Pointed Puppets to Spear Your Snacks

A company by the name of Fred and Friends has come out with possibly the most pointless product of our time. Food Fingers—the "FingerPickin Cocktail Picks"—are multicolored plastic caps that fit over your finger and end in a tiny three-pronged food spear. They seem almost like a good idea, for party platters and such, until you realize you'll still be eating with your slobbery hands, only they'll be hands covered in slobbery rainbow plastic. More here.

An Electric Beach Cruiser for the Supremely Lazy

Maybe this would be an acceptable form of transport for the likes of Marlon Brando or Alfred Hitchcock, but for anybody else it simply declares, "Hello world! I'm too lazy to pedal or balance!" At least it's only three grand.

The Beachcombing Electric Tricycle, besides being embarrassing to say out loud, by Hammacher Schlemmer is exactly what it sounds like—a beach cruising chimera with an added wheel and 20 MPH 350-watt motor. The Li-Ion battery can haul you for up to 30 miles of shame as long as you weigh less than 250 pounds. If so, the onboard storage can stow your "groceries, gym bag," or pride. It's even got a lower back rest for some reason. It retails for $3000 from the HS website. More here.

Microsoft Is Losing Mobile Subscribers Faster Than It Can Gain Them

When you run the numbers on Microsoft's mobile platform, it doesn't look good. Despite the debut of Windows Phone 7 about a year and a half ago, the company is losing mobile users faster than it can add them.

For a three month period ending in February, Microsoft nabbed a paltry 3.9 percent of the market, slipping 1.3 percentage points from November and 3.8 points from a year ago, the latest figures from comScore show. Redmond currently lags far behind even BlackBerry, which has been dealing with massive problems of its own, and snagged 13.4 percent of the space in February.

Microsoft's platform has been on a free fall since the end of 2007, the year Apple just about started digging graves for these second-tier platforms by introducing the iPhone. At that point, Microsoft still controlled 36 percent, according to comScore, but by the end of 2009, that figure had been slashed in half to 18 percent.

For the record, Apple and Google are sitting pretty, currently speaking for 30.1 and 50.1 percent of the OS share respectively.

So what, if anything, can Microsoft do to get it back? Or at least, can it stop losing ground? It's banking pretty hard on the new Nokia Lumia 900, and at $100 (with a new contract), the pretty little device is not a bad gadget to bet on. While it's a step in the right direction, Microsoft is on a downward trajectory, and it needs to do something drastic to get people interested in its OS. More here.

Bottle Opener + Sunglasses = Beer Goggles?

Unless you're into the whole Oakley look, the Brewsees aren't the most stylish shades you can buy. But damned if they're not the most functional, with each arm ending in a working bottle opener. Now you might be thinking to yourself that there's no way a plastic pair of sunglasses could be used to open a bottle. 

And you'd be right. That's why the openers on the Brewsees are actually made from 6061 airplane grade anodized aluminum. For $30 they even arrive inside a Brewsee-themed bottle koozie, and should be just as effective when it comes to hiding your drunken bloodshot eyes. More here.

How to Unlock the iPhone 4S Right Now

Hacker Loktar_Sun has discovered how to easily unlock your iPhone 4S—and any other iPhone. The unlock will free you from your carrier's tyranny, which is great news, especially while traveling or switching companies.

You will only need a jailbroken iPhone, see here how to. The rest is painless:

IMPORTANT: Before starting, make sure to have the latest iTunes. This process should be painless and easy but, like with every other unlock, proceed at your own risk.

Step 1

Go to Cydia and add repo.bingner.com as one of your app repositories. Search for Sam Bingner's SAM package and install it.

Step 2

Click on SAMPrefs icon.

Step 3

Go to utilities. Select De-Activate iPhone. Make sure your iPhone is deactivated under More Information.

Step 4

Click on By Country and Carrier in Method. Then select your carrier.

Step 5

Click on More Information again. Copy your IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) in SAM Details.

Step 6

Click on Spoof Real SIM to SