A view of the city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates was recorded from 4AM to 4AM over the weekend. The time-lapse shows shadows moving with the sun, one tiny little cloud that wanders over, the fountain show seen as flashes of light, and strangely ominous music. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Well, rut-ro, Shaggy–seems like we’ve flown too close to the sun on this one–Dubai’s ambitious World of Islands that were built as part of a luxurious resort are now eroding back into the sea from which they came. Millions of tons of sand were pumped in to form the islands to mimic the world, and as you can see no longer resemble the world so much as… suggesting it. Property assessments are grim. Oh well. I suppose the residents could always buy *real* islands somewhere. View the slideshow over at Inhabitat.

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Natalie Mead told Gulf News: “Passengers stranded in the hotel were getting excited for the first time in days when they heard about our wedding; some even helped me with my hair and make-up. It was also great to see everyone in the UK on our wedding day, even if it was via webcam.

“It has been an amazing day and we are just so grateful for everything that everyone has done for us. It is definitely a story to tell the grandchildren. There was no way we were going to let this volcano stop us [from] getting married.”

Caroline Black, a celebrant who conducted the online ceremony from London, said: “It was just like any other wedding except the bride and groom weren’t there.”

The airport donated flowers and a wedding cake for the celebration. Link -via Bits and Pieces

Ayman Najafi, 24, and Charlotte Adams, 25, were sentenced to a month in prison with subsequent deportation and fined about £200 for drinking alcohol.

The pair were arrested in November after a local woman accused them of breaking the country’s decency laws by kissing on the mouth in a restaurant.

The initial complaint against them was made by a 38-year-old woman who said she was offended by their behaviour at the Jumeirah Beach Residence, where she was dining with her daughter.

The pair’s defence lawyers said the woman – who did not appear in court – had not seen the kiss herself, but had been told by her two-year-old child that the girl had seen them kissing.

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Photographer Cédric Delsaux (previously at Neatorama) began the project Dark Lens with the intent of photographing suburban decay in Dubai, but the addition of Star Wars characters made it something special. Link to pictures. Link to article (en Français). -via Dark Roasted Blend

Sky from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Best to view this HD time lapse in full screen.  Filmmaker Philip Bloom shot this in Dubai over five days and nights, capturing the luminous grandeur of the city; music is “Xibalba” from The Fountain by Clint Mansell.

Philip’s blog is a great resource for HD-DSLR aficionados.

Neatorama readers have followed the construction of the Burj Dubai. At times it seemed as if it would never be completed. Now the new tallest building in the world, renamed the Burj Khalifa, is finished. See photographs of the grand opening and find links to stories about the event.

Fireworks light up Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest buildin during the official opening ceremony in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Monday, Jan. 4, 2010. In a surprise move, Dubai renamed the gleaming glass-and-metal tower in a nod to the leader of neighboring Abu Dhabi – the oil-rich sheikdom which came to its rescue during the financial meltdown.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by digimouse.

Now that Dubai’s economic bubble has popped and the emirate’s mega-projects are imploding under their own debt crunch, we can weep over all the fantastically outlandish buildings that will never be built. Like the rotating tower by architect David Fisher above, a refrigerated beach, a vertical seawater farm, and so on.

Inhabitat and Treehugger have the post: Link

The Airbus A380 is the ultimate in airline luxury, and here are lots of photos to prove it!

The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine airliner manufactured by the European corporation Airbus, a subsidiary of EADS. The largest passenger airliner in the world, the A380 made its maiden flight on 27 April 2005 from Toulouse, France, and made its first commercial flight on 25 October 2007 from Singapore to Sydney with Singapore Airlines. The aircraft was known as the Airbus A3XX during much of its development phase, but the nickname Superjumbo has since become associated with it.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by rappin.

This amateur video shows us how small everything is compared to the mighty Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world.

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Christophe.

[YouTube - Link]

Reminiscent of the amazing musically coordinated fountains of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas the Burj Dubai fountains named “Dubai Fountains” certainly are impressive. This $217 million project was built by the same California based company WET Design (whose website I highly suggest checking out as it is beautiful!) that created the Bellagio Hotel’s fountains. This record setting fountain uses 6,600 lights with 50 coloured projectors and is able to fire the water into the air at as astonishing 150m or 490ft! The music played in this video is Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman’s “Time to Say Goodbye”.

The first video I found through Dark Roasted Blend (check out the rest of the site!)

This second video is by far my favourite and allows you to see a much closer view of the fountains at work. The song used in the performance is called “Baba Yetu”, created by Christopher Tin which I’m sure some of you Civ 4 fans will most certainly recognize as the opening track to the game!

[YouTube - Link]

The beach will have a network of pipes beneath the sand containing a coolant that will absorb heat from the surface.

The swimming pool will be refrigerated and there are also proposals to install giant blowers to waft a gentle breeze over the beach.

Versace’s plans have shocked environmentalists. Rachel Noble, the campaigns officer at Tourism Concern, which promotes sustainable tourism, said that the carbon generated by such projects would contribute to climate change, whose worst effects would be felt by the poor.

“Dubai is like a bubble world where the things that are worrying the rest of the world, like climate change, are simply ignored so that people can continue their destructive lifestyles,” she said.

The hotel should open in late 2009 or early 2010. Link -Thanks, Chris Tackett!

The Burj Dubai tower, the tallest skyscraper in the world, is about to be completed. To celebrate it, David Hobcote has taken a series of amazing high resolution pictures from the air which give an exact impression of the breathtaking, massive scale of this building.

Construction is expected to be completed in August, 2009. See more pictures at Gizmodo. Link -Thanks, kid_icarus!

The Cloud is Nadim Karam’s design concept for a resort city elevated 300 metres in the air and supported on slanting legs resembling rain.

Where it’s supposed to be located? Yes, you guessed it: in Dubai.

Link – via Pusha

1 Sydney Opera House
2 Eiffel Tower
3 Burj Al Arab Hotel, Dubai
4 Statue of Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro
5 Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
6 Empire State Building, New York City
7 Channel Tunnel

Link -via Arbroath

Update: This was a poll conducted by Teletext Holidays, and is not related to the New 7 Wonders project.