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NewsFactor - Hewlett-Packard submitted a $2 billion offer for 3PAR on Friday morning, topping Dell's latest $1.8 billion bid for the storage technology provider. Formed in 1999 by a group of server-cluster engineers from Sun Microsystems, 3PAR offers technologies that enable enterprises to service a wide range of applications concurrently from multiple on-premise servers, virtual cloud servers, or hybrid systems that combine on-premise and off-premise elements.

This amoeba-shaped depression on Mars, called Orcus Patera, has had planetary scientists scratching their heads for decades. Despite these sharp new images from the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft, the crater's origin is a complete mystery. Orcus Patera, discovered in 1965 by the Mariner 4 spacecraft, is located near Mars' equator, between the volcanoes Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons. At 236 miles long, it would stretch from New York to Boston on Earth. Its rim rises over a mile above the surrounding plains, and its floor lies 1,300 to 1,900 feet below its surroundings.

This animation from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico plots the positions of all the known asteroids in the solar system in 1980, and adds new ones as they are discovered. The pace and patterns of asteroid discovery give a neat visual illustration of the history of solar system exploration.

As scientists get used to the idea that Earth is in a new geological age, that the Holocene — the last geological age — has been replaced by Anthropocene, they're figuring out how it got to be that way. Two years ago, ecologists Erle Ellis and Navin Ramankutty at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, released a map of the world's biological areas, traditionally known as biomes. Similar maps were found on science classroom walls across the land, but theirs was different in one very fundamental way. They updated the definition of biome to reflect how human beings used the land.

The kids may be ditching wristwatches for time-telling smartphones, but manufacturers and designers still have some tricks just barely up their long sleeves. The trick seems to be making watches more like smartphones by packing in extra functions or forgoing utility altogether for pure aesthetics or prestige.

Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes and a team of restructuring consultants reportedly met with all the major Hollywood studios last week to tell them about a plan to file bankruptcy before interest payments come due on nearly $1 billion in secured debt at the end of next month. The company might be able to survive by restructuring its debt, according to the Los Angeles Times — but even a restructuring could entail bankruptcy. Either way, the company is in big trouble.

The re-release of Avatar, which begins Friday, contains an extra nine minutes. Director James Cameron tells us what's been added. Plus, he fills us in on the planned sequels and his upcoming project with Guillermo del Toro.

A new study has shown that people feel morally cleansed when they are physically clean and as such are more inclined to judge others more harshly.

Metroid: Other M is the exact kind of game Nintendo said it wasn't making anymore.

PC Magazine - Open-source social network Diaspora is set to launch on Sept. 15, the service's creators announced in Thursday blog post. But can it do battle with Facebook?

PC World - In the wake of revelations that the US military network was compromised in 2008, and that US digital interests are under a relative constant threat of attack, the Pentagon is establishing new cyber security initiatives to protect the Internet. The Pentagon strategy--which is part digital NATO, part digital civil defense, and part Big Brother--may ruffle some feathers and raise concerns that the US Internet is becoming a military police state.

AP - Efforts by Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of the BlackBerry, to broaden the debate over data encryption were dismissed by Indian industry groups as unnecessary Friday and appeared unlikely to break a logjam over government demands for access to users' e-mails by an Aug. 31 deadline.

Appolicious - Microsoft's marketing and development costs could reach $1 billion as it pushes its new mobile platform. Also, the more you use your smartphone, the more damage you may cause to your brain.

Diaspora, a nascent open competitor to Facebook that raised $200,000 from online contributors, will launch their much-anticipated service on Sept. 15, the company said today in a blog post

The age of the automobile started 125 years ago Sunday with Gottlieb Daimler's invention of the "riding car."

Consider it a new version of death by PowerPoint. The NATO command in Afghanistan has fired a staff officer who publicly criticized its interminable briefings, its over-reliance on PowerPoint program, and what he considered its crushing bureaucracy.

Crazy adventures begin almost as soon as Jeremy Hart sets off on an around-the-world drive in a Ford Fiesta.

We're living in an age of multiple connected screens, where even our media-savvy televisions demand some occasional typing to search for a videogame, TV show or Netflix rental. Problem is, typing (more like hunting and pecking) with a game controller or remote control is a pain in the butt — and that's the world into which the TiVo Slide is being born.

Artist Theo Kamecke has taken vintage circuit boards and transformed them to adorn furniture and sculpture that can be used in homes and galleries.

SEATTLE -- Snowball the dancing parrot doesn't just bob to the beat. The YouTube sensation, who proved last year that humans aren't the only species that got rhythm, gets his groove on better with a dance partner. "It's not just an automatic response to sound," said neurobiologist Aniruddh Patel of the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. "It's concerned with bonding."