Jerry Yang the co-founder of Yahoo! Will step down as the chief executive of the internet giant, ending a 17-month long turbulent tenure which saw him rejecting a takeover bid from Microsoft . Yang decision to step down follows months of criticism from various quarters on a range of issues including his move to shun Microsoft 47.5 billion$ buyout offer.

However, the 40 year old Yang will return to his “former role as Yahoo! Chief”- the position for corporate strategy once the successor is appointed and will continue in the company board. Both internal and external candidates are being looked for replacing Yang.

Yahoo! Has been struggling from months to improve its financial performance, but things are gone from bad to worse this year

Just days after preliminary data gathered in the largest cellphone cancer study thoroughly depressed us, a new study claims that exposure causes red blood cells to leak hemoglobin—leading to kidney stones and heart disease.

During the study, scientists exposed samples of blood to varying degrees of microwave radiation (including levels well below those emitted by cellphones) for periods between ten to 60 hours. No matter how you cut it, the result was hemoglobin leakage (which just sounds nasty). Obviously, heart disease is the most serious condition of the two, but I can tell you from experience that you don't want any part of a kidney stone either. Those things could make even Chuck Norris cry like a little girl.

I wouldn't say that this test was the most thorough ever conducted, but I think deep down we all know that when all is said and done, the final verdict about cellphone use is going to be grim.

Britain is not only getting a whole lotta lot of F-35B STOVL fighters, but two new 60,000-ton state-of-the-art aircraft carriers. Apparently, according to Dr Lee Willett, it's all part of a new World arms race:

All the major navies in the world are now building them. The Russians have one of their big carriers, the Admiral Kuznetsov, back at sea and have stated that they plan to build 12 carrier battle groups. The Chinese and the Indians are also under way with plans, the Japanese are building a destroyer that will act as a helicopter carrier and the US are working on new-generation carriers. We’re an island nation and we have global interests so we need these four acres of moveable sovereign airfield that we can deploy wherever we want, whenever we need them.

The world is an unstable place and, post-Iraq and the global war on terror, access to other nation’s territory or airspace is more difficult.

Great. When have I heard this before? Maybe knowing that Dr Willett is head of the Maritime Studies Programme at the Royal United Services Institute, helps in understanding that maybe he has an special interest in this two mobile naval airbases.

The carriers—which will cost $5.9 billion, a lot less than the $14 billion that the US spends on their super-carriers—will host 36 F-35s and two EH-101 Merlin multi-purpose helicopters each.

Constructed in modules all across Britain, which will be later assembled in a very complicated process in a central shipyard—will be almost fully automated, requiring only a 1,500 crew. Here is the fact sheet:

• The surface of the16,000sqm flight deck is covered in a grainy,heat-resistant paint,similar to very coarse sandpaper. The entire painted surface amounts to 370 acres - slightly bigger than Hyde Park.

• Two huge lifts, each with a 70-ton capacity, are capable of transporting two aircraft from the hangar to the flight deck in 60 seconds.

• The ground-breaking twin-island layout allows more deck space for aircraft and better visibility of the flight deck. The forward island is for navigating the ship; flight control is based in the aft island.

• The ship's 29,000 sq m hangar is 150 metres in length and has 20 slots for aircraft maintenance.

• There are 11 full-time medical staff on board managing an eight-bed medical suite, operating theatre and dental surgery.

• Onboard water treatment plant produces over 500 tons of fresh water daily.

• Two Rolls-Royce MT30 gas turbines and four diesel generator sets produce 109MW.

• Cabins are spacious and cruise-liner style, with en-suite toilets and shower facilities. Officers and senior ratings have single or two-berth cabins. The maximum number of crew in a cabin is six.

• The carrier will carry more than 8,600 tons of fuel, enough for the average family car to travel to the Moon and back 12 times. This gives a range of up to 10,000 nautical miles.

• Top speed will be in excess of 25 knots, sufficient to cross from Dover to Calais in an hour.

• The two five-blade propellers are each 30ft in diameter - that's one-and-a-half times the height of a double-decker bus.

Head to the Daily Mail for more details.

Here's the new iPhone Pro, something that we don't expect at MacWorld 2009 at all. However, we do expect something like this to come at a later date. Why? Because it just makes sense.

This concept started as a Photoshop idea by Giz reader Mat Brady. He wants to get rid of his Nokia N95 but can't get himself to buy an iPhone for the same reason other people don't like the current iPhone. Lack of a physical keyboard, lack of a good camera, and not enough storage.

