The stadium is to have a permanent 25,000 seat main structure, but for the Olympics they'll also install a 55,000 seat upper tier. When the games are over, it can be (relatively) easily taken down and, if needed, shipped to another Olympic city for the next games. In fact, London is currently talking to Chicago, a possible host of the 2016 games, about sending the stadium their way.

Chicago is making a low-impact games a big part of their bid, proposing holding events in existing structures like Soldier Field and the Bulls Arena rather than the earth-raping clusterfuck that's happened in Beijing where they had to build all sorts of crazy stuff to prepare for the influx of people.

One could imagine a movable set of stadiums, moving from city to city and being set up for each games. It's a cool idea, one that I could see grabbing hold as the real impact of having to build a megastadium every four years in a different city becomes more apparent. [Guardian via Treehugger]

St George says in the 19th century his great-grandfather, Alexander Stanhope St George, built a trans-Atlantic tunnel from London to New York which was forgotten by time. The artist discovered his great-grandfather's plans recently and using the diagrams installed parabolic mirrors at both locations that reflect what's happening 3500 miles across the pond. Now, I can't say for sure since I haven't seen the Telectroscope in person, but a picture in the gallery above suggests a more logical explanation that involves built-in webcams and broadband internet sending live video in both directions. Either way, the scope looks fantastic and I can't wait to check it out.

The Telectroscopes are on display 24/7 until June 15. New Yorkers can check out the Brits by heading to Fulton Ferry Landing in Brooklyn; Londoners will need to head to Tower Bridge if they want their fix of spying on the Yanks. [Telectroscope via Gothamist 1, 2]

• large 2.8 inch VGA display (640x480 pixel resolution)
• Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
• Quadband GSM/GPRS/Edge and UMTS/HSDPA
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0
• 3.2megapixel camera with autofocus
• extra VGA camera in the front for video telephony
• QWERTY keyboard
• Qualcomm 528 Mhz CPU
• 4 GB of internal memory plus a MicroSD slot
• FM Radio
• an accelerometer sensor (like the iPhone's)

[newsMobile— Thanks Giancarlo!]

Parking
Road signs pointing to garages were said to be misleading, and some signs inside the garages were inaccurate. Furthermore, there were complaints about problems paying for parking and exiting the structures.
Check In
On day one, check in counters were not open at 4am, meaning some ticketholders had to start lining up, causing a backlog that certainly didn't help the launch. By noon, 20 flights had been canceled because of baggage handling problems.

Baggage
Here's the heart of the issue at Terminal 5's launch. The luggage system was designed to be streamlined as a checkpoint for travelers, on the way to the plane.

BAA also enthuses about technology like the baggage drop, which hoists suitcases to an underfloor belt, enabling passengers to walk forward to departures rather than turning around. "It's on the way, not in the way," quips Ms. Kearney.

Exaggerating all of this, the belt system jammed at one point. Sometime on day one, the airlines had no choice but to only check in those without baggage.

To add insult to injury, the Terminal 5 system has also lost the luggage of a passenger who died traveling back from Hong Kong, who is a son of an ex British Airways employee. He said, "To lose the luggage of a dead person is unforgivable."

In the end, British Airways has claimed responsibility for 15,000 bags were stranded at Heathrow. There is speculation that this number may have been has high as 20,000.

Flight Control
Not much went wrong here. Thank god. Last I checked, there were weather related delays, but that's not something you can plan to avoid. But the problems with check ins, resulting from lines and baggage problems, did result in 34 flights being canceled on day one.

Security
"Twenty security lanes promise speedier passage, though domestic travelers will now be fingerprinted."
Since people couldn't get through check in and baggage handling issues, security was probably not taxed.

Testing

In truth, they'll get this stuff ironed out. Eventually.

Terminal 5, by the numbers:

Cost: £4.3bn
Construction: September 2002 to March 2008
Number of passengers annually: 30 million

Phase 1: opening 2008 Terminal 5A and B
50 aircraft stands (total)

Phase 2: opening 2010 Terminal 5C
60 aircraft stands (total)

Terminal 5A dimensions: 396m long x 176m wide x 40m high
Levels above ground: 4

Terminal 5B dimensions: 442m long x 52m wide x 19.5m high
Levels above ground: 3

Multi-storey car park: 3,800 spaces
Sofitel London Heathrow Hotel: 605 rooms (opens June)

Rail links: Heathrow Express
London Underground Piccadilly Line

Check-in self service kiosks: 96
Check-in fast bag drops: over 90
Check-in standard desks: 54

Security zones: 2 (north and south)
Security lanes: 20
Baggage reclaim belts: 11
Length of bag conveyers: 17 km
No of bags processed per hour: 12,000

Number of lifts: 192
Number of escalators: 105
Number of seats: 9,140 (excluding catering outlets)
Number of toilet blocks: 112
Number of toilets: 800
Number of baby change facilities: 32
Childrens' play areas: 3 (for toddlers to 7 year olds)
Number of retail facilities: 112 (including 25 food and drink outlets)

[CS Monitor, Forbes, NYTimes, NYTimes, BBC, Airport-Technology, BAA]

The boys in blue made a beeline for 19 businesses situated on the Blackstock Road, a crime hotspot that, coincidentally or not, is just round the corner from the mosque where extremist preacher Abu Hamza used to preach from. Premises raided included a butcher's shop, internet cafe and greengrocer's.

