The Boston-based nonprofit,MassChallengebills itself as “the world’s largest startup competition”. The current accelerator started on June 27th and runs through the end of September. Final judging takes place in October and 10-20 winners will split $1 million in awards. MassChallenge is a very special kind of accelerator program, as it is both an independent non-profit and does not take equity. The competition is open to anyone in the world, with any new startup, in any industry....

This past Thursday was thePitch ’11 Event, a chance for nearly 90 startups to pitch their wares to interested investors, potential collaborators and startup enthusiasts, held at the home of the San Francisco Giants, AT&T Field. Pitch ’11 was organized byLaunchabl.es, and while some questioned why the event was held in the concourse inside a baseball stadium, it actually makes an ideal location for such gathering of folks, even if its a slightly unprecedented move....

I’ll never forget when I first laid eyes onBoston Dynamics’ BigDog. Watching him climb up forest hills reminded me of a beast made by J.R.R. Tolkien. New this week is Boston Dynamics’ next prototype, AlphaDog Proto, a four Legged Squad Support System built with funding from DARPA and the US Marine Corps. When fully developed AlphaDog will carry 400 lbs of payload on 20-mile missions in rough terrain. Our friendsat IEEE Spectrumtipped us off to the dogbot....

Meet Apep, the rare star system that could explode and kill us all An exotic stellar peacock 8,000 light years from Earth readies to erupt in an unprecedented explosion The Wolf-Rayet at the door A new study from the University of Sydney examines conditions in one of these bizarre stellar systems. “Wolf–Rayet (WR) stars embody the final stable phase of the most massive stars immediately before their evolution is terminated in a supernova explosion (Carroll & Ostlie 2006)....

While Farmville, Cityville and Mafia Wars, all popular titles from game developer Zynga, continue to dominate the charts,Bossa Studios, a London-based startup founded by four veterans with a passion for innovation in games is aiming to change the social gaming market, focusing on making its games more the like the games everyone loved growing up. Think: shooting aliens, Godzilla invasions and multi-player explosions. The company launched last week atThe Next Web Conference Startup Rally....