Belkin's Thunderbolt Express Dock Finally Gives You a Reason to Remember You Have Thunderbolt [Thunderbolt]

Oh right! That thing on my MacBook Air that Apple made such a big deal about. Thunderbolt. It's extremely quick, and I'd like to use it! But where are the Thunderbolt accessories? But Belkin's got one to multiply your ports.

The Thunderbolt Express Dock serves up three USB ports (we're unsure if it's 2.0 or 3.0), gigabit ethernet, Firewire 800, and—ta da!—another Thunderport jack. It's not the most elegant looking port expander, but ethernet on your Air could be great for those who miss it, and whoever is still a Firewire devotee. As for now it's just on display at the Intel Developer Forum, so no details on cost or release. [9to5Mac]

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Iridium's Newest Satellite Gear Gives You WiFi Across the Entire Planet [Phones]

If you think your phone's data connection is shitty at home, just imagine being in the middle of the wilderness. Or on a mountain. Or the ocean. Iridium's new super-rugged handset and access point sucks satellite signal everywhere you go.

Let's say you're in the middle of a glacier. Or, maybe more realistically, a national park. Or really anywhere on this wide planet of ours that doesn't get mobile reception. You probably want to check your email or do a little web browsing, eh? Tough shit! There's no signal, and certainly no WiFi. So make your own WiFi.

The Iridium Extreme handset is water resistant, dust proof, ruggedized against drops and shocks, and, of course, connects to Iridium's global satellite network for voice, SMS, and GPS action. So that's great if you need a rugged satellite phone. Add in the Iridium AxCess Point (x-treme spelling!), a medium size USB-connectable black box and you've got a satellite-powered WiFi hotspot, anywhere on Earth.

Now admittedly, it's slow—28 Kbps. Like, early 90s speeds. A far, far, far reach from 3G, or even EDGE. But it'd be enough for email and light, slow browsing. Or checking out some photos if you have the patience of a Zen master.

So it's slow, expensive, and not exactly compact—but for those who traverse the various jungles, crags, peaks, ravines, and seas of the world, it could save a life. Or help you blog a little! [Iridium]

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RankMyHack Gives You Achievement Points for Your Ballsiest Cyber Attacks [Hacking]

2011 has seen some of the most brazen, daring cyber attacks to date, from the Arizona police to BART quite recently. It's a bad time to be a eve a medium-sized name on the net. So let's turn this into a game, shall we?

RankMyHack.com is an old-fashioned leaderboard for the "hacking elite." After singing up, you get points by breaking through the defenses of bigger and badder companies and organizations. Player can put out bounties on sites who they perceive as evil or just plain fun to mess with. And you can also challenge other members to dueling matches with their own time limits and stakes. It's all very in-depth and immersive... and even a little scary.

Not that think this so called gamification of hacker culture is going to bring down civilization as we know it. But having explored the site a little bit, one can see that with the right tools and some guidance you can start racking up points and making a name for yourself. Remember the single French girl who hacked her way into BART a few weeks ago. She said it was easy. A site like this could potentially give people a target to aim their blossoming hacker skills at.

Or, you know. Groups could, conversely, check out the site themselves and see if they should start beefing up their security in a hurry. [Washington Post]

Image Credit: dyoma/Shutterstock

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Bowers & Wilkins Gives Its Customers a Special AirPlay Party Mode [Apps]

Airplay's pretty great, right? You can zap whatever music you like on over to your compatible device. Fun. Great. Just one problem: Only one person can be AirPlayin' at any given time. Minor quibble? Maybe, but it's a tad antisocial.

Think about it: Your friend wants to show off his knowledge of the Greenpoint IndyFolk scene by playing a song over your Wi-Fi-savvy device. No problem. Until you want to one-up him by playing something else—he's got to hand the connection over.

One more reason to wish we were rich enough to own the fabulous $600 iPod dock that is theB&W Zeppelin Air:: Starting today, it has a special app that lets multiple people jump on its AirPlay feed at the same time. It's kind of like a closed-circuit turntable.fm, allowing anyone who has the app to hop on the airwaves and play songs from their iOS device's music library. And whoever starts the session has veto power.

The app will work with any AirPlay product right now, so you can bet your fanciest shoes that Apple will ape the functionality in a future iTunes build, destroying yet another of its partners' competitive advantages.

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Awesome Full Image of Earth Gives You an Idea of How Huge Hurricane Irene Is (Updated) [Hurricane Irene]

This image of the full disk of Earth, taken this morning at 10:45AM by NASA/NOAA GOES-13 satellite, gives you an idea of what a huge mother Irene is going to be. Here's the last image, taken at 12:30pm.

Data shows its diameter is now about 510 miles. Brace yourselves, East coasters. [Flickr and Flickr—Thanks Rebecca!]

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