jet

The New York Jets are taking their green image to another level.

More than 3,000 solar panels from manufacturer Yingli Solar have been installed at the team's Atlantic Health Training Center in Florham Park, N.J., making them green in terms of energy as well as uniform.

The solar system will provide the team's 120,000-square-foot training, teaching, and medical facility with 750,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.

The New York Jets claim it's the largest photovoltaic system currently installed at any National Football League team headquarters.

"This project is the first of many … Read more

Sports fans can easily find the live stadium experience to be paradoxically out of touch compared with the instant stats, superior commentary, and HD replays available to home viewers. DVRs, HDTVs, and smartphones can't follow you to the live game. At stadiums, it's hard to get any smartphone to work properly. Streaming radio apps black out live game broadcasts, unless you're using Sirius. As for video, unless you've got some portable TV with an HDTV antenna converter box, you're out of luck.

This is the promise that NFL FanVision offers to a seasoned fan. At first glance, the device--a dedicated ruggedized handheld with a 4.3-inch screen formerly used at Nascar events--looks like a castoff from the early '00s, some idea of a personal media player from the early age of iPods. Purportedly waterproof (though we didn't test it) and boasting a 6-hour battery life for streaming, it's a bit too big to pocket and hangs from a lanyard around one's neck. Sure, it's not nearly as elegant as an iPhone. What it does, however, bears consideration. A live TV feed of the current game (plus audio commentary), multiple viewing angles, instant multi-angle replay after every play, plus live video of other games around the league, the NFL Red Zone channel, and stats...it's compelling for a hard-core fan.

How it works Others might ask, why not just watch the real live game in front of you? That's a valid point, but not for me. I'm a New York Jets fan, and my dad has been one for 45 years. We know the players, and we like to know what's happening down to the fine details. FanVision's audio commentary and stats offer more than what's given via the minimalist PA system and the infrequently updated HD megascreens. And instant replay, the killer app for the home user, is offered up at the press of a button.

Even better, FanVision seems to be set up to be overload-proof. FanVision works via a dedicated local UHF channel that's licensed to broadcast in the stadium and the parking lot area. The device is really a higher-tech TV, one that can receive up to 10 channels of digitally compressed video and stat data and cache highlight videos for replays. Once booted up via a small power button, the device locates the nearby broadcast tower and downloads team-specific data and channel programming. After a few minutes of initialization, the device is up and running. By avoiding Wi-Fi or 3G, FanVision's broadcast concept shouldn't suffer from slowdown.

It all sounds great on paper, but we wanted to test it for ourselves.… Read more

It's not too late to enter the JetBlue All You Can Jet Giveaway! You only have until 12 p.m. PDT to tweet out this message:

Follow @the404 and RT this for a chance to win 1 of 2 #AllYouCanJet @JetBlue passes. Rules: http://bit.ly/dodRKs #AYCJ

Don't forget that you have to be at least 18 years old and a resident of the United States to enter. We'll tweet a congratulatory message at 3 p.m. EDT today to announce the winners. Good luck!

Apple's yearly iPod and iTunes event goes down tomorrow and we've got plenty of predictions (and dreams) for what Apple will show off. We'll likely see a "Retina display" and a forward-facing camera come to the iPod Touch devices, but Wilson's hoping for a revamped Apple TV that could bring iOS 4, an A4 chip, 1080p playback, 16GB of storage, and a $99 "impulse" price tag.

Check out our Crave poll, submit your own predictions, and don't forget to check back with us tomorrow for official news!

This summer, a hot-springs resort in Atami, Japan, became a vacation destination for men who just can't stand being single. For almost two months, the resort offered players of the dating sim Love Plus Plus a physical location to bring their virtual girlfriends.

Once there, the players visited romantic locations and took pictures next to black-and-white markers on the ground that acted as triggers for the corresponding augmented-reality smartphone app. In real life, it looks like the men posed by themselves, but the app inserted a picture of their virtual girlfriends to simulate companionship. As the only single dude on the show, it's apparently my job to investigate this matter in greater detail, so see you in Japan!

What's with everyone just throwing away animals? First there was the security camera clip of a British woman trashing a cat, and now LiveLinks just posted a video of a young girl chucking puppy after adorable puppy into a river! Luckily, we can rely on the vigilante justice of 4Chan's /b/ thread to come to the rescue in both cases.

The infamous message board is on the hunt to reveal the identity of said puppy-chucker, and they've already narrowed down the location of the river to a city in Croatia; they even found two potential Facebook profiles that match her description, although it could be anyone. She's around 5 feet 7 inches tall, blond, and Caucasian...nevertheless, we're confident that they'll bring the culprit to justice. Just don't hurt us!

Again, there's only one hour left to add us on Twitter (add Jeff, Wilson, and Justin while you're at it) and tweet out the bolded message up there for your chance to win one of two All You Can Jet prizes, courtesy of JetBlue! Good luck to everyone entering. We can't wait to see where you go!

