Briefly: Get 50% Off Telstra Pre-Paid Smartphone, Google Teases ‘Star Trek’ Computer, The Return Of Psy

Brief news items of note for Lifehacker readers including: 50% off Telstra pre-paid Huawei Ascend Y201 smartphone, Google teases ‘Star Trek’ computer, Australian post code decoder, the return of the irrepressible Psy.

  • Vodafone’s public network mapping tool, complete with outages, network comparisons and its entire 4G rollout footprint, was accidentally leaked to the public today. You can use the tool to search a specific address and toggle different layers to discover the network coverage options that are/will be available. The telco has since pulled the 4G functionality from the mapping tool, but you can still check out plenty of information for your suburb including the closest base stations, high-traffic data areas, planned outages and 3G+ footprints. Find out more here.
  • Remember Psy and his inexplicable mega-hit Gungnam Style? (If you’d managed to forget, our apologies for reminding you.) The rotund king of K-Pop has returned with a new western release entitled Gentleman. The music video, which includes a bevy of crazy korean TV show hosts and ridiculously gorgeous models, has already amassed 53 million views on YouTube. You can check out the clip and full lyrics here.
  • Some clever programmer has knocked together an Australian post code decoder in his spare time. Simply type in a post code and the decoder will zoom into the corresponding region on the Australian map. Currently, the decoder doesn’t include the names of the suburbs which limits its useability but it’s good fun nonetheless. [Via Reddit]
  • Google is actively working towards a Star Trek-inspired computing solution — and the estimated ‘stardate’ is nearly upon us. According to a recent article in The Slate, Google is attempting to transform its search engine into something that would look right at home on the Starship Enterprise. “Captain Kirk never pulled out a keyboard to ask a question. So in that way it becomes one of the design principles—we see that because the Star Trek computer actively relies on speech, if we want to do that we need to work to push the barrier of speech recognition and machine understanding.” Read the full article here.
  • Cole is currently selling the Telstra Huawei Ascend Y201 prepaid smartphone for $39.50 — $39.95 off the normal RRP. The deal also includes 2500 bonus Flybuys Points, but only if you activate the Telstra SIM card. The phone comes with a 3.5-inch screen, an 800MHz Cortex-A5 CPU and 512MB RAM running on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The deal will be available from 17 April. [Via OzBargain]

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