De-Smell Your Dell With A USB Scent Flower

Men! Do you smell so bad that even your laptop has started stinking? Desperate times call for desperate measures, which means you might just have to consider this USB scent flower.

As your lookey-holes can see, it's in the shape of a flower, but don't let that put you off. You can't put a price on a harmonious working environment, nor be too picky about aesthetics. Besides, each bouquet—which retails for $9.99—has three refill cartridges which last for months. The USB flowers come in different colors and scents, so every day can be an Ocean Breeze, Purple Lavender, Pink Jasmine or White Chamomile day. Shop.

DSLR Tiny Spy Camcorder

If you thought those micro four-thirds cameras were pricey for their size, get a load of this Japanese spy camera. Considering it costs $120 and weighs just 12g, it might just be the most expensive camera per millimeter ever.

The actual size is 2.5cm x 2.5cm x 2.6cm, and it shoots video at 640 x 480 resolution. Photos can be taken too, at 1600 x 1200 res, plus there's even a mono speaker within that tiny casing. It takes microSD cards for recording onto, and has a miniUSB port for transferring footage to PCs. You can find them here.

Steve Jobs Action Figure Now Equipped with Ninja Stars

The world may never know whether Steve Jobs actually packed ninja stars on that fateful flight to Japan, but in the (extremely likely) event that he didn't, you can recreate the fantasy on your own. In action figure form!

The newest model figurine some pretty intricate updates—a wedding band on Steve's hand, more durable glasses, and, of course, a handful of Ninjutsu weaponry. He's even got a mystical white iPhone 4, probably acquired with lightning ninja dexterity.You can find it here.

 

 

This Watch Could Star In Terminator 5

If you look very closely at the Urwerk UR-110 watch, you can just about make out a face. Not, like, a watch face. The face of an uncaring machine delivered to us with some nefarious intent.

The UR-110 has a confusing layout, but is actually quite practical; by placing the time on the watch's right edge, you can see be subtle when you're checking just how long that presentation's been droning on. And amongst all that raw titanium, there's still a touch of whimsy: a "Oil Change" indicator that alerts you if your watch needs service.

My favorite part? Urwerk hasn't decided on a price yet.

 

 

Charge All Your Gadgets Using This Multi-Charger

Most multi-chargers bore me to tears, but JoyFactory's Zip, Touch-n-go looks like it was designed by people who actually care what these things look like on your desk. It uses magnets to connect the gadgets' cables to the charging-pod.

It's not on sale yet, however JoyFactory claims it'll come in somewhere between $49 and $99. 

 

 

Turn Your Office Chair Into An Office Bed In Seconds

If every office chair converted into a narrow bed-like furniture item like this, I'd be in heaven—there'd finally be an excuse for all those accidental office naps.

Whisky in a Can Is the Best Thing in a Can

Scottish Spirits, despite the name, is not a Scottish liquor company. It's based in Panama. But that's not important. What is important is that it sellswhisky in a can. Real, straight whisky. 12 ounces of it. In a can.

Again, it's not scotch. That's okay. It's eight shots of whisky. In a can. For the first time ever.

No, it's not sold in the US. Not yet. But I can safely say, after seeing many things in a can, whisky is the best one yet.

 

 

Science Has Found the Best Way to Cure Your Hangover

Finally, a reason for science to exist: A researcher in Philadelphia (of course!) has discovered the single most effective cure for a hangover. And it's really pretty simple.

Coffee and aspirin. That's it! So much simpler than my current cures of "building a time machine and preventing myself from drinking the night before," and, if that fails, "staring at the wall until the day is over." This is all according to Thomas Jefferson University's Michael Oshinsky, who, no joke, gave rats hangovers:

Ethanol brings on headaches thanks to a chemical acetate it can produce and even low doses can affect some people more than others, said the study.

Professor Michael Oshinsky, of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, induced headaches in rats using small amounts of ethanol.

He then gave them doses of caffeine and anti-inflammatories to find it blocked the acetate and relieved the headaches.

Is this real? Well, it's science, so it has to be! But what does it mean?

For one thing, that dehydration isn't the cause of hangovers—the rats Oshinksy got drunk weren't dehydrated—so don't worry about coffee further dehydrating you. For another, all the weird cures your roommate is always trying to make you take—"A raw-egg-and-vodka wheatgrass shot? And I have to drink it from the opposite side of the glass? Are you sure about this?"—aren't even as effective as what your grandfather (and grandmother) were taking.

There's a DIY Gastric Bypass Surgery Kit For Sale on Amazon

For those considering gastric bypass surgery, take a look at Amazon's do-it-yourself kit. It's only $260 (cheap!) and comes with 3 sets (so you don't have to get it right the first time!). Bring your own anesthetics and instructions, though.

 

 

Rainbow Shots Turn Even More Rainbow In Your Stomach...Honest

There's not much you can say about this video of a bartender pouring out a series of rainbow-hued shots than WOW. I wonder if they all tasted different?

My guess, if so, would be yes, yes they do. I think I can spot algae, cucumber, '70s bathtub, earwax, urine, raw sausage, pureed carrot, rust, and bloodied water. 

 

 

This Is What It's Like to Stare a Black Hole In the Eye

If you ever got close enough to a black hole to get this view, you'd be on your way to anextremely horrible death and possibly other universes. So, uh, thank goodness for the magic of the internet?

What you're looking at is a computer-generated image, posted by NASA today, that shows the visual distortions that take place as light bends towards the immensely strong gravitational forces:

Every star in the normal frame has at least two bright images—one on each side of the black hole. Near the black hole, you can see the whole sky - light from every direction is bent around and comes back to you.

