What Facebook and Skype Integration Would Mean For You

Facebook and Skype integration! That's the rumor. But beyond the intermingling of two major tech companies, the important question is: how's this going to affect you?

Video Chat With Facebook Friends From Skype

Just to be clear: this wouldn't mean that you'd be able to Skype video chat through Facebook. Not yet, anyway. Instead, when this supposedly goes live in a few weeks with Skype 5.0, you'd be able to connect with your Facebook friends list through Skype. Still pretty handy! And in-browser video chat is apparently seen as a "logical progression" to the partnership, meaning it could well happen down the line.

And Text Them, Too!

According to the WSJ, the deal would also include SMS, which definitely wouldn't get annoying after a while.

Facebook Phone's Own FaceTime?

Facebook denies that they've got a phone in the works—much less two—but that's a product that would definitely benefit from deep Skype integration. Skype's currently only available on Verizon phone.

A Google Voice Alternative

Specifically, an alternative to making calls in Gmail. That's not to say that a Facebook/Skype VoIP solution would be better, necessarily. But if you for some reason want to break free of big G, or don't have a Google account to begin with, you'd have a viable alternative. Choice is good!

You'll Actually Use Skype

As wonderful as Skype is, less than a quarter of its 560 million members are active. When they add what's arguably your most comprehensive Rolodex—your list of Facebook friends—you might be tempted to actually use other parts of the service once in a while. And eventually maybe even cut that cellphone voice plan loose.

Insulate Your Brain and Body in This Sealed Off Mini-Room

If you're unfortunate enough to live in a region cursed with bitter winters (I know I am!), you know the pain of keeping your pad heated. One solution? Build an insulated room within a room to stay focused and toasty.

German architectural firm Davidson Rafailidis created this prototype, constructed out of plastic and wood, that hooks up directly to a window for both light and warmth. Probably not a great space for the claustrophobes out there, but might make for an excellent place to get some work done without having to put on a sweater. Or hide some bodies. Y'know, whatever's your thing.

Rent the Balancing Barn at Your Own Peril

Architects took on gravity and won, and now daredevils can pay almost $300 a night to stay in the "balancing barn," where 50 per cent of the building dangles precariously off a slope.

Thankfully it doesn't appear that a swing was built-in under the barn as the concept pictures suggested last year. Everything else about the Suffolk, England-located barn however matches up perfectly—albeit, scarily. The website describes the house as being "clad in elegant silver tiles," however I'd watch out on a sunny day if I were you—they look capable of reflecting some mean sunlight.

Construction has just been completed, and already the website is taking online bookings from next month. Stays of four nights cost £725 ($1,150), which works out to a little below $300 a night for the eight person-sleeper. I'd suggest packing a first aid kit just in case.

Fanboys, Time to Get Your Very Own 8-Bit Steve Jobs Bust

Come on. You know you want it. I dare you. It's only a fraction of the price of your spankylala Macbook Pro. And unlike your iPhone 4, you can hold it and caress it in any way you want.

Not only is it Jobs' bella figura, but it will be digitally created for you, on demand, using Shapeways' 3D manufacturing machines. I tell you, $128 for spending the rest of your life watched by his Steveness? That's nothing.

Video Box Battle Royale: Who Should Be Your TV's New Best Friend?

With new offerings from Roku and Apple, and the grand impending entrance of Google TV, the crowd of little plastic boxes that all want to stream your video is getting packed. And confusing. But we're here to help you compare.

While you know an MP3 player will play MP3s, and a DVD player will do its thing, the new breed of boxes don't wear their functionality on their sleeve. Set-top boxes, media boxes—we know they're boxes, yes, but what's inside? What are these boxes going to do for you? Some want to make renting movies a cinch, some want to help you stream the movies you already have—and some seem like they want to try to do it all. So take a look below, and see what matters most to you.

It might feel like comparing apples to oranges to turkey legs, but every device listed on the plate wants to help replace your TV.

Magnets Could Turn You From a Rightie to a Leftie

I don't know why you'd want to be a leftie, but at least we know the choice is out there if now. The magic causing the change of dexterity is called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, and is specifically intended for right-handers.

When magnets are applied to a specific part of the brain (the posterior parietal cortex region, which is involved with planning physical movements), researchers at the University of California Berkeley found that their 33 right-handed guinea pig volunteers started favoring their left hands for smaller tasks instead.

