has a new version of Word coming out next year as part of their Office 2010 suite, which does not contain the infringing XML component. Microsoft could also simply remove the particular XML portion of the existing Word applications to comply with the court ruling for future sales.

On Monday Google unveiled what they are calling a “next-generation infrastructure” for their web search, and they are asking the public to give it a try. The “secret” project has been underway for months according to a recent post on the Google Indexing blog, and is almost complete. According to the post, the new system “…will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions”.

Google has codenamed the new underlying search indexing “caffeine”, and is looking for the general public to give it a try and provide feedback in the way of differences between the new and old. The new indexing can be tried out at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/, where you can do a search and see if you can tell any difference in the results. According to the blog post from Google, they are only looking for feedback in differences at this time.

Calling 911 can save your life, but there are some situations where if you talk, you are endangering your life further. Maybe you are hiding from a dangerous killer for instance. Or maybe you had a stroke and can’t talk. Well now Iowa County has launched the Nation’s First 911 via text message.

So far, the service is only available to residents of Black Hawk County who subscribe to a T-Mobile service provider, but that could grow. Emergency text messages can be helpful for deaf, hard-of-hearing or mute victims who find themselves in a dangerous situation.

Looks like it’s official. Radio Shack will soon be known as “The Shack”, and their “San Francisco and New York Summer Netogether events promise to be speaker wire-riddled mayhem.” Wire riddled mayhem or not, they have revealed a massive keyboard to get things started.

According to a tipster, the Times Square version of the event will connect two gigantic, fake laptops with live webcam images of the two events being beamed across the country. So, they must be really serious about changing their image from a place where nerds buy parts for ham radios and such.

Like two tech superheroes up against an awesome foe, Sharp and Sony have announced a joint venture today in an effort to produce and sell very large LCD panels. Looks like when December 29th rolls around, Sony will be pumping $105 million into Sharp Display Products in an effort to create a share split of 66-percent Sharp and 34-percent Sony.

The deal should be completed by March 10th of next year. The end result of their union will primarily be 32-inch LCD screens along with shouts of “Wondertwin powers, Activate!”.

The future of beer is in a box thanks to some inside-of-the-box thinking. The $20, 1.5-gallon boxes of beer are designed for beer drinkers who prefer their beer from the tap but also don’t mind if that tap is a box. Currently they are testing boxes of Miller Lite and Coors Lite in select cities and they plan to expand it nationwide this football season.

In case you were wondering, 1.5 gallons equals 16 bottles. So you’ll be paying $1.25 per bottle, which is more expensive than buying a 12-pack of bottles. Hey, you have to pay for innovation.

KDDI’s collaboration with Japan’s National Institute of Information & Communications Technology has resulted in the most advanced fiber optic cable in the world. This new cable is able to zip data around at amazing speeds that are up to 10 times faster than existing cables.

We’re talking 30 terabits per second compared to 3 that we use now. Just to put that in perspective for you, that’s 720 DVDs(Each two hours) transmitted to the destination within a single second. Keanu Reeves says Whoa.

Most kids have a 14 to 20 something inch TV in their room. This kid has a 98-inch screen installed in his ceiling. And we, like you, are jealous. Patti Deni (Our candidate for mom of the year) had it installed for her son. At it’s heart the setup is an NEC projector along with some Draper projection mirrors, which fills that huge StarGlas60 display with full HD images than can be viewed from almost any angle.

This install couldn’t have been easy. Word is they had to reframe and reinforce the ceiling to do it. Now that’s an awesome mom.