So that's what it's like to stare a black hole dead in the eye. It's sure less scarier than falling into one.

 

 

Sony Ericsson's Xperia Arc Has a New Type of Display

What the hell, Sony Ericsson? "Reality Display"!? Are you just jealous of Apple's Retina Display; Samsung's Super AMOLED Plus and LG's NOVA buzzwords? Whatever, this Android Gingerbread phone is slim at 8.7mm—yes, a new "world's slimmest" phone.

You've got to feel for LG really, who had barely a day riding the "world's slimmest" float with their 9.2mm Optimus Black, and before it the iPhone 4, which is a shade thicker.

The Arc has a 4.2-inch Reality Display with 854 x 480 resolution, which they say brings a brighter, clearer picture than other displays thanks to the "Mobile Bravia Engine". There's an 8.1MP camera on the back (no forward-facing cam here), and two color options: midnight blue and misty silver.

 

 

Charm the iPhone Snake to Sit 'Round Your Neck

This patent-pending iPhone neck-mount has dual uses. It can slither around your neck for hands-free viewing while on the go, or coil up on the desk in front of you, for stationary media-watching.

 

 

Did You Know It Costs More Than a Penny to Make a Penny?

I just found out that it costs more than a penny to manufacture a penny. Specifically, it costs 1.62 cents to produce that 1 cent copper coin. And that's been the case for a while now! What the hell?

Why's it cost so much? Apparently, the penny is made from 2.5% copper and 97.5% zinc and those metals have gone up in price as of late. In fact, if you could melt the coin, you'd have materials totaling 1.62 cents—more than the cent that measly penny is worth. That's crazy! What's crazier is that it's been that way since 2006. Aren't useful things supposed to be greater than the sum of its parts? Shouldn't they have changed the metal mixture to something cheaper by now?

Apparently, the director of the Mint tried to make the penny cheaper to manufacture but Congress shut that initiative down. As it currently stands, the Treasury boss can "recommend changes in metal content or in the amount of coins produced" but only Congress can make the final decision.

So maybe it'll eventually become worth the money to make! Though really, I figured this loss in manufacturing would make for a good reason to kill off the penny (I mean, who likes pennies?). But with old school Congress calling the shots, I doubt that'd ever happen—no matter how useless and expensive pennies become.

What Do Kings Use for Ringtones?

Would you believe me if I said that King Juan Carlos of Spain has the sound of giggling children set as his ringtone? And that it went off during a meeting with a Honduran ambassador?

According to Spanish newspaper El Pais, the King was shooting the breeze with a Honduran ambassador when the ringtone piped in:
But before accusing him of break and understand it's probably his GRANDCHILDREN. Juan Carlos never said what the ringtone actually was, but AOL news mentioned that he has a whole bunch of of the little runts, which would make sense. Moral of the story? The sensibilities of "royalty"—whatever that now means—are just as middlebrow as your own.

Can A Shirt Pocket Ever Be Too Big?

Can shirt pockets ever be too big? Can you appear sane with a netbook crammed into your chest pocket? No matter the answers, this weird shirt can be ordered now for $30 here.

South Korean Scientists Transmit Broadband Signals Through Human Arm

Human skin is apparently a very energy-efficient conduit for transmitting data. A recent experiment achieved a rate of 10Mbps, which may put my Internet connection to shame. The experiment used small, flexible electrodes and took place at Korea University.

The finding may lead to a new generation of medical devices that can monitor blood sugar or electrical activity in the heart. Such devices cut energy needs for a monitoring network by about 90 percent compared to wireless devices running on batteries.

South Korean researchers placed electrodes about 12 inches (30 centimeters) apart on a person's arm, and found that the low-frequency electromagnetic waves travel easily through the skin without any outside interference.

The South Korean study improved on past attempts by using tiny metal electrodes coated with a silicon-rich polymer, which allowed the device to bend at a 90-degree angle 700,000 times without incident. Each electrode was just about the width of three human hairs.

This may not seem all that surprising coming from South Korea, known as perhaps one of the most wired places on Earth for Internet. But we can't help but wonder if the researchers hadn't been watching some Battlestar Galactica goodness, given the tendency for a certain Cylon (played by Grace Park) to plug data cables into her arm for a bit of computer-on-computer consultation — not that we're talking about brains communicating directly with devices just yet.

 

 

A Map of the First Internet

This is Arpanet. The internet before Google. Before Flickr, before YouTube, before BitTorrent. Before pictures of your ex-girlfriend on Facebook. An internet that you could draw a map of with only a few lines and some dots. 1972.

At this point, the internet wasn't even the internet—still dubbed ARPANET, the Pentagon (and a handful of universities') private plaything. As you can see, it wasn't exactly extensive. The network served only to link key research centers. It's pretty amazing to think that this smattering of cables turned into the bizarre, twisted, incredibly complex nebula of porn, parody, knowledge hatred, joy, and cat videos we now adore.

 

 

Will It Blend? - Chrome Notebook

BlackBerry's Storm Line Looks Far From Dead With Pumped-Up Storm 3 Leak

It has a 3.7-inch display with 800 x 480 resolution (which will be the highest for a BlackBerry phone ever), along with a 1.2GHz processor to match therumored Torch 2 speed, and a 5MP camera that shoots video at 720p. Supposedly it'll have 8GB of storage, plus 512MB of RAM, and will be able to hotspot like the other two rumored handsets.

The Storm line has stumbled a few times, with talk that RIM might even kill the whole series off, but it looks set to be back on track with this far more powerful third model.