While people weren't beginning to write with their left hands, they did find that they started picking stuff up with their other hand, or pressing an elevator button.

The potential here is obviously vast, and I'm not just talking about which hand we use. Imagine if magnets could make us favor healthy food over fattier food? Earlier mornings instead of long lie-ins? I can almost see horror movies being planned using unauthorized TMS technology, that's how big this could get.

Still, it's only early days for the team in California, but I doubt I'm the only one who's on the edge of their seats over this one.

Ultimate Tablet Showdown: iPad vs. PlayBook vs. Galaxy Tab vs. Slate

The iPad's finally got some competition; in the past few weeks, the HP Slate made a brief appearance, the Samsung Galaxy Tab debuted, and just BlackBerry unveiled its business-minded PlayBook today. Here's how they all measure up:

It should be noted that there are still some things we don't know about the PlayBook, and the HP Slate specs are taken from a leaked internal document that hasn't yet been officially confirmed.

Still, the battlefield's a lot more clearly defined than it was when we first compared tablets—both real and rumored—back in January. And as its rivals catch up, the iPad's looking increasingly outgunned.

That's just on the hardware side, though. Apple's still got three major advantages that opponents haven't made up much space on: iOS, the App Store, and a huge head start. It's going to take more than a pair of HD cameras to overcome that.

Deceptively Packed Dalcans Lollypop Cabinet Boasts Hidden AV Goodies

The simple lines of the Dalcans high-end "Lollypop" unit hide a host of features one would not readily associate with an AV cabinet. For instance, it smells.

Yes, smells. As in fragrance. Inside the cabinet, you see, are four diffuser capsules. If you're wondering why such soothing scents would need to be emanating from your television set, you obviously did not see Steve Buscemi's sex scene in last week's Boardwalk Empire pilot on HBO.

With a starting price of $38,629 it's certainly not Glade scented candles we're talking about, of course, but in any event here's a laundry list of the other items Dalcans has crammed into their minimalist cabinet (in case you're looking):


42" HD LED TV with mirror screen
Crestron amplifier
iPod dock
Odyssée acoustic speakers (2×200W)
Four HDMI ports
mini jack stereo + VGA
USB
network connectivity (Ethernet and wifi)

The price above is for the basic "classic" version, if one could seriously consider the price of a low-level luxury car "basic." An "automated" version sells for $51,117 and may very well control space and time for all the explanation they give about what the hell "automated" means.

Segway Company Owner Dies After Driving Segway Off Cliff

Just like the countless innovators, explorers and fine people killed in a Frankensteinian way by their own inventions, the current owner of Segway—not Dean Kamen—died yesterday after he rode off a cliff and into a river in England.

Jimi Heselden, aged 62, was found at 11.40am yesterday by the River Wharfe in North Yorkshire, with his X2 Adventure (pictured) by his side. Police believe that it was just a freak accident, with nothing suspicious about the man worth $262m falling to his death.

It's particularly poignant as his company had only just purchased the Segway company in December 2009. He sounded like a really nice guy according to reports, a chap who left school at 15 to work in the mines, but was fortunate enough to develop some interesting-sounding defense systems which made him millions.

He was one of those rare philanthropists who had given away millions to charity but didn't like to talk about it—at least £23m ($36m) in the last few years alone, it's thought.

Titanium Foam Builds Wolverine Bones

Eat your heart out, Wolverine. The X-Men superhero won't be the only one with metal fused into his skeleton if a new titanium foam proves suitable for replacing and strengthening damaged bones.

Bone implants are typically made of solid metal – usually titanium. Though well tolerated by the body, such implants are significantly stiffer than bone.

This means that an implant may end up carrying a far higher load than the bone it is placed next to, according to Peter Quadbeck of the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials Research in Dresden, Germany. In a worst-case scenario, the decrease in stress placed on the bone means it will deteriorate, while the implant loosens and needs to be replaced.

Spongy inspiration

Now Quadbeck and colleagues have created a titanium implant with a foam-like structure, inspired by the spongy nature of bone. The titanium foam does a better job than solid metal when it comes to matching the mechanical properties of bone, such as flexibility, and this encourages more effective bone regrowth.

