NASA has been collecting data about the Earth, the solar system, and beyond for over half a century, but it’s not always easy to see how all of this data is making our world a better place on the level of people like you and me. The Space Apps Challenge, sponsored by NASA and Innovation Endeavors (an investment firm headed by Google’s Eric Schmidt), asked international teams to submit ideas for apps offering solutions to global problems. There were four types of challenges that teams could work on, including software, open hardware, citizen science, and data visualization. Within these broad categories were specific goals: for example, creating an open-source 3D printing platform that works in space or redesigning the Voyager Golden Record for 2012. Thousands of people and organizations ultimately participated in the challenge (which gave them just one single weekend to come up with a demo or pitch), and the results are in. Before you say “ugh, I don’t care about apps,” take a look at these short videos highlighting the winners, because we’re pretty sure you’ll want to care about these.

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The 6 Space App Challenge winners that want to change the world

This is a small (but growing) series of Nintendo game characters (games for Nintendo, not all made by Nintendo) as traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints by Geekologie reader Ezra’s illustrator friend Jed Henry . This is Samus here, but there’s a Link and Mega Man after the jump. Will he eventually do a Mario? Only time will tell. Kidding, there’s no way there won’t be a Mario one. Unless Jed hates Mario and never draws one, in which case I’ll come back to this post and replace all this text with something about somebody’s peenor. Probably mine. Will it be big? Will it be small? Will it be on fire ? SPOILER: Crooked and shooting laser beams. Hit the jump for the others.

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Nintendo Game Characters As Japanese Woodblock Prints

How would you celebrate your 250th birthday? The beer makers over at Guinness decided to go large, and couldn’t possibly have been drunk when commissioning this $125,000 submarine-turned-bar with an interior that looks like a futuristic golf ball .

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Gallery: A submarine converted into a submersible bar

Why it took so long for somebody to finally combine cupcakes and sausages is beyond me, but I suspect it has something to do with a lot of people calling themselves foodies but not really being foodies. People always like to lie about themselves to sound more interesting. Me? I’m the hardest-core kind of foodie. “The kind that invents new foods?” I was gonna say the kind that eats food off the floor with zero regard for the 5-second rule, but one time I DID eat a hotdog on a hamburger bun, so I guess yours works too. These are cupcakewursts: sausage casings filled with cupcake batter and grilled. The Cupcake Project has complete instructions if you want to make your own, which, let’s not kid ourselves, you do. *poking gut* “Stop.” *pokes again* “I SAID STOP.” Not until you tehehe like the Pillsbury Doughboy. Hit the jump for several more shots, including some of the cupcakes on long john donut buns with raspberry jelly ketchup.

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Cupcakewurst: Grillable Cupcakes In Sausage Casings

Don’t tell me you didn’t see this coming from a mile away. AdAge reports that Amazon is seeking advertisers to splash their ads all over the Kindle Fire ’s welcome screen — either for the current Kindle Fire or an updated Fire tablet.

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Ad-supported Kindle Fire tablets coming in the future?

This is a LEGO Star Wars toy display with some holographic video effects. Do they have them at Toys R Us? No clue, I got banned from the nearest one for bicycle jousting in the store. Dammit, I was gonna buy something! No I wasn’t. I was gonna peg my friend with a dodgeball then run and hide in a big pile of stuffed animals. I love how at the end of the holographic battle it includes the warning, “THE ANIMATION IN THIS VIDEO IS FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES ONLY. THE MODELS DO NOT ACTUALLY POSSESS ANY OF THE ANIMATED FUNCTIONALITIES.” Because it would suck finishing your new LEGO Star Wars set if you hadn’t read that. *smashes AT-AT* WHY WEREN’T YOU SHOOTING LASERS? Hit the jump for the video.

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Lil Plastic Pews: Holographic LEGO Star Wars Toy Display

We’ve been saying for a very long time that the megapixel war is over. Today’s cameras pack more than enough pixels for most people to work with. Here’s a 112-megapixel sensor where megapixels matter.

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Huge camera sensor can photograph the sun and stars in daylight

Seen here shooting straight for the nuts, a robot designed to create and climb creases in fabric crawls up a man’s pant leg. Don’t worry though, I’m sure the robot’s inventors created the thing out of necessity and not just for no reason. Its creators say that Clothbot could be a tiny pet that climbs around your body, or even a moving phone that sits on your shoulder, leaving your hands free. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I was wrong. *slamming head on desk* Stupid stupid stupid! Hit the jump for a brief video of the climber in action.

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I’m Going Nude: Robot Climbs The Folds In Clothes

SpaceX is scheduled to launch its Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket Saturday morning, May 19 at 4:55 A.M. EDT . If all goes well, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule will be one step closer to ferrying astronauts up to orbit and opening the door for manned private spaceflight missions in the future.

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How to watch and track SpaceX’s landmark launch on Saturday

I admit, I’ve got a Pinterest obsession . Since I started aggressively ‘pinning’ finds to my boards , I’ve racked up 488 pins in a month and a healthy number of board followers. Still don’t understand what Pinterest is about? This hilarious video by Comediva explains how addictive it can get.

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Video: What Pinterest’s ‘pinning’ would look like in real life