Snoop Dogg may dig some real life illicit activities like smoking weed rolling with hos, but he isn’t down with the online sort.

Snoop has teamed up with Norton to encourage the internet public to submit rap videos that are shorter than two minutes, with a theme of “Hack is Wack.” On HackisWack.com, Norton explains what they’re looking for in submissions and details the grand prize for the sickest beat:

A panel of Norton representatives along with Snoop's management will judge videos based on originality, creativity and how well they convey the anti-cybercrime message. At the end of the contest, a grand prize winner will be selected and receive two tickets with accommodations to a Snoop concert, the opportunity to meet his management or agent and a super cool Toshiba laptop. We've included some tips on the different elements of cybercrime to help guide you and ignite your creativity. And remember, keep the content clean, have fun and Hack Is Wack!

The site encourages rap hopefuls to pimp their entries on social media sites like Twitter with the hashtag #SnoopNorton. The contest is accepting submissions until September 30th, and winners will be announced October 20th. If you’ve got some dope ass flow about hacking, identity theft and malware, you can enter here.

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For almost 12 years the incredible Duke Nukem has been living in the land of vaporware as every year there were rumors of Duke Nukem Forever coming but every time the faithful were let down.

Well no more.

It was just announced at the big PAX 2010 convention by the folks at 2K Games and Gearbox Software, the company behind the great Borderlands game, that Duke Nukem Forever was alive and well with the developers at Gearbox Software.

I am just watching the live stream of the announcement on Ustream but I will update as more information becomes available.

UPDATE: audience is being encouraged to use their cellphones and take screenshots and video

UPDATE 2: we did not get to see the intro but the live stream is showing people playing the game so expect the web to be flooded soon with reports on the game.

UPDATE 3: and we have the first of the YouTube videos showing up.

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The girl shown in a widely circulated video drowning six newborn puppies in a river has been identified by police in Bosnia after a massive grassroots internet effort to find her.

Much of the effort to identify the blonde teen, who wore a bright red hoodie as she drowned the six yipping puppies, was spearheaded by /b/, who have a history of finding and identifying animal abusers. Users of 4chan were also largely responsible for locating the woman who was filmed on CCTV in Britain last month trapping a pet cat in a trash can for fifteen hours. The cat in that case survived the trauma. 4chan users have successfully stepped in to ID cat abusers prior to that as well.

The puppy drowning vigilante campaign got a boost when Transformers director Michael Bay offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the girl’s apprehension by authorities:

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Somewhere around 2018 NASA will be carrying out 5 experiments to discover more about our sun via a small car-sized spacecraft as part of a project called Solar Probe Plus. The experiments are designed to answer two key questions about our sun – why is the sun’s outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun’s visible surface and what propels the solar wind that effects Earth and our solar system?

From the press release we get

As the spacecraft approaches the sun, its revolutionary carbon-composite heat shield must withstand temperatures exceeding 2550 degrees Fahrenheit and blasts of intense radiation. The spacecraft will have an up close and personal view of the sun enabling scientists to better understand, characterize and forecast the radiation environment for future space explorers.

NASA invited researchers in 2009 to submit science proposals. Thirteen were reviewed by a panel of NASA and outside scientists. The total dollar amount for the five selected investigations is approximately $180 million for preliminary analysis, design, development and tests.

You can find out more about the project at its website: http://solarprobe.gsfc.nasa.gov/

There is also apparently a 30-second video for the project as well (via Fast Company).

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I want a Yoshi horse and GODDAMN IT I WANT ONE NOW.

[Warkitty, via That Girl's Site]

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The Toshiba StorE TV+ will be arriving at market soon and now we have some nice features to share that should keep most multimedia enthusiasts happy.

The StorE TV+ starts off with a very nice 2TB hard drive and includes an integrated 802.11 b/g/n WiFi connection alongside a 10/100 Ethernet port. Users also have a nice LCD front panel that can display TV information, even when your TV is in the off position.

There’s also plenty of support for the StoreE TV+ which can play Ogg and Flac audio files, among other standard audio options, while plenty of video support is featured including MPEG-1, 2 and 4 plus H.264. The system also offers MOV, MP4, MKV and AVI support alongside VC-1 codec abilities.

The downfall? No DivX or XviD support has been listed.

You can pick up your new media drive this September for $307, a slightly weird price, but then again missing DivX and XviD support is even more strange. [SlashGear]

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Know what I hate most about this new fad for motion gaming? It’s the adverts.

Oh Christ, the adverts.

