Steve P., over at Core77, catches the above headline from a San Jose Mercury news story.
Testimony continued today in the trial of David Lin, who allegedly mailed a bomb [on behalf of Anthony Chang] in a toy robot dog that resulted in the death of 18-year-old Patrick Hsu in 2001...When Patrick came home for a weekend visit from the University of California-Santa Barbara, he placed batteries in the toy, detonating the bombing device.
Anthony's woman had left him for Patrick. Geek love, gone tragic. –Brian Lam
If you thought the Vista Ads were boring, check out this Windows 386 ad from the early 90s. I'm not sure what kind of designer drugs these people were on when they made this, but we're pretty sure it's currently used for farm animals and prison inmates sterile. – Jason Chen
We love our cellphones around here. But we're not asses about it. Take this woman flying from St. Louis to Fort Myers.
The woman was on an American Airlines flight from St. Louis to Fort Myers and was ignoring instructions not to speak on her cellular phone, Urrutia said. "She was disregarding instructions and being very disruptive," Urretia said.
But once she was told police would be escorting her off the plane, the woman's tone changes, Urretia said.
Lesson? Don't get so hopped up on sleeping pills and booze before you get on a plane. – Jason Chen
If you'd rather be shaken and not stirred out of bed in the morning, the Danger Bomb Clock is for you. First it makes a loathsome noise that's supposed to mimic an explosion, and then you must unravel some sort of secret code (and just how that's done is not quite clear in its description) by pushing its buttons in a certain order just to make the thing stop honking at you. Check out this elegant prose:
You'll be shaked out of bed with explosion sound. To stop the bomb, you have to pull out just one code from 3. The safty code is set randomly every morning. So thrilling!
Now available for pre-order, it ships March 16 for $31.– Charlie White
Last year, Sanyo released the innovative, Xacti HD1, a pocket-sized high def camcorder. Just over a year on and we have some news on the HD2.
It still records in 1280 x 720 resolution, but the still camera has been bumped from 5.1 megapixels (MP) to 7.1MP. It records video at 30fps to SD Cards and supports the new 8GB SDHC cards. The last one could store 21 minutes of HD video on a 1GB card so, in theory, you’re looking at 2hrs 48mins with an 8GB card.
It comes with a cool new docking station that boasts a HDMI slot for directly transferring content to a HDTV, while also charging the battery, which is good for an hour. That doesn’t seem that long to me – is that average?
Start-up time is a quick 1.7ms and there’s a 10x optical zoom. It measures 80(W)×119(H)×36(D)mm and weighs in at around 235g with battery. No details on shipping dates or price yet.-Martin Lynch
We’ve all seen it happen. Dork with iPod./phone/blackberry steps out in front of traffic and almost dies. In the waste-of-money road safety TV ads they do die, and in real-life, death by gadget is becoming a more common occurrence.
One New York senator has a solution: fine anyone caught using a mobile gadget while crossing a street £50 on the spot. Speaking to Reuters, New York State Senator, Carl Kruger said:
“Government has an obligation to protect its citizenry. This electronic gadgetry is reaching the point where it's becoming not only endemic but it's creating an atmosphere where we have a major public safety crisis at hand.”
I’m not sure it will be enough to snap dozy commuters out of their internal world but it’s bound to make a ton of cash for the city council . Someone go wake up Ken Livingston and tell him we have another cunning plan.-Martin Lynch
Woo-hoo! Finally, video games are good for something after all.
After being shown to be bad for pretty much everything else (aggression, social skills etc.) researchers at the University of Rochester have found that playing action video games, like Unreal Tournament, can improve your vision.
In experiments, people that played action games for a few hours each day over a month saw a 20% improvement in their ability to recognise letters in a clutter – a visual test similar to reading the bottom line on the eye chart at the opticians. Another unlucky control group got to play Tetris.
“Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information,” says Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. “After just 30 hours, players showed a substantial increase in the spatial resolution of their vision, meaning they could see figures like those on an eye chart more clearly, even when other symbols crowded in.”
So, next time someone blathers on about the evils of gaming you have some bona fide research to debunk them, partially. Then, thanks to your heightened aggression levels from gaming, you can proceed to beating the crap out of them.-Martin Lynch
Steve P., over at Core77, catches the above headline from a San Jose Mercury news story.
We love our cellphones around here. But we're not asses about it. Take this woman flying from St. Louis to Fort Myers.
Last year, Sanyo released the innovative, 
We’ve all seen it happen. Dork with iPod./phone/blackberry steps out in front of traffic and almost dies. In the waste-of-money road safety TV ads they do die, and in real-life, death by gadget is becoming a more common occurrence. 
Woo-hoo! Finally, video games are good for something after all. 
Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
Contributor | Tamlin Magee
