In many respects Google Hangouts is impressive—it brings together Google's disparate chat options rather neatly—but you should think twice about using it if you rely on making Google Voice calls from your computer.

Those who have updated Google Talk in their Gmail accounts—easy enough to do by selecting "Try the new Hangouts" after clicking your chat avatar—are reporting that it's now impossible to place or receive Google Voice calls from the inbox. In fact, as Verge explains, that means the only option for making a Google call from the a computer is to use the web-based calls app, which calls one of your connected phones, and can then be rerouted to the person you're trying to get in touch with. Basically, a pain in the ass.

What to do? Well, don't bother upgrading to Hangouts in Gmail if you use Google Voice to make phone calls from your computer. If you already have upgraded, though, fortunately you can revert back to the old-style chat by clicking on your avatar again.

It should be clear by now that Hangouts is far from a final, finished product, and Google has already hinted that it plans to add more of the its Voice features into Hangouts over time, along with SMS support at some point in the future. With any luck, that'll include making phone calls from your computer, too. [Verge]

These little things look exactly like flowers—and that's because they're meant to. But in real life you'd never be able to spot them, because they are in fact microscopic crystals grown on the surface of a razor blade.

The images—which take a starring role on the cover of this week's issue of Science—were produced by Wim L. Noorduin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Motherboard explains how they're created:

[He] and his colleagues dissolved barium chloride (a salt) and sodium silicate (also known as waterglass) into a beaker of water. Carbon dioxide from the air dissolved naturally into the water, fomenting a reaction to form barium carbonate crystals. In response to the crystals the pH of the solution surrounding them lowers, triggering a reaction with the dissolved waterglass, and adding a layer of silica to the growing structure. This reaction uses up acid from the solution and allows the barium carbonate crystals to continue to form. As this process takes place, the shape the crystals take can be manipulated through changes to the solution–increases in carbon dioxide levels in the water creates “broad-leafed” structures. Reversing the pH gradient at the right moment can create curved, ruffled structures.

The resulting structures are imaged using scanning electron microscopy, and then false color is added to make them look truly like flowers. That might seem a little like cheating—but we thing the results are worth it. [Science via Motherboard]

Images by Wim L. Noorduin

Imagine taking a picture, without a camera. If that sound ridiculous, it's because it is—but it's also exactly what a team of researchers from the University of Glasgow, UK, have been doing.

This picture wasn't created using two multi-pixel sensors like most 3D images—but with a technique called ghost imaging, which for the first time has been extended to work in three dimensions. Ghost imaging records images of objects by recording light that doesn't actually hit them.

It sounds weird, but a single-pixel sensor can rely on paired light sources—say, a split laser beam—to gather intensity information that is later computationally reconstructed into an image. New Scientists describes how the 3D technique works:

A projector shines hundreds of random computer-generated, black-and-white patterns on an object, while four single-pixel detectors record the amount of light reflected back. Patterns that happen to match the shape of the object reflect more light than those that don't. The computer weights each black-and-white pattern according to the intensity recorded by the detectors and overlays the results, so that a picture of the object gradually emerges. The 3D system's four detectors are placed above, below and on either side of the projector. These detectors measure slightly varying intensities of reflected light and create pictures with different shading.

The result, published in Science, turns out to be exactly the same as if an ordinary camera were placed where the projector sits and the sensors were replaced with light bulbs. The results sure look neat, but they could be useful, too—because of the indirect way in which the images are acquired, the researchers reckon it could be used for surveillance cameras of the future. [Science via New Scientist]

Over 23 years ago, Luo Gong—just five years old at the time—was on his way to kindergarten in the Sichuan region of China, when he was abducted and taken over 1,000 miles to Fujian in the southeast. But now, he's used the power of internet to find his family again.

A Fujian news service, Nhaidu, reports that Lou—being only five at the time when he was snatched—had no way of finding his way back. The only thing he remembered was that he lived in a town somewhere close to two bridges.

After years of struggling to come to terms with his situation, Lou came across a website dedicated to reuniting missing children with their families. He quickly posted his story, which was spotted by a volunteer—and soon found out that a family in Guangan city had lost a son 23 years ago. From there, he turned to Google Maps to try and identify his old neighbourhood. Eventually, he spotted the two bridges he remembered—and headed home to find his family.

He's now been reunited with his parents, 23 years after being abducted. It's currently not clear if Lou’s adoptive family will face charges over his abduction. [Nhaidu via South China Morning Post via Verge]

Yesterday saw Google face a lot of questions over Google Glass privacy: not only was it grilled by developers at I/O, but Congress also sent it a list of eight questions it wants answered. It's response? Don't sweat it; you'll know if someone is spying on you, silly.

Speaking at an I/O session, Steve Lee, Glass' product director, explained that "privacy was top of mind as we designed the product." He argued that early prototypes covered the user's eye, which they soon realised was a bad idea; the final version leaves the eye exposed, allowing others to see where they are looking. Which, according to Lee, makes privacy worries a trivial concern:

"You'll know when someone with Glass is paying attention to you. If you're looking at Glass, you're looking up... If I'm recording you, I have to stare at you — as a human being. And when someone is staring at you, you have to notice. If you walk into a restroom and someone's just looking at you — I don't know about you but I'm getting the hell out of there."

