"Hack Days" are intended to celebrate creativity as developers race to create Web apps in less than 24 hours. And past events have had performances from Beck and Girl Talk. But hiring go-go dancers isn't exactly going to attract more women coders.

It's not much worse than some of the booth babe demonstrations I've seen, though. And don't tell anyone, but I'm a fan of those gals. [Yahoo Developer Blog via Simonwillison.net]

Sorry
I wanted to acknowledge the public reaction generated by the images of female dancers at our Taiwan Open Hack Day this past weekend. Our hack events are designed to give developers an opportunity to learn about our APIs and technologies. As many folks have rightly pointed out, the "Hack Girls" aspect of our Taiwan Hack Day is not reflective of that spirit or purpose. And it's certainly not the message we want to send about our values here at Yahoo!. Hack Days are about making everyone feel welcome, including women coders and technologists.

This incident is regrettable and we apologize to anyone that we have offended. Rest assured, it won't happen again.

If and when we will ever see the M20 in the states is open for debate. After all, we are still waiting on the Linux-powered G60. The problem is that many people probably stopped caring about a Garmin GPS phone months ago. [CENS via Engadget]

The family now gets $52,600 (up from $44,000) as well as $4,385 every year as long as one of the parents are alive. The Foxconn official that leaked this information to the press spoke anonymously since he wasn't a qualified press-relations employee. [Yahoo]

It was January of 2008 when we first caught wind of Garmin's widening ambitions, and grabbed our first joyful glimpse of the navigation-centric handset, followed by an (also joyful!) hands-on. But that was in February, nearly a year after the announcement. And also, again, that was February, about six months ago. The ASUS-built Nuvifone was uniformly impressive from the start—with a custom-built Linux OS, creative location-aware applications, clean styling—but it'll have a much tougher go of it in the age of app stores, especially against the 3GS, Pre, and Hero, which have pretty impressive GPS integration in their own right.

Sadly all we're learning today is that the G60—to be followed closely by the much less exciting Windows Mobile M20—is only shipping in Taiwan for now, which we can at least take to mean the product is finally ready. US release, decidedly not happening in Q3 of last year, is still unknown, as is the price. [Garmin]

The Taiwan National Stadium makes use of 60 distributed Apogee Sound AE-7SX weather-resistant loudspeakers for primary seating area coverage, 12 Apogee Sound ALA-5WSX weather resistant Acoustic Linear Array loudspeakers provides field coverage, and 2 Apogee Sound AFI-205 and two AFI-Point5 loudspeakers provide Control Room audio monitoring. The 76 loudspeakers are powered by 52 Peavey Electronics model PV2600 and 3 model PV1500 power amplifiers. Additional signal processing equipment includes Apogee Sound loudspeaker controllers, Symetrix SymNet Digital Signal Processing equipment, an Altair 48-channel mixing desk, Tascam CD, DVD and cassette players, Peavey Electronics, microphones, and CUE Touch Panel Controllers, all wired together with 9,500 meters (5.5 miles) of Klotz Cable.

Naturally, going 100% solar with an installation like this requires a buttload of green tech:

The ultra-modern $5 billion Taiwan National Stadium, designed by renowned Japanese architect Toyo Ito, and constructed for the 2009 World Games, features a stunning 14,155 square meter roof incorporating 8,844 solar panels, which emulates the form of a flowing river, and generates 1.14 million KWh annually preventing the release of 660 tons-per-annum of atmospheric carbon dioxide. On days when the Taiwan National Stadium is not in use, the electricity generated from its roof is fed back the city's electrical grid where it will meet almost 80% of the area's energy requirements.

Indeed, if you look at the images of the roof, it seems to be completely covered in "a flowing river" of solar panels. [PrthatRocks]

The entire exterior is covered with curved fins that generate wind energy while also making it look like a huge cloud. At least it would be, if it was selected as the winning entry in the contest to design the performing arts center. Which is wasn't. But still, it's a pretty stunning design. [Plus Mood via Inhabitat]

This kind of thing isn't too uncommon, and normally a company like Dell would either honor the price (if relatively few orders were placed) or offer some kind of discount, so as not to, you know, go out of business. But the Taiwanese government is now saying Dell must honor all 140,000 orders or face prosecution for violation of fair trade laws (and no, we have no idea what fair trade has to do with this situation).

