After Heene's wife confessed to her part in his grand hoax, we knew that punishment would come. Sadly it's in the form of a mere 20 days of jail for Mayumi Heene and 30 days for Richard Heene. Mr. Heene will also be serving an additional 60 days in a work release program and four years of probation during which he is forbidden from "profiting from the Balloon Boy hoax."

I sincerely doubt that this is the last we'll hear of Heene, but let's enjoy the four years of quiet, shall we? [TMZ]

The winning MIT went about the task in a brilliant way: They offered shares of the prize money to anyone who reported the weather balloons' locations. And what do you know? Tips about the locations came flooding in as people saw green: Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

This challenge and the way it was won goes to remind us that a combination of the old and the new, viral campaigns and simple cold hard cash, can be unbeatable. Now let's just not run off to use that oh-so-new knowledge for anything potentially evil, please. [Guardian]

Update: Well, that went fast. Took the MIT team 9 hours to find all 10 balloons. Read more here, and congrats to the winners! [Thanks Andrew.]

What's cool is how most of the balloon hunting communities I've found are working towards selfless goals. Both DARPABalloon.com and this MIT group are proposing to gather a huge number of participants, and rather than give each contributor a measly cut, the forty grand will be donated to charity.

Good luck to everyone involved. If you happen to stumble across one this weekend, consider reporting it to a group that's playing for charity. Just make sure it's not one some kid let go of first. [DARPA via WSJ via AllThingsD]

We heard that they "did it for the show," but now we have more than Falcon Heene's slip up to go on as his mother has confessed to authorities not only that she and her husband were lying as Falcon hid inside their home, but also that they've coached their kids to lie about the incident.

This is probably not gonna help shake those criminal charges. [Reuters]

Authorities haven't said what the charges will be, exactly, but here's hoping whatever they are they involve this asshat paying back every cent he owes the authorities after they chased down that now infamous—and empty—Mylar balloon over Colorado. At least.

Lest you doubt this is actually going to happen, know that police searched the Heene home early Sunday morning. They also scheduled a 1 p.m. EST press conference, where they will update us all on what's going down. "We anticipate criminal charges will be filed sometime in the near future," said Sheriff Jim Alderden in an interview with CNN this morning.

You wanted publicity, Richard? You got it.

Update: Reader John's supplied us with the 911 call from that fateful day, if that's your thing. [CNN, Gawker]

Today, we spoke with a Denver-area student who claims to have worked with Falcon's father, Richard Heene, on a reality show proposal for ABC.

The student wants to sell the information and says the National Enquirer is considering buying it for between $5,000 and $8,000.

The student claims to have been hired by Heene, and says the two worked together from March until May 2009 to prepare "business plans and proposals" to pitch to ABC.

Here's what the seller says the documents prove:

"The show surrounds scientific experiments and controversial pranks, and one of the pranks within it — actually several of the things within this document — talks about very similar information to what is being debated on the air."

The seller adds:

"When Mr. Heene is denying having any involvement with this being for a show — when the little kid, Falcon, says 'Dad, you said to go hide in the attic, we're doing this for the show' — and then he's adamantly denying that, that's when I started cracking up because I have proof that that's not true."

The student says Heene never paid for the work, which took more than 15 hours. The student emailed him/herself the proposal as a record and doesn't believe Heene knows the seller has the information.

"I never would have thought it would become valuable, but at this time, this is kind of the evidence that they're looking for," the seller says.

"I'm a student, you know, so if I can get my rent paid from this it'd be awesome."

If you want to buy the proof, let us know, and we'll put you in touch with the seller.

So he heard his parents frantically calling for him, and didn't come out of the garage—apparently because he hides whenever his parents are angry at him. What a wuss. Good thing he's only six years old or we'd sic our resident angry Spaniard on him for a bitchslap.

As an interesting little tidbit (thanks to the commenters for pointing this out), it appears BB says "But we did this for the show" at around 0:45, which is immediately followed by a fart. No lie, go watch it. I'm not really sure what he meant by "the show": It certainly plays into suspicions that this was all done as an attention-getting stunt, but the kid was also on television once before and could have been referring to that. [YouTube]

Like the really cool iSteam, MyBalloon is one of those nice iPhone toys that will let you do a silly thing for $0.99. It also uses every control element in your iPhone:

• The microphone to inflate. If you blow too much air it will explode.
• The touchscreen to control the flow of air out of the balloon, closing it or making funny balloon noises. You can also touch the balloon itself.
• The accelerator, so when you move your iPhone, the balloon bounces accordingly.

The overall effect is quite cool, resulting in a great balloon simulator—whatever that means. Unfortunately, it is not perfect because the touchscreen controls are not accurate at times. Fun for $0.99, which depending on the user's mental age may result in hours and hours of joy. Or just 30 seconds.

I belong to the first group.

Blow. Balloons.

Good graphics.

It's silly.

Controls go bonkers sometimes

Maybe too silly, even for $0.99.

[iTunes App Store]

Just 2 1/2 hours later, the balloon reached its pinnacle of 117,597 feet—holy moly, that's 22.27 miles above the earth! At that point, the helium balloon burst and its payload parachuted safely back to Earth, where there were a few recovery teams close enough to see its soft landing. Cool pix, indeed! [SABLE-3]

Product Page [balloonbazooka.com via MarvoMatic]