Honestly, we didn't expect Jeff to show up for work this morning after his weekend excursion to Montreal for his bachelor's party, but he's back and divulging zero details about what happened abroad, because that conversation is better suited to giggling whispers in private cubicles.

For now, let's just assume that Jeff had a delightful time skipping across the city and supporting local hole-in-the-wall establishments with a handful of his closest friends.

Without our listeners (yes, you!), The 404 would be nothing but three semi-educated post-adolescents shouting into a box, so to show our appreciation we're throwing a contest with JetBlue Airlines to fly you anywhere in the U.S. and Caribbean for a week! Yep, the grand prize is a seven-day unlimited All You Can Jet pass to feed your wanderlust anywhere on JetBlue's map, and another lucky winner will receive a complimentary five-day pass for the same deal!

Two winners will be chosen at random and here's how to enter: simply  follow The 404 Podcast on Twitter, retweet the phrase "Follow @the404 and RT this for a chance to win 1 of 2 #AllYouCanJet @JetBlue passes. Rules: http://bit.ly/dodRKs #AYCJ" and you're done!

The contest is over on Tuesday, August 31, at 3 p.m. ET and winners will be announced by 5 p.m. ET, so hurry for your chance to win one of these two amazing prices, courtesy of our friends at JetBlue!

After some serious contest pimping, we're dropping two big announcements about our favorite movie "Back To the Future." As if the idea of a modern remake of the film wasn't bad enough, it turns out that no one's favorite tween pop star Justin Bieber is rumored to play Marty Mcfly. *Pause for "Noooooos"* The child star has yet to comment on the horrific gossip, so keep your fingers crossed.

Now for some good news: the wait is finally over, and BTTF fans might finally get the chance to don Marty's famous Nike "powerlaces" sneakers, thanks to a patent from Tinker Hatfield and the dudes at the Nike Innovative Kitchen.

The initial blueprint of the shoes look nearly identical to the '80s-style super high-top in the film, replete with the parallel lacing and a separate charging system below. While you're there, be sure to check out NiceKicks' brief history of Nike's BTTF-inspired shoes!

Good luck to everyone entering the Jet Blue All You Can Jet Giveaway!

Movie sequels almost universally suck, but video game sequels? More often than not, they improve on the original.

So it is with Top Gun 2 ($2.99), the unexpected but very welcome follow-up to last year's widely praised Top Gun. It's essentially the same game, but just plain better in nearly every respect.

As before, you pilot your jet from a chase-plane view, tilting the iPhone for decidedly arcade-style steering. Top Gun 2 is more like a racing game than a flight simulator, as you're effectively on a straight-line track in the sky the entire time.

But … Read more

Would you eat a burger created by The 404 Podcast? CNET social-media expert Caroline McCarthy joins us on today's episode and tell us about the burger joint of the future.

Rex Sorgatz, one of the founders of Fimoculous and former guest of The 404, consulted on 4Food, a new restaurant that adds a social-media twist to the burger by letting customers save their unique burger creations in the 4food system; a profit-sharing system even gives the creator 25 cents of in-store credit for every custom burger sold! Since Caroline knows practically everyone in Web 2.0, expect to see … Read more

Once upon a time, a weird news story was just a weird news story. Now, thanks to the Web, it's an international sensation and everyone can be a part of it: a reality-show-hungry couple claiming their kid flew away in a balloon; a strange, dead animal washing ashore; an oddball clan of Alaskans getting improbably close to the White House.

This week, it was the ridiculous story of Steven Slater, a JetBlue flight attendant who cursed out an uncooperative passenger over the intercom, activated the plane's emergency slide, and escaped with a beer in hand. Not only is … Read more

It's often been argued that Madden, EA's premier exclusive sports franchise, has had nowhere to go with its yearly editions--that users are paying for glorified "roster updates." Though it's true that many of Madden's yearly tweaks have bordered on the nearly invisible to those who weren't hard-core fans, EA Sports has taken a decidedly opposite approach to Madden 11's improvements.

Here, we look at the console version of Madden, specifically on the Xbox 360. Read here for our take on the iPad version.

Scott: "Simpler. Quicker." These are advertised on the box boldly. Clearly aware that the video game version of football has become a little like gridiron Street Fighter, with too many moves to explain without hours spent on proper training, much less the 40 seconds between plays, the emphasis in this year's Madden has clearly been placed on streamlining and mainstream appeal. Is that a smart idea, and more importantly, does it work?

Edging toward simplicity is not a trend limited to Madden. Shooters, RPGs (Fable III, in particular), and casual games have all been boiling down their interfaces, removing text and icons, and making complexity easier to grab in a shorter period of time. … Read more

Sometimes when people do crazy things, you just look at them and think: "You're crazy. You should be locked up, the key thrown away, and the meals to consist of only tofu."

However, there are times when people do crazy things and have such beautiful, persuasive explanations that you can't help but be disarmed to the point of wanting to be that crazy yourself.

Such is the case with Paul Stender, an Indianapolis man who, together with his friends at Indy Boys, Inc., decided to equip a nice yellow school bus with an engine from a … Read more