The raid was not just about cellphones, however—although T-Mobile claims that 40 percent of its stolen phones go on to be used in the Blackstock Road area. Some of the other charges leveled against the suspects include drug dealing, money laundering and selling fake documents.

And the reason for 600 woodentops? Well, a bit like the Kaiser Chiefs, officers predicted a riot, so they sent an entire regiment of men down there. Seventy men were arrested, 300 stolen mobiles recovered, as well as (deep breath) 120 laptops, 110 cameras, 32 iPods and 20 satnavs. Oh, and 47 forged passports and driving licenses. I heart London. [Daily Mail]

Yuri Suzuki's design uses a Post-It pad to mark out the frequencies of pirate radio stations that caught her ear while living in North London. "My radio enables you to make notes about the radio station and mark its position," she says. "The radio looks like a memo pad, but underneath is a speaker; the pencil acts as the antenna that controls tuning and volume."

Yuri feels there is a connection between graffiti artists and pirate radio stations, as both are art forms that hack into public spaces. Her Future Pirate Radio lets you tune into pirate radio via QR codes. First, the graffiti artist stencils a QR code onto the wall, incorporating it into their work. Anyone who takes a picture of the graffiti will then be able to tune into the pirate radio station that inspired the artist via the internet.

Finally, Jochem Faudet's work consists of a pair of radios whose controls are grouped together in order to make it easier to use. Actually, it's rather complicated, so here's Jochem's own explanation.
"Radio 1: All the tuning and volume functions are grouped around the speaker. The On/Off switch and volume function is situated closest to the speaker. The AM/FM switch is situated at the end of the tuning circle, by flicking the switch down it points to the FM numbers situated on the outside of the circle or by flicking the switch up it points to AM numbers on the inside of the tuning semi-circle.

"Radio 2: The tuning function and volume function are separated from each other in this concept. To adjust the volume one has to turn the wheel with the integrated speaker, by sliding the AM/FM switch to FM it hides the frequencies of the AM and vice versa."

Nope, still too complicated for me, I'm afraid. [Dezeen]

On top of an aluminum body sit 4,638 dots that can turn from silver to black in one quick flick. Beneath that lies two electronic drivers, 134 distribution boards and over 16,500 feet of cable. Controlling the flip-dots was harder than normal, however, and Pharos Architectural Controls, a company which develops electronic controllers for lighting applications, had to fiddle around with the control parameters and rewrite firmware on the drivers.

I like the flicka-flicka noise as the Cloud changes color—It reminds me of the old-skool arrivals and departures boards in airports before everything went TV monitor-tastic. Terminal 5 opens on March 27 of this year, and if you're flying into London via BA, don't forget to look up as you hit the down escalator. [YouTube and Troika]

When you think about what a cabbie has to endure—an average of 34 months spent learning the Knowledge, as it is referred to, when you take to the streets of London on a moped, with nothing but a kagoule and an A to Z for company, when you phut-phut your way round the capital's roads until you know the city like the back of your hand, and can prove it to a bunch of bolshie examiners—then it is not surprising that the human element triumphed over technology.

Says Spencer Kelly, presenter of the technology programme Click:

We chose waypoints that took us through extremely busy parts of London. We would need to go from Box Hill in Surrey to Wembley Stadium, then the Houses of Parliament and finish at Greenwich Observatory. In fact, if we had just followed the shortest route to our first waypoint - the new Wembley Stadium - we would have gone right through some of the worst traffic blackspots in the area.

The rules were simple. Andy the cabbie could choose whichever route he wanted, listen to traffic reports on the radio, and change route at any time. But so he did not get an unfair advantage, he was not allowed to use bus/taxi lanes to avoid any jams. I had to do what the sat-nav said. No exceptions.