Dell has apologized and says it will compensate buyers for the mistake, but they probably mean some sort of discount instead of a loss of millions of dollars. [Channel Register via The Raw Feed]

Acer's rise to the number two spot behind Hewlett-Packard was fueled in part by netbooks and other low-cost PC models, as well as what people in the biz call "vision" as it pertains to introducing new PC features months before the competition even knew consumers wanted them. The souring economy has helped too, notes the New York Times, as consumers were naturally inclined to reward PC companies that could sell them cheaper hardware.

Perhaps the biggest piece of the explosive growth puzzle, however, is Acer's relatively recent acquisition spree. The short list read, to me, like a laundry list of PCs that friends and I had owned in the early 1990s:

Over the last two years, it has acquired brands like eMachines, Gateway and Packard Bell. It pitches eMachines as its most affordable brand, while Acer-branded products cater to the mainstream. The Gateway moniker covers more expensive, flashier computers in the United States, while the Packard Bell brand serves the same purpose in Europe.

The four-front branding assault adds a thick layer of complexity to the company's ultimate goal of establishing a consistent image around the globe. But Mr. Lanci says PC makers must follow the lead of automobile companies and the likes of Procter & Gamble with a brand for every occasion now that consumers make up such a large part of the computer business.

These factors have combined to give Acer a sure shot at dethroning the mighty Dell as the No. 2 PC maker. That fact sat strangely with us at Gizmodo today, if only because of the scant anecdotal evidence we've associated with the brand: Neither Blam or I could name one person we know who owns an Acer computer.

Obviously someone is buying all these computers (and that comment isn't meant as a sleight against Acer at all), but who? You? [NYT]

The company that purchased E Ink is little-known (to me, anyway) Taiwanese company Prime View, which already assembles the parts produced by E Ink. We think 2010 might be a little optimistic for the actual production of color e-ink, given what Amazon's Jeff Bezos had to say on the matter, but it'd be nice to be wrong in this case. [Reuters]

As far as specs are concerned, the only information available at this time is that it will feature an 8MB SSD and 512MB of RAM—a significant jump from the $400 Touch Book. It can also run Windows XP or Linux. That sounds great, but if the A-View ever becomes widely available, I would expect that a hefty price increase might come along with it. [Digitimes]

Using the iPod-esque controls and the screen, the user can display and record measurements, adjust case lengths and convert measurements between standard and metric. Definitely a smart design, but when DIYers might be able to get their hands on it is unknown. [Gearlog via Newlaunches via Coolest Gadgets]

At the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, two robots will take the lead in the famous musical. The "male" and "female" robots can both walk and are equipped with silicon faces capable of mimicking human emotion, though I guess only half the male's face needs to work so who knows what the researchers are hiding?

Pictured here we have Pica the painter, a secondary cast member of the production. He's not the most charismatic fellow, but he draws well.

All proceeds of the December 27th performance will go back into research. So if you're in Taiwan, it might be worth checking out. [The China Post]

The goal, of course, is to try and increase screen size without adding a significant amount of bulk to the phone itself. While this render looks thicker than most of the cellphones out there, the result of the dual screen design is a display size that reaches 5-inches or more. Apparently, ITRI has prototypes in hand so it will be interesting to see whether or not this concept will be more appealing than technology like pico projectors and rollable displays. [Computerwoche]

The Eee Top will definitely not please gamers, Photoshop pros or their ilk, but the simplified custom interface (made for touching!) and clean design make it a decent option for more casual, social PC users. As for pricing, the desktop is going for about $565 in Taiwan, but I'm willing to bet it'll be closer to the $400 to $500 price point when it comes to the U.S. [Engadget Chinese]

But accusations of monopoly sound a little hollow coming from a company that last made headlines for narrowly escaping a copyright trademark suit filed by Apple to cease the sale of Luxpro's Super Shuffle iPod shuffle knockoff. The suit resulted in a changed name for the player and a massive, failed countersuit by Luxpro. Even more significant here is that Luxpro's latest suit has been filed in an Arkansas court, which I'm guessing will be a little less lenient when it comes to Luxpro's obvious imitation products.