While what they say is notionally true—you do, of course, have to have your head facing in the direction of someone to record them—it's a pretty shaky privacy argument. You can look to one side and record, say, or even close your eyes. Or root it and just blink to take a picture.

So while Google might be confident that privacy isn't too much of a concern, such arguments are unlikely to convince the wider public—or Congress!—that they have covered all the bases. One thing is certain: the privacy issues surrounding Glass look set to run. And run. And run. [Verge and Ars Technica]

In a court room in Virginia, Facebook's lawyers are busy arguing that the social network's "Like" feature needs to be recognised with free-speech protection under the US Constitution.

The Big Blue is hoping it can reverse a lower court ruling, which arose from a lawsuit which suggested a Facebook “Like” isn’t First Amendment speech. Bloomberg explains the background to that case:

The case involves Danny Carter, a former Hampton jailer, who claims he was fired after he posted a picture of his boss’s opponent in the sheriff’s race on his Facebook page, along with a link to the contender’s website. The post, made almost four years ago because Carter clicked the “Like” button on the “Jim Adams for Hampton Sheriff” Facebook page, was the subject of arguments today over how to view one-click, online endorsements of a person, idea or product.

There are two opposing stances over how much protection a Facebook like deserves. Back in April 2012, District Judge Raymond Jackson ruled that “liking” something on Facebook didn’t amount to “a substantive statement” that warranted constitutional protection.

But in this new hearing, Circuit Judge Stephanie Thacker has noted that “Carter clicked the Like because he liked something... How is that any different than perhaps putting a sign in the yard saying ‘I Like Ike’?” If you were wondering, yard signs were ruled protected speech by the US Supreme Court in 1994.

Of course, the arguments far from over—and it's not clear that the judgement in the current case, Bland v. Roberts, will be the end of things. But in the meantime, it might just pay to be careful about what you choose to Like. [Bloomberg]

One year ago, a team of researchers traveled deep into the Honduran rainforest in search of Ciudad Blanca, the legendary lost city of treasures. Yesterday, they revealed images—uncovered by lasers—of structures that they believe to be the White City itself.

The legend of the White City has captured explorers' imaginations for centuries; Hernán Cortés detailed his interest in the purportedly gold-laden metropolis as far back as 1526. But the Mosquitia region where it was rumored to exist is densely packed with rainforest, and the conquistadors never penetrated deep enough to claim their prize.

Modern archaeologists have been just as stymied. Mosquitia has been the focus of a half dozen intensive explorations in the last century alone, some of which have yielded signs of some ruins and mounds. No one, though, despite their best efforts, had found anything close to a full city structure.

The team of researchers from the University of Houston, though, had something none of those expeditions did. They had lasers.

Major Laser

The National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping does just what you would think; uses highly advanced lasers to see things the human eye can't. Specifically, in this case, the team—led by a Los Angeles-based filmmaker—used a Lidar system to penetrate the thick foliage of Mosquitia and discover the treasures that lay beneath.

Lidar itself isn't particularly new. Developed in the 1960s, it was originally used to measure cloud densities, but comes in handy today for everything from mapping the Amazon rainforest to hunting down modern-day pirates. In this implementation, the system spits out laser pulses and measures how they're reflected off vegetation and the ground, to map the surface hidden beneath the forest's canopy.

By stripping away layers of reflections the researchers were able to remove detail from the canopy and reveal the ground beneath, shown on the right in the image above. Yesterday, the researchers revealed these images for the first time, at the American Geophysical Union Meeting of the Americas in Cancun.

The White Cities?

After others had spent centuries trying to unearth a single city of gold, the NCALM exploration made a surprising find: not one city, but two.

It might hard for the untrained eye to see, but the Lidar images revealed regularly spaced mounds—and a few other linear features—that possibly make up two distinct city centers. Either of which could very well be the legendary Ciudad Blanca.

We should know soon enough. The team is now closely studying the data to work out which sections contain the most promising features. Once they have, they'll deploy archaeologists to investigate the site further.

What will they find? Maybe rubble. Maybe gold. Maybe thousands of inexplicable golden orbs. The possibilities are endless when you uncover a legend right here in real life. [Nature]

Google and NASA have just announced that they're teaming up to create a laboratory focussed on developing the future of artificial intelligence—using quantum supercomputers.

The Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, basesd at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, will be home to a quantum computer from D-Wave Systems. Researchers will work to, in Google's words, "study how quantum computing might advance machine learning".

In practical terms, Google thinks that quantum computing could transform web searching and speech recognition technology, while some of the collaborating researchers will be hoping to learn how similar tricks can be used to model disease and climate It's obviously unclear what will come of the project, or how long the results will take to appear—this is cutting edge stuff, in its very early stages, after all—but it sure sounds like it could be exciting. [Google via New York Times via Verge]

Image by D-Wave

As part of the ongoing Apple e-book price fixing investigation by the Department of Justice, a new email sent from Steve Jobs to James Murdoch has come to light.