I've an iPhone 3G. I love it. In fact, now that I'm in Spain and I can't use the 3G—because AT&T will nail me for the data roaming at a buck per megabyte—I miss a lot of things, from Maps to Facebook. But even while I can't live without it, I can see those shortcomings. In fact, I've bitched about the camera and the storage quite a few times. Mat made his concept and called it iPhone Elite: an iPhone with 60GB of storage, true 16:9 aspect ratio, slide-out keyboard, one megapixel front camera for iChat, and a high quality camera, with good lenses, optical zoom, and video capability.

That's good, but we thought it could be a bit better. We fixed the keyboard to make it more rational and compact, losing some unneeded keys. With the space, we added what it's really needed to make the iPhone a true Nintendo DS competitor: A direction pad and two buttons. For the D-Pad, we didn't want to reinvent the wheel and just copied Nintendo's tried-and-proved design.

Is this doable now? Technologically, it is. We've seen designs by HTC that get close to this, although they don't have the software and the final polish that this class of Apple product may have. Would it be more expensive too produce than the current iPhone 3G? Of course. Would we want to pay extra for it? Definitely yes.

Sometimes, we so take for granted our shiny devices that we forget they could very well kill us. Need pictures to illustrate that macabre thought? Here are 30, brought to you by 1930s Vienna.

The 30 illustrations are from the book Elektroshutz, found in Vienna's Technisches Museum. These frightening fables are great reminders to not pee on, chew on or feed to babies electricity. Check out Bre Pettis' Flickr for the rest of the set.

Pictures are convincing, but a video, as it goes, seals the deal: Blackberry apps appear to be running on WinMo. But how? And more importantly, why?

It turns out that this is probably a leak of an official RIM project, called BlackBerry Application Suite. CrackBerry dug up a year-and-a-half-old presser from the company describing its intentions:

[RIM plans to] expand its support for Windows Mobile®-based devices with a new software application suite that will enable devices from third-party manufacturers to benefit from the popular BlackBerry® software applications and services.

Well, considering that the pictures and video resemble the aforementioned concept, and that the programs were sighted running on a phone supported by AT&T, RIM's partner in the initiative, it looks like the BlackBerry Application Suite might be coming to fruition.

If carried out correctly, the appeal could be great; the BlackBerry OS core apps offer a substantially more user-friendly experience than Windows Mobile's, which haven't managed to curry much loyalty in nearly a decade of existence and revision. The suite also appears to offer an alternative home screen, which resembles the Storm's.

The success of this will come down to two factors: price and code. If the apps are free and native, then it'd be hard to justify not leaving WinMo's humdrum messaging, browsing and organizational apps behind. If the suite is either paid, exclusively bundled with select handsets or virtualized, it might be a non-starter. This leak is as vague as it is early, so expect a good deal more information to surface before too long. Warning: comically lazy gadget video below.

Brando's latest puts its last tiny keyboard effort to (very mild) shame with wireless connectivity and full backlighting. As ridiculous as this thing is, the new features almost make it practical.

Measuring up at 170x81x15mm, the 56-key unit isn't going to do you much good for banging out more than a few short emails or blog posts, but by eliminating the tether and illuminating the keys, Brando has made what could serve as an easy-to-find, full-featured media center remote. In any case, this little stocking-stuffer will run you $47 dollars, though it won't be available until just after the holidays.

Nothing says "I'm here to cause harm to you in several ways" quite like a blowgun that doubles as a 3.5-inch knife. It's yours, along with an inevitable visit to jail, for a mere $20.

Closed this weapon is 5 inches, and the blade is stainless steel. The kit comes complete with three darts and a handy nylon pouch for ninjas on-the-go.

It was just last month that our mouths were agape at the sight of a leather-wrapped Asus Eee PC. Now, dammit, they're agape again after viewing the buttery soft Gokukawa leather keyboard.

The $548 asking price is kind of a kick in the teeth, especially since there are no labels on those smooth, silky keys. However, for $603, you get letters etched into the leather. Lucky you. Not so for the cow.

I think I'm in love: The NanoBrewMaster Home Brew Station is an infinitely configurable, 15-gallon beer-making gift from the gods. Newbie brewers like myself just set it up, forget it, and it makes beer.

Seriously, if the guys at NanoBrewMaster are to be believed, all you have to do is dump in the liveblood of any beer—hops, yeast and water—and this rig regulates the ingredients, monitors their distribution, and then produces beer. There are even a pair of built-in taps (plural, in case you want to make two 7.5 gallon batches).