Whether they'll take Luxpro's monopoly accusations seriously remains to be seen, but the filing makes it clear that Luxpro is after money, and lots of it. [MacNN]

So the Eee was a minor global hit with the budget-conscious and started to get a bit of brand recognition out there. What next? Never the strategic thinkers, the company did what any Taiwan firm would do—flood the market with brand and line extensions...

...ASUS is no different from most in this regard. Sure, they have an Italian as their "design director", but no other outside adviser with any sort of influence. Their leadership is all very local with a local mindset, not those of the foreign-educated Korean type that Samsung brought in when it wanted to start revolutionizing its corporate culture.

And that's an important point: It took Samsung and others many years to become powerful global brands. And many of those early years were spent reforming the company from within and building a strong focus on a corporate mission and strategy. They didn't waste a lot of time on chasing feeble trends.

Granted, we've been a little confused by Asus' Eee line-up as well. We'd love to see them return to their roots and maybe stop slapping the name Eee on things that aren't cheap and netbooky. But blaming the dilution of their brand on them being Taiwanese is, considering the amount of tech-based success stories that have come out of the island, facetious.

Look at HTC, for example. The maker of the first Google Android handset has watched its revenues skyrocket at ten times the pace of the standard phone market. Or maybe Acer, who now commands second place in notebook shipments and third in PC shipments all over the world. While Taiwan's brands still aren't as globally recognized as their Korean and Japanese neighbors, the countries are all following pretty similar paths—moving from components manufacturing to high-tech, name-brand merchandise.

Besides, both Japan and South Korea got their best known brands up there without giving up "Asian corporate culture.” Samsung, despite its attempts to open up and adhere to global competition standards, is still run by a chaebol. Sony only appointed its first non-Japanese CEO two years ago. While there are tons of problems with the closed nature of Asian conglomerates, a “lack of focus” and iffy brand-building gimmicks probably aren't on that list.

And lastly, can you really call the netbook a “feeble trend?” A study in September pegged low-cost laptops as the driving force behind increased PC shipments at a time of economic sluggishness. If anything, Asus is the proud daddy of a movement that's changed the entire industry. Not all of Asus' recent moves have seemed particularly smart. But thinking their nationality has something to do with it—that's just plain dumb. [Cnet Asia]

The guy in the video keeps asking whether it's an earthquake, in case you were wondering.

Deputy Dog dug up this clip, which I then found via DVICE. It reminded me of my own visit to the Taipei 101 last year (see my photos in the gallery above). The ginormous ball, of which the Burj Dubai has nine, was installed on in-place from 41 discrete steel plates because the combined weight of 730 tons would have been too heavy to lift by crane. The people even came up with a nickname for it: the Damper Baby. Don't look at me. The best I could come up with is some combination of "stabilizer" and "testicle".

The architects were forced to install it because of high winds and the fact that the Taipei 101 is only 600 feet from a fault line. In order to get up to the observation floor where you can see the top of the ball, you have to ride in the world's fastest elevator. I actually might have my own video of my ride up somewhere, but it's possible that it was deleted shortly after the world's fastest elevator ride turned into the world's stinkiest elevator ride. I had a lot of good food.

One of the commenters on Deputy Dog wondered why there haven't been reports of people climbing over the barrier and trying to sit on it or swing it manually. To which another commenter responded, "perhaps it just says that the Chinese are able to restrain themselves from such boneheaded acts, while too many Brits just go crazy and can’t act with appropriate restraint." No, I don't think it's that, although Brits are pretty nutty. I think it's because nobody wants to be crushed to death by a 730 ton ball. [Deputy Dog via DVice]

[Flickr Credit for lead photo]