What's more, the foam is porous, so the bone can grow around and within it, truly integrating the implant with the skeleton.

The titanium foam is made by saturating polyurethane foam with a solution of titanium powder and binding agents. The titanium clings to the polyurethane matrix, which is then vaporised away along with the binding agents. This results in a titanium lattice which is finally heat-treated to harden it.

Though the foam has yet to be approved for use in humans, Quadbeck and colleagues are now working with physicians to explore its suitability for treating certain injuries.

Peter Lee of the Department of Materials at Imperial College London is impressed. He says there are applications where inserting one of these titanium foams "looks like the most promising solution", such as bridging long gaps between broken bones.

Yuyuan Zhao, a materials engineer at the University of Liverpool, UK, adds that "if human bone isn't good enough, an implant could give your body better performance" than leaving bone to heal naturally or using other types of implant.

The Bra That Doubles as a Gas Mask Is Now For Sale

 It's the lovely brassiere that can save lives. How? When the bra is removed, the cup of the bra can be worn as a gas mask. I'm not joking. It's now available, here's how it works:

See, you take off the bra in event of emergency and then separate the cups from each other. After that, place your mouth and nose into the cup's interior and extend the bra strap over your head. Lastly, breathe normally. The peace of mind of wearing a bra that's ready for gas bombs will cost you $30.

True Acoustic Art Takes 1,400 Man Hours to Make, $320,000 to Buy

Last weekend I visited the Barnes Foundation art gallery in Philadelphia, and among my favorite pieces were the sculptures of Jacques Lipchitz. The Vox Olympian Loudspeaker hangs with them aesthetically, and it can play music, too.

The Vox Olympians, designed for superyachts, are crafted in England by a company called Living Voice. They're made with some materials you know are good, like gold, silver and bronze, and some that sound like they're good, like tellurium, beryllium and alnico. Each pair takes 1,400 man-hours to make.

The cheapest they run is £210,000, about $328,700, which is outrageously expensive, even compared to the run-of-the-mill ultra-rich-person-gear you normally come across. But if I had a boatload of money, buying speakers that were as good for looking at as they were for listening to would probably something I'd consider.

Facebook Fixed Yesterday's Outage By Rebooting Facebook

Facebook's two-hour outage yesterday undoubtedly left thousands of acres of Farmville crops untended and countless high school acquaintances unstalked.

 So how'd they fix it? Just like you fix your own stubborn machine: rebooting the entire system. Works every time!

If Mozilla Ever Made A Cellphone, This Is How It Might Look

Everyone's busy gossiping about a Facebook phone which may or may not exist right now, but let's pause all that and daydream about an incredibly lovely phone that very certainly won't ever become reality: The Mozilla Seabird.

The Seabird is a design created for the Mozilla Labs' Concept Series by a fellow named Billy May. It's basically a community-driven exploration of how an Open Web phone might look. The design involves an Android-based operating system, "an 8 megapixel camera, dual side pico projectors, wireless charging, and an embedded Bluetooth dongle,"

Mozilla makes it clear that this concept is just something dreamed up by its community and not a planned project, but that doesn't stop me from wishing that this potentially impossible piece of tech would find its way onto shelves instead of the FacePhone.

Sony's 6X BDX-S500U External Blu-Ray Drive Burns 25GB in 20 Minutes

Sony Optiarc's new portable Blu-ray drive is fast: it can burn single layer discs at 6x speed and dual layer ones at 4x. That means you could burn 25GB in the time it takes to watch an episode of Fraiser.

In addition to your average DVD and CD media, the BDX-S500u can also playback any 3D Blu-ray discs you throw at it with the included CyberLink Media Suite 8 software. The speedy new drive will be available soon in the ballpark of $200-$240.

Sonos' WD100 iPod Dock Floats Music Wirelessly to Multi-Room Systems

Designed for use with a ZonePlayer multi-room system, the WD100 iPod/iPhone docksends music wirelessly around the house. There's not much of note here, but existing Sonos users can snap up the cheap-as-chips $119 dock from next month.