Murdoch, ultimately in control of what happens at Harper Collins, was approached by Steve Jobs to undermine Amazon’s $9.99 e-book pricing model, reports All Things D. Jobs explains in the email that he thinks Haper Collins should "throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.”

That said, the rest of the email softens the overall message: those prices are really suggested as caps, and Jobs admits that the idea might not work out. But it is clear that the plan was to organize a market which charged more than Amazon. It will, of course, be up for the courts to decide just how signifacent such evidence is. The full filing, from which this email is taken, can be found below. [All Things D]

Jobs-Murdoch-exchange

One of the smaller—but nonetheless incredibly useful—new updates from Google is a series of actions buttons in Gmail which will help you handle tasks without having to send more messages or leave your inbox.

The new system will allow you to RSVP to events, review submissions, one-click reply to registration emails and quickly jump out to sites-specific tasks like airport check-ins, all from the inbox. The buttons will magically appear in email as and when Google notices a chance for you to use them.

Google's also added interactive flight cards right into Gmail—so flight details from emails are ripped out and displayed graphically at the top of the page. Google says it'll work out if your flight is on time, display connections, and even give check-in prompts.

There's also a developer call for more one-click interactions—so you can expect to see more features like this pouring into your inbox soon. [Google via Engadget]

If you try and use Google's new Hangouts app for Android on AT&T's cellular network, don't expect to video chat—because you can't.

Slashgear reports that the video chat capability in the new Hangouts app doesn't work on AT&T's cellular networks, throwing up a message that reads "you must be on a Wi-Fi network to join a video call." It seems AT&T is alone in imposing the restriction, and it's also not an issue in the iOS Hangouts app, but it does affect all Android handsets—including a fully unlocked Nexus 4.

If this all sounds familiar, then it's because AT&T famously blocked Apple's FaceTime over cellular last year. For what it's worth, it did eventually crumble and allow the service over its 3G networks. When The Verge approached AT&T to find out what was going on with Hangouts, it gave a fairly indirect answer:

All AT&T Mobility customers can use any video chat app over cellular that is not pre-loaded on their device, but which they download from the Internet. For video chat apps that come pre-loaded on devices, we offer all OS and device makers the ability for those apps to work over cellular for our customers who are on Mobile Share, Tiered and soon Unlimited plan customers who have LTE devices. It's up to each OS and device makers to enable their systems to allow pre-loaded video chat apps to work over cellular for our customers on those plans.

In other words, if Google has asked nicely, AT&T claims, it would be working—though it's not really clear what criteria the carrier uses to approve apps. Of course, the whole thing suggests AT&T is actively detecting what type of traffic is being sent and received, even from unlocked devices, and is able to reject it. And that's perhaps even more worrisome than being unable to video chat over cellular. [SlashGear via Verge]

Watch enough Arrested Development—I mean, is there really such a thing as enough?—and you become party to a long and intricate series of recurring jokes. Now, you can feast your eyes on an interactive visualization that lets you take a closer look at where the gags crop up.

So, whether its references to building houses in Iraq or awkwardness between George Michael and Maeby, you can see where all the jokes crop up, episode by episode. Or flip it on its head and look at which themes appear in a particular episode. Put together by Beutler Ink and Red Edge, it's easy enough to navigate, so go check it out here. A warning, though: it will leave you wanting to fire up Netflix. [Recurring Developments via Flowing Data]

Google's I/O event kicks off today, and with it will come a slew of announcements about new products and services. But what are you most excited about?

A shiny new version of Android? Updated web services like Maps? A unified chat system to end them all? A Spotify-like streaming service? New hardware? Or something else unexpected and exciting?

Ahead of Google's I/O event later today, details of a bunch of new Maps features have leaked.

A sign-up page for the new features briefly went live, before being swiftly retracted. Fortunately the guys at Droid Life captured some screen shots, which reveal some of the new features.

The main thrust appears to be making Maps a more intelligent service: creating maps tailored to the kind of information you're looking for, with a "smarter search box" to highlight the "things that matter most". Presumably that could be anything from flights and public transport, to bars or... well, whatever, really.

The leaks also suggests that Earth will now be integrated into Maps without the need for a plug-in, bringing together all of Google's geographic data under one umbrella. Indeed, Google seems to claim that all those layers of information will reach "from outer space down to the streets".

Big promises—but let's wait and see what comes out of I/O. [Droid Life via Engadget]

Information can only travel so fast—but even if it can travel at the speed of light, there would be a natural delay before memes could traverse the entire universe. So where across our neighbouring star systems might some of our favorite pop culture references have ended up by now?

Fortunately, that's exactly what today's XKCD explains. So, any life in the vicinity of Luhman 16, a brown dwarf 6.6 light years from the Sun, would now be loving "I can haz?", while sentient beings floating around near Tau Ceti would have "All your base are belong to us" ringing in their ears.

As for life near Castor, one of the brightest stars in the night sky? Well, it'd only just be experiencing Yogi Bear. Sadly, if we send out an apology now, it'll take years to arrive. [XKCD]