Rabbit

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- New technology lets students cheat more than ever.

- America's hottest late-night club is Applebee's; photographic evidence.

- Crazy message left on a broken airplane wing.

- Homosexual gamers to hold a "Gaymer" convention.

- Not having a Facebook profile now makes you "suspicious."

- Panasonic ErgotFit headphones cost $5, sound like $50.

- Bathroom break video: Everybody hurts.

It used to be about the products, man.

The release of Apple's new iPad today drew the usual long lines, gawking crowds, and media circuses to the company's major stores. In other words, a typical launch for an Apple product.

But what has steadily changed over the years is the amount of marketing and commercialization that has pervaded what had once been the realm of a few hardcore Apple fanboys. Eager iPad buyers aren't just lining up for the thrill of getting their hands on the latest Apple goodness, they have a sponsor. Others are lining up … Read more

It's not difficult to upload photos and videos to your Facebook account, but some users would like to make posting pictures on Facebook as easy as it can be. They need Upload Rabbit for Facebook, a free tool that uses a simple wizard to help users post pictures and videos to their Facebook page. It can create folders, post to your Wall, and let you choose whether to share your pictures and videos with everyone or just friends. However, its drag-and-drop interface and capability to stay logged in to your Facebook account make it a great choice for heavy … Read more

TaskRabbit, the San Francisco-based startup that lets people outsource errands, announced today it has raised $17.8 million in Series B financing.

The new round was led by LightSpeed Venture Partners and included contributions from TaskRabbit's existing partners, as well as new investors Allen & Company and The Tornante Company, an investment firm led by former Disney CEO Michael Eisner.

The new round of financing comes seven months after TaskRabbit raised $5 million in Series A financing, bringing its total financing to date at $22.8 million. Since that round in May, the company says it has seen its … Read more

Happy Chinese Lunar New Year! According to the lunisolar calendar, this year's animal zodiac celebrates the rabbit, the fourth animal in the 12-year cycle. Jeff can't get enough talk about Chinese cultural traditions, although this day of celebration is a little bittersweet for me thanks to a present I received today from Amazon.com.

Rabbit Mothers aside, Verizon subscribers and AT&T haters are celebrating today for the release of the Verizon iPhone. Early reviews are already in, and it turns out the Verizon iPhone is indeed...a phone; which is more than we can say for the AT&T version.

CNET's cell phone expert Kent German already ran anecdotal testing to compare the data and call quality of the Verizon handset, and Big Red's version definitely has the advantage in almost all of the trouble-prone test sites in San Francisco. Keep in mind that this may change depending on your location, but if you were waiting to see if Verizon would deliver on its promise for better service, it did.

Like a good Apple fanboy, Wilson already has a digital copy of News Corp.'s experiment iPad-only newspaper, The Daily. He played around with it for a little while before the show, and even though he refuses to say anything bad about it on the recorded segment, I'll throw him under the bus to tell you that he wasn't entirely happy about the loading speed of the category carousel on the front page. We're also wary of a daily newspaper that updates itself at noon every day...is this today's news tomorrow?

We can't say anything too incendiary about The Daily since we live in fear of Peter Ha, a friend of the show who's also the tech editor for the good afternoon paper. He's booked to guest host tomorrow's episode of The 404, so we'll wait to grill him on it then.

Google also gave its Android Marketplace a makeover yesterday, and although it's been criticized in the past for being too difficult to install and pay for apps, the company hopes to change that with a new interface that allows users to access the store with their Google IDs. You can search for apps on desktops or laptop computers, and the apps will automatically download and install on your Android phone.

The new Android Market will also allow in-app purchasing, so you can add levels to games and other enhancements to existing apps over Twitter to all your friends. Check it out at http://market.android.com.

Mubakalar finally approves of a few voice mails that we listen to after the break, so keep them coming! The phone number to call is 1-866-404-CNET.

Finally, if you're looking to back up your data so this doesn't happen to you, consider today's Deal of the Day, brought to you by Kodak.

It's the Western Digital 1TB Portable USB Hard Drive for $99.95 from B&H Photo and Video. The drive is portable, easy to use with any USB 2.0 port, and is made from recycled materials to decrease your digital footprint on the environment. Enjoy!

Banzai Rabbit challenges you to save the world playing as a superhero rabbit mutant. The story borrows from sci-fi classic "The Fly," as early on a rabbit, a flea, and two scientists get caught in a cloning accident that spawns the main character as well as his nemesis, an evil flea genius. Gameplay revolves around action like the old classic arcade game Frogger. Your job is to navigate Banzai Rabbit across traffic to save humans before they are infected by a deadly virus that transforms them into bugs.

Your enjoyment of this game depends largely on how much … Read more

As the World Wide Developers Conference winds to a close here in San Francisco, we hope developers who attended the many sessions and labs have been given plenty of inspiration to keep making great apps. Just like at every WWDC, Apple has announced the winners of the Apple Design Award. According to Apple, this year's Design Awards focused on "iPhone OS applications that demonstrate technical excellence, innovation, superior technology adoption, high performance, and outstanding design." They have some great picks in there, so be sure to check it out.

Notably absent from this year's offerings are … Read more

As we've seen a little bit of this week, old school Volkswagen Rabbit owners can get creative in terms of maintaining their bunny cars. In today's video we observe a Rabbit owner who describes how he runs his bunny on vegetable oil. Really? Let's see...

The narrator walks us through the two-tank setup running in waste vegetable oil along with the diesel fuel that this VW Rabbit is designed to take. The narrator does an excellent job in describing step by step how the process works and all the car parts involved in making this process happen. … Read more

So far this week we've featured a few of the ways that Volkswagen Rabbit fanatics have upgraded this cult automobile. But let's suppose that you don't have the time, money or know-how to enhance your Rabbit...thankfully VW has already done (some of the) work for you in the form of the VW Rabbit Thunder Bunny. But you're probably not going to be able to locate a Thunder Bunny on your local VW sales floor, as unfortunately Volkswagen dropped the Rabbit name once again in favor of the Golf for the most recent model year.

While … Read more