fan

Another entrant in the race to produce a ducted-fan-propelled, vertical-take-off-and-landing UAV, the planned "humvee of the air" will morph to different missions and reach targets three times faster than helicopters, according to the manufacturer.

The official name of the vehicle is VTOL-Swift Tactical Aerial Resource, or V-STAR. With a cruising speed of 288 knots, a 650-mile range and a 400-pound payload, the V-STAR promises to be a "breakthrough solution for frontline military logistics," according to Broomfield, Colo.-based Frontline Aerospace. The aircraft would use a Rolls-Royce gas turbine with counter-rotating blades and "diamond-box-wing" design … Read more

Rory Reid from CNET.co.uk joins us to talk all things tech. iPhones won't help you get laid in the U.S. or the U.K., Speed Racer looks like an abomination and Randall's stuffy nose ruins the show.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

It seems that the founder of Napster--no, not Seth Green--may have finally cashed in big time on one of his creations.

According to TechCrunch, Napster founder Shawn Fanning has sold his gaming social-media start-up, Rupture, to Electronic Arts for $30 million.

TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld reported Thursday afternoon that as part of the deal--which EA has not yet announced, "but is expected to do so soon," Fanning and Rupture co-founder Jon Baudanza will become EA employees.

For Fanning, this represents the big-time payday he's clearly been seeking for years. He never made much off of … Read more

Paramount Pictures and application developer FanRocket announced a service for Facebook users that will allow them to send movie clips to each other. The clips, which are sent as messages and last from a few seconds to several minutes, are intended to help recipients "relive the moment" in a familiar film, a studio executive told the Associated Press.

The service, called VooZoo, certainly takes message ornamentation a step or two beyond the emoticon, letting the "stars do the talking," as the FanRocket site says. I'm not sure, though, that some Facebook users will be familiar … Read more

New or relatively obscure artists might have to turn to an organization like ArtistShare or Sellaband to get listeners to fund a professional-level recording project, but established artists have an easier way: they can ask their fans. (Or have their mothers do it.)

That's what Jill Sobule has done. She's best known for her minor 1995 hit "I Kissed a Girl," but has released several albums since then. Unfortunately, she's had a lot of trouble with her labels--two have gone bankrupt, and another two have dropped her. So to fund her next recording, she's … Read more

I've written about "fan clubs" before--by and large, I think they're a scam by which very popular artists and concert promoters can charge even more money than the already ridiculous list prices. Usually, "fan clubs" make you pay a one-time fee of something like $100 for the right to buy tickets slightly earlier than the unwashed masses, then they throw in a couple of nearly worthless perks. In the case of The Police, I got the "right" to buy tickets near the top of the arena, access to online chat rooms, … Read more

Social network, Imeem, has acquired struggling music-licensing company, Snocap, the company cofounded by Shawn Fanning of Napster fame, according to a published report

TechCrunch, citing an unnamed source, reported that the deal is being finalized this week.

Snocap offers to handle copyright and music licensing for musicians and also powers embeddable download stores that artists can place on any site. From these digital-music vending machines, musicians sell their own music.

In October, Snocap CEO Rusty Rueff told CNET News.com that the company had cut its staff from 56 to 26.

We appreciate additional help cooling down the computer as much as anyone else, for obvious reasons. But the way things are going, external PC fans may be getting more complicated than the climate control system for our entire building.

Take this multi-fan controller from Zalman, for example. It looks like something out of a Doppler weather center. The box can control four fans, indicates power consumption in real time on a color LCD, and even sounds an alarm when a fan stops working, according to Gadget Grid.

But what hooked us is the animated propellers. Hours of mesmerizing fun.

Finally, the solar-powered fan hat has a mate. Let's have a round of applause for the "Solar-Powered Visor Radio."

Like its counterpart, this is a functional piece of headgear that makes use of the sun's rays to impress your friends, but for entertainment purposes as well as protection from melanoma and heat stroke. The visor has a speaker on each side, Gearfuse says, piping in tunes from a built-in AM/FM tuner.

It just goes to show that being green is no guarantee of immunity from the dreaded Date Repellant Syndrome.