Even better, the purchase price (undisclosed at this time, but probably very high) includes five types of beer.

Matt, the guy who literally jigged his way around the world, discovered the hard way that space tourists will be unable to lug Sony SR1 HD cameras into orbit because microgravity won't let them.

Poor Matt found out the hard way. After plunking down $3,500 for a ticket on a Zero G vomit comet plane ride, he tried to film his low gravity jig no less than 15 times before giving up. The brand new camera camera just would not record.

Why? Well, it had nothing to do with the cameraman and everything to do with zero gravity (actually, microgravity). Because an object in microgravity is actually falling towards the Earth, the camera's hard drive drop-protection kept kicking in, rendering the expensive device useless.

The solution was to buy another ticket and another HD camera, this time with a flash drive. The result is below at around the 3:50 mark (alternatively, you can head to YouTube and watch the entire video again in HD—it's better that way).

Now, obviously, NASA astronauts and probes have HD cameras that work just fine in orbit around the Earth and elsewhere in the solar system, so this little anecdote is meant more for the uber rich space tourists. Leave your non-flash camera rigs at home.

A scheduled Businessweek feature broke at midnight about Palm OS, and the subhed confirms that it will be shown at CES. The facts are thin, but they're below.

• "the goal is to create products that bridge the gap between Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry devices, oriented to work and e-mail, and Apple's iPhone, oriented to fun."
• The article implies that the platform would be capable of acting as an OS for not only smartphones, but gameboy like consoles and e-book readers.
• Palm believes they can grab 2% of the market; that RIM will dominate the majority of share and the iPhone will have 10%.
• The OS would also help phones make "smarter use of data about you. For example, your smartphone could send you an e-mail the day before your next business trip, advising you on the weather conditions in your destination city."

Seeing that the need for a warranty-voiding Wi-Fi module switch was the only thing keeping users from easily making convincing mini-MacBooks, MSI has semi-released OS X wireless drivers for the Wind.

After pelting MSI with unlikely requests for OS X driver support, a number of users on the MSIWind.net forums have received responses from the company, written in the "Dear Sir/Madam" parlance of a Nigerian scammer but nevertheless containing an early version of working Wi-Fi drivers for the Wind's Realtek RTL8187SE Wi-Fi module. The driver doesn't allow the card to be used like a regular Airport adapter, but according to users connects just fine through Realtek client software.

Forum-goers are floating copies on a couple of ephemeral hosting sites, so head over to the thread and give it a shot.

Technologizer has meticulously reconstructed Apple's history in the form of sweet, formerly tantalizing patent filings.

Many patents submitted under seductive names like "Microcomputer for Use With Video Display" and "Media Player" went on to become commercial successes and household names, though even in this curated, selective list, for every recognizable sketch there is a promising one that never came to fruition. What ever happened to Apple's 2003 "Media Player System" filing, which promised wireless music transmission between the iPod and other devices? Or this awesome, fully articulated iMac concept?

The gallery is a novel way to piece through Apple's greatest hits and misses of the last 31 years, many of which, like the 1992 filing for an Apple cell phone are much richer in hindsight. After piecing through the gallery though, it's hard not to get the sense that after all this time and all these patents, there still isn't an effective predictor for which ones will ever amount to anything.

Horrific yet incredibly intriguing is the only way I can describe this spiked and gelatinous alien nest that mimics the landscape around it. Fortunately, it won't hold any eggs waiting to snatch human bodies.
In reality, it's an art museum and alpine ice research station that will be completed next year in the Swiss alps. The construction of the building will use a computer numerical control drilling machine, which will manufacture 180 pieces out of 2,000 cubic meters of wood. The pieces will be assembled on site.
Head to Archdaily to read all the details and see more images.

It should be common sense to back up whenever you are sending your laptop off to be fixed, even for something small. According to Consumerist, one unlucky reader learned the hard way.

While there is no official HP policy on erasing the hard drive for minor hardware defects, its something that might want to be kept in mind when you send your laptop in. One of Consumerist's readers, Marjan, decided to send his computer in for repair when one of the keys egregiously decided to pop off. The laptop came back with a spanking new "P" but all of Marjan's data had been wiped clean.

At least back up when you are sending your computer in for repair—wouldn't you need that information anyways if you were being torn away from your precious? Look, I know we're all pretty lazy—this is America, after all—but springing for that extra hour to back up your hard drive may just be worth it. 

This car has 43% battery life remaining, but I wonder if that gauge depletes linearly or, as on my laptop, surprisingly quickly near the end.

