A stunning time-lapse of Iceland's nightless summer

The Top 50 'Pictures of the Day' for 2011 Every day at 5pm the Sifter posts the Picture of the Day. Below you will find a collection of the Sifter’s Top 50 from 2011. It’s hard to imagine the year is almost over, time seems to fly faster each successive year so it’s fun to take a moment and look back at the year that was. Click any of the pictures below to be taken to the individual post to learn more about the photographer and picture taken. Global Video System Parallels is a worldwide leader in virtualization and automation software that optimizes computing for consumers, businesses, and Cloud services providers across all major hardware, operating systems, and virtualization platforms. For the Cloud, Parallels automation and virtualization software enables cloud services providers to rapidly and profitably deliver the widest range of cloud services that small businesses want and need. Our software includes key building blocks of cloud service delivery - self service control panels, billing, cloud service provisioning and virtualization. We enable the delivery of all types of services that small businesses need - shared web hosting and web applications, messaging and collaboration services, virtualized infrastructure services and thousands of other applications. Our Automation products allow businesses to optimize their systems to maximize profit. This website was created using our Parallels Panel product.

BACK TO THE FUTURE : Irina Werning I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today… Two years ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future.. Now its time for KOREA, TAIWAN AND TOKYO.

The Top 25 Photo Galleries of 2011 Dec 29, 2011 Below you will find a collection of the Sifter’s top 25 galleries posted in 2011. Often the most popular posts on the site, the galleries not only take our readers around the world, but back in time as well. Some galleries even show us the farthest reaching points of the Cosmos and the thriving microscopic world invisible to the human eye. Click any image or title to be taken to the original post, enjoy!

Fake video windows - best thing I've seen today // Current To Our Faithful Current.com Users: Current's run has ended after eight exciting years on air and online. The Current TV staff has appreciated your interest, support, participation and unflagging loyalty over the years. Ben Colclough: Kilimanjaro: 5 Things They Don't Tell You Last year, an estimated 25,000 people set out to climb Mt Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain. In so doing, they ate approximately 110,000 snickers bars, drank 70,000 litres of tea, expelled 75 cubic metres of intestinal gas and used 962 kilometres of toilet paper. More significant for the rest of us, they also produced some 25,000 personal accounts of the climb, tales of altitude, aptitude and attitude that have been written up, blogged about or televised more times than Britney Spears' waist line.

National Geographic Photo Contest 2011 - In Focus National Geographic is currently holding its annual photo contest, with the deadline for submissions coming up on November 30. For the past nine weeks, the society has been gathering and presenting galleries of submissions, encouraging readers to vote for them as well. National Geographic was kind enough to let me choose among its entries from 2011 for display here on In Focus. Gathered below are 45 images from the three categories of People, Places, and Nature, with captions written by the individual photographers. [45 photos] Use j/k keys or ←/→ to navigate Choose:

Crazy Lion Man Categories October 23, 2010 3:06pm By Rowdy Joe Videos Crazy Lion Man Soon to be crazy lion poop! 15 Cool And Creative Umbrellas Umbrella is one of those things you probably wouldn’t like to use very often. However, the tough reality is that it’s sometimes inevitable when you have to leave your cave (office or home). In order to make this experience less unpleasant, we’ve picked 15 cool and creative umbrellas to fight the evil rain. Although umbrella might seem like a common, everyday item that has been there for ages, the very first working and folding umbrella was made only in 1969 by Bradford E. Phillips. After 40 years, there is roughly thirty three million umbrellas sold each year in the US alone, worth $348 million. Awesome pictures from around the world Someone sent me these in a chain email, it was horribly formatted. I also do not know who made the comments, or how accurate they are. I take zero credit in the pictures, I just wanted to compile them nicely for all to see. The world’s highest chained carousel, located in Vienna, the height of 117 meters. Thor’s Well – “the gates of the dungeon.” CapePerpetua, Oregon.

This Homemade Portal Video Is Pretty Darn Amazing If you’ve enjoyed the game Portal in the past, you understand the allure of being able to open wormholes in space. Filmmaker Jason Craft decided he wanted to recreate that experience with his goofy friends so he created a CG movie that is on par with anything you can see at the theatre these days. His short, Portal: Terminal Velocity, shows us what would happen if a bunch of dudes had a gun that could instantly transport you through space and time. The video is pretty amazing and even more amazing is their “working” portal gun. Sadly, it too isn’t real:

Creative Architecture Ideas Today’s collection is going to be a mix of amazing exterior and interior architecture designs. For most of us villas featured are out of reach .) but at least we may admire the creativity and luxury. And of course, we always may get inspired, right?! .) Incredible Space Pics from ISS by NASA astronaut Wheelock Go Discovery! It was October 23, 2007 at 11:40am EST when I had my first ride to space on Discovery. She’s beautiful… just sad that this will be her last voyage.