Sickeningly happy saccharine families bouncing around their perfect white living rooms with their perfect smiles and perfect hair, grandpa and mom and daughter laughing and having the time of their awful lives playing Wii Sports Resort. Sweet merciful crap, pass the bucket. A typical example of what I’m talking about:

Microsoft and Nintendo are both guilty of serving us this patronising crap, but now Sony has single-handedly rescued motion gaming advertising with its latest spot for PlayStation Move. It’s brilliant, it’s funny, and – surprise! – it stars the AMAZING Kevin Butler. Seriously, this character can do no harm for the PlayStation brand:

[Via YouTube]

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BlogWorldExpo, the world’s largest blogging conference and expo returns to Las Vegas this October, and we’ve got a great deal for Inquisitr readers.

BlogWorldExpo runs for three days, with the conference running from October 14-16 and the Expo 15-16. Along with floor representation from all the big companies (and a pile of small ones) in the blogging space, the conference offers unrivaled access to some of the best known names in blogging.

The Inquisitr will also be attending BlogWorldExpo this year for the first time, with James Johnson and myself covering the event, so if you’re around you might run into us as well. We might even do an Inquisitr meetup while we’re in town as well!

So here’s the deal: using code BWEVIP4 you receive 20% off tickets to BlogWorldExpo. The discount is available to the first 200 people only.

To sign up to BlogWorldExpo, click here then follow the registration links. Enter the code at checkout to get your discount.

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Those who work for Google are envied thanks to the well-known perks associated with the company, including fun things like scooters in the hallways, competing five-star chefs who want you to nom their tasty sushi and... bedbugs?

Someone in Google’s marketing department may be in a bit of hot water for tweeting something that was quickly picked up by Business Insider and Gotham-centric gossip blogs, and while the tweet has been rescinded, it’s out there now:

“jeepers i am not immune from the bedbug epidemic. bedbugs have been found at work.”

Interestingly, not only has the offending tweet from user @pammy5 been deleted, it seems the entire account is gone. Although there is a massive stigma in New York surrounding bedbugs, Google isn’t the first company to have a high-profile and embarrassing brush with the hardy little critters. A Hollister store closed for a bit this summer after falling prey, seats were removed in a Times Square theater after becoming lousy, and most hated financial institution Goldman Sachs was rumored to have an infestion of blood sucking insects as well. Oh, there were reportedly bedbugs at Goldman Sachs, too.

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At yesterday’s big Apple event that was live streamed to only those people lucky enough to own a Mac, iPhone or iPad one of the big announcements was the launch of the company’s music social network called Ping (thank gawd they didn’t go with iPing). One of the features that was a high point of Ping was that you could connect to your Facebook account.

A lot of press followed talking about how this was going to change the whole social network or how Ping was going to be a dud. Then we started hearing whispers that not all may be good between Apple and Facebook as some people suddenly found the option to connect to Facebook had disappeared.

Then Kara Swisher let us all know that the option had been removed because of what Steve Jobs referred to as onerous terms

When I asked Jobs about that, he said Apple had indeed held talks with Facebook about a variety of unspecified partnerships related to Ping, but the discussions went nowhere.

The reason, according to Jobs: Facebook wanted "onerous terms that we could not agree to," related to connecting with Facebook friends on Ping.

For those who are struck by the word, the definition of onerous,according to an online dictionary: "Involving an amount of effort and difficulty that is oppressively burdensome; Involving heavy obligations."

Jobs did not elaborate on those troublesome terms and also would not say if Ping would incorporate connecting with Facebook or even using Facebook Connect–which would make it much easier to find friends to share music with.

So what was suppose to be a primary source of connecting with people within Ping was suddenly no longer available and much was made of that change. As Om Malik wrote this morning after waking up to find that the Facebook to Ping connection that he had been early enough to enable wasn’t working.

I'm hoping that the Facebook Connect problems are temporary and a glitch. Otherwise, Ping would really suck and the big losers in this game of corporate one-upmanship are the consumers, who probably — like me– just want recommendations from our friends, then buy those tunes. As a long-time customer of Apple and its iTunes store, I'm severely disappointed that I can't bring my pre-configured social graph to Ping. I hope Apple and Facebook both come to an agreement and kiss and make-up.

So what caused this tiff between the two companies?

Well according to Kara Swisher in a later post it all boiled down to Apple being Apple and Facebook saying that the new music social network was breaking Facebook’s TOS by by not signing an agreement to honor large scale network interaction limits. Instead Apple went for the public API which is free which caused Facebook to block them.

Sources said Apple went ahead with a plan to access the Facebook APIs freely, but Facebook blocked it since it violated its terms of service.

When that happened, it seems Apple pulled the plug on the connection with Facebook friends.

But in the same post Kara also said that the two companies are talking about putting in a more robust Facebook Connect feature into Ping, because really without it Ping will be a pretty empty place.

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