Spencer, who was using the TomTom, and alternated between the voice of Yoda and John Cleese, won the first leg, choosing to use the M25, a mahoosive freeway that circumnavigates London. He managed to get to Wembley Stadium, in the northwest of the city, five minutes ahead of Andy. When it came to the streets of the city center, however, Andy's experience was at a clear advantage, and he was already celebrating with a cuppa beside the Greenwich Observatory by the time Spencer had arrived at the Houses of Parliament. [BBC Online]

When a user texts "toilet" (at a cost of 50 cents) the service will pinpoint their location by measuring the strength of the phone signal. It will then guide the user to one of 40 public toilets entered into the system thus far. Apparently companies like Vindigo Inc are already offering similar services in the US —and to be honest, a service like this could be useful when traveling on long car rides or drunkenly wandering the streets in a strange town. Whether its useful enough to end up on something like Google Maps is another story. If you have an iPhone, searching for Starbucks in your area might achieve the same effect. [CNN]

Adjoining the site for Shuttleworth's "pleated" structure is the 202-foot-high Monument to the Great Fire of London. When its shadow falls across the roof garden's dial, you will be able to tell the time.

The monument, currently undergoing restoration, was erected in 1677 by Sir Christopher Wren, the architect who redesigned London following the 1666 fire which destroyed most of the Medieval-era city. [Daily Mail]

Volunteers were asked to try and outrun a virtual predator who was stalking them round a maze. If he caught up with them, Bzzzzzt! they were given a shock to the hand.

If the ghostie was far away, players used the prefrontal cortex region of the brain, which deals with complex planning tasks. If the ghostie got up close and personal with Pac-Man, brain activity shifted to the periaqueductal gray, a more primitive area which governs quick-response survival mechanisms, such as fight, flight or freeze.

The research will be used to help scientists better understand anxiety disorders, such as panic attacks. [Guardian Unlimited]

When the P&O building was constructed in 1965, each floor was hung from a huge beam at the top of the tower and supported by the central core. According to Matthew White, project director, the weight has to be removed from the structure from the bottom up. "Eventually the beam will be deconstructed at roof level, leaving the core, which will be demolished from the top down."

And this is what will replace the '60s block—a 735-ft sliver of skinniness from Richard (now Lord) Rogers.

I think I prefer the current look. [Daily Mail]

Both Hamill and Anthony Daniels, aka C-3PO, gave talks to the 50,000 aficionados gathered there. And Steve Sansweet, Lucasfilm's head of fan relations and director of content management said that Star Wars would see no more big-screen action: instead, forthcoming projects would include The Clone Wars, an animated TV series; and The Force Unleashed, a video game. He did, however, add a caveat.

"George has made it very clear that he will not be making any more Star Wars movies. He will also not let anyone else make a Star Wars movie," Sansweet said, adding, "Has George ever changed his mind? Yes!" [Channel News Asia and The Sun]

At midnight Spain, a major Sony stronghold, they were giving away half-price consoles but this morning retailers were reporting that the 600€ PS3s were not exactly flying off the shelves. An informal poll in El Corte Ingles, Spain's biggest retail chain, showed that there were still enough consoles to last until at least next week. Video of le bâteau in Paris and more European indifference/desperation after the jump.

The night before the Mayor of Madrid (he's the one looking at the la-las of the lady on his left in the picture below) was up way past his bedtime to present a cute tweenager with her first console courtesy of Banesto bank. They were selling PS3 at half the price to tout for new business (to get that offer you had to tell your employer to transfer your salary to your Banesto bank account for a minimum of 25 months). T-shirts with "My mom had her paycheck paid into Banesto and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" "I've got Playstation 3" emblazoned on the front and baseball caps were also doled out.

In Berlin, german gamers were treated to a free gig, courtesy of those nice people at Sony (thankfully, no David Hasselhoff). Italy got its consoles two days before everyone else, after retailers Darty announced that their PS3s were going on sale on Wednesday morning. Ooh, those Italians can't half be rebellious when they want to. – Ad Dugdale

PS3 Launch Leave Parisians Cold [Next Generation]

Apple Sells "Refreshed" Laptop Filled With Porn To 11 Year Old Girl [Consumerist]

Image via First Goatse

Credit Card Underground Maps [Firebox]

MMS to Combat London Graffiti [MobHappy]

You may feel a little squeamish about going through this body scanner, but that's the way things are going these days. And though it may dig into the whole privacy thing, you'll find this piece of test equipment up and running at London's Paddington station. Now it's not just bags that will pass through it, but people as well, hopefully detecting any would-be terrorists in the crowd. Not everyone will have the pleasure of being scanned, because as anyone who lives in a city with public transportation knows, that would be INSANE. But passengers will be "randomly selected" to walk through the box. So, if you had plans on shaving that beard, now might be the time. It takes about 80 seconds to get through this piece of equipment and it claims to be able to detect hidden weapons and explosives, and maybe some of that extra fat you put on at Christmas. But who's really looking?

Body scanner unveiled at station [BBC News]