SONOS INTRODUCES THE SONOS WIRELESS DOCK

New Sonos iPod accessory will be available by the end of October

SANTA BARBARA, CA - September 23, 2010 - Sonos, the leading developer of wireless multi-room music systems for the home, today introduced the Sonos Wireless Dock (WD100), an accessory to the award-winning Sonos Multi-Room Music System. With the Sonos Wireless Dock you can now play all of the music from an iPod or iPhone in every room of the house. The Sonos Wireless Dock will be available for $119 beginning by the end of October.

"The Sonos Wireless Dock is the perfect accessory for our music loving customers who own an iPod or iPhone and want to enjoy the music stored on them in any or every room of the home," said Phil Abram, President, Sonos, Inc. "This new dock reinforces our mission to provide our customers with access to all of the music on the planet, including everything available on an iPod and iPhone in the home."

The Sonos Wireless Dock accesses all of the music stored or playing on an iPhone or iPod and sends it wirelessly to Sonos ZonePlayers all throughout your home – before converting the music to analog – guaranteeing the best possible audio quality.

The Sonos Wireless Dock is compatible with the following devices: iPod touch (1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation), iPod classic, iPod nano (3rd, 4th, and 5th generation), iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G and iPhone, and has been certified by the developer to meet Apple performance standards.

For more information about Sonos or to locate an authorized Sonos dealer in your area, please visit www.sonos.com.

Why iPads Increase Wine Sales at Restaurants?

Some restaurants across the world are now using iPads to show their wine lists. Stupid and overkill, you say? Not if you sell a lot more wine because of it.

In just two weeks, Bone's—which is Atlanta's most famed steakhouse and has 1,350 labels in their catalog—sold 11 percent more wine than in the three weeks previous to the iPad introduction. Like Bone's, many restaurants around the world are having the same experience. Everyone using iPad wine lists seem to be having big sales jumps.

It's not the novelty factor, the Bone's owners and clients say. The reason is simple and logical: Reviews.

Most people don't know most vinos in a restaurant wine list. They may know that certain region and certain winery and certain grape and certain year are considered to be good or bad or just nice enough. But with so many references, most mortals don't have a single clue. Then people look at the prices and don't know what to do. It goes like this: "It's my birthday, but it's a $500 bottle of Pingus worth the expense or not?"

Now, if you had instant access to a short review for each wine from a credible source, then you can make a decision on the spot. So when Robert Parker says that a 1995 Pingus is "one of the greatest and most exciting wines I have ever tasted", then you may decide that it's well worth the price tag.

But then again, why not just print the reviews on paper? Because it's way easier to keep the iPad always updated, as entries get out of stock and new ones come in.

Charge Gadgets From Your Backpack Without the Sun's Help

I much prefer the look of Quirky's Trek Support backpack to Voltaic's solar-powered backpack from years ago, and if enough people agree with me and pre-order it (for $130), they'll even put it into production.

Just like the rest of Quirky's products, the backpack design has been crowdsourced, but it just needs enough people to pre-order it before putting it on the factory line. It's about half the price of a solar-powered backpack, and doesn't have the obvious panels on the front—choosing, instead, a subtle grey and blue color-scheme.

Various pockets have been stitched in, with the main compartment large enough for a 15-inch laptop. The rechargeable battery, housed in a lower compartment, can charge up the gadgets via USB. It might not be as planet-friendly as the solar backpacks, but at least you can ensure your iPod won't run out of juice on a winter's day.

Michael Jackson, The Online Game

Planet Michael is a massively multiplayer online game devoted to the music and life of the late Michael Jackson. No, this is not a joke.

"We put a focus on something that will truly allow fans to immerse themselves in a Michael Jackson-like universe or music-video-like world and interact with each other and then go on adventures and do gameplay stuff and socialize," Josh Gordon of developer SEE Virtual Worlds tells USA Today.

The game will feature areas based on songs like Beat It and Smooth Criminal. Players won't use violence on quests, but dancing.

Planet Michael is a free-download that claims to be "The Ultimate Michael Jackson Online Game." (Isn't it the only Michael Jackson online game?) Planet Michael is aimed at players 13 years-old and up. That is not a joke, either.

'Planet Michael' will let players build virtual Jackson worlds.

British Intelligence Agency Used Semen as Invisible Ink

A new book reveals that a member of MI6, the British spy agency, discovered during WWI that semen makes excellent invisible ink, and often deployed it in the field. The name of the man who discovered this?Mansfield Cumming.