The car charges in under 3 hours using a 240 volt [fixed...Jalop had it wrong, and I neglected to fact check at 3am, but good catch people!] power source at 50 amps. I like the yellow trim. 

Some guy got tired of kids wrapping his house in toilet paper every night. So he borrowed some mil spec night vision goggles, filled a super soaker with pee and drenched them when they showed.

The story said the watergun was filled with Fox urine, which according to commenters in the know, can be bought at stores as a rodent repellent. Good to know! Although the man is facing charges, I hope he gets off. Although in some cultures, if convicted, he'd almost certainly be facing a firing squad of urine filled water guns. Think about that for a second. 

Analysts Medialets found the top Android apps based on downloads, rating, and number of comments. It's a slightly limited mix of games, social networking, and audio tools, but Android's still just a baby.

The number one app is Namco's immortal Pac-Man with more than a quarter-million downloads, no surprise since it's an exceptionally well made version of the classic. Brain Genius Deluxe and Bonsai Blast round out the games section. The Weather Channel app and ShopSavvy's barcode scanner represent for functional tools, and the rest is filled by music discovery apps and ringtone editors. The big surprise for me? MySpace Mobile clocks in at number 2, helped by its integration Shazam, number 7 on the list. But maybe that's because thinking about MySpace reminds me that Dane Cook is still out there, wreaking havoc on all that is good and funny.

Engadget got themselves a United Keys OLED Keypad, which may remind you of a crappier Optimus Aux keypad. And, well, they found it to be a crappier Optimus Aux keypad.

On the upside, the keypad by itself, without its cheap attached keyboard, will only run you $200. Compare that to Optimus' baby, which goes for a rent-replacing sum of $650. It's plug-and-play with Windows, and the software is easy to use and pretty full-featured. It's more than just nine shortcut keys, including context-specific shortcuts and "'nested' command trees."

Unfortunately, those little 64x64 monochrome keys look exactly as awful as you'd expect, and the keys themselves are apparently pretty mushy and unappealing. The worst crime? It's Windows-only for now, though United Keys does promise that Mac and Linux support will roll out soon. My opinion? If you really want an Optimus Aux, go buy one. And if you can't afford one, maybe this isn't the gadget to cheap out on.

American Toy and Invention Co. is selling a kit that'll let you build, implode, and rebuild a multi-story structure that looks strangely enough like the 5th Avenue Apple flagship retail space. I'm sure it teaches about the physics of demolition, but hey! Stuff's blowing up! Stuff with iPods inside!

The inventor, going by the name Advanced Engineering, is selling 4- and 8-story kits that both support rebuild and re-implosion. He says he's run out of funding to ship the product, but before his site went down due probably to intense interest, he was still selling a few kits for around $60. We hope he gets enough cash money to keep making these toys, it's a great idea and we're sure he'd have a market for it.

Intel released survey results that attempt to measure the place of Internet access in both men's and women's lists of priorities, and found that it's more important than any other nonessential purchase.

This is one of those reasonably meaningless polls that ends up saying what we already knew: people like their Internet access. In this survey of 2,119 adults polled by Harris Interactive, Internet access polled higher than any other source of discretionary spending (things like eating out, shopping, and television subscriptions).

But the real buzz around the survey comes from these numbers: 46% of women and 30% of men would rather give up sex for two weeks than give up Internet access over the same period. Frankly, that's lower than I'd expect: I'm not sure what kind of Casanovas they polled, but I go without sex for two weeks sometimes totally by accident. On the other hand, every time I've gone two weeks without the Internet, it was as some kind of forced vacation and I really felt the pain.

Intel also said that 65% of those polled "cannot live without Internet access," which is kind of an extreme reaction. Does that mean that they'd kill themselves rather than live without it? Or just wish they'd never been born?

What do you guys think? Two weeks without sex, or two weeks without your precious Internet? 

Designer Da Feng created the Gym Car mockup that includes a near-complete home gym as well as a Batmobile-esque carbon fiber exterior. No word on the safety of doing bench-presses while driving.

The car's interior features a step machine, rowing machine, bench press, pull-up simulator and weights, and the energy outputted during a workout would go to powering its batteries. The exterior design of the car is supposedly inspired by World War II fighter planes, which sounds a lot more professional than "inspired by Batman."

Given the many laws prohibiting something as easy as talking on a phone while driving, we've got to believe the transit authority would frown upon any combination of exercise and driving, but I could see the benefit of a little stationary bike or something to help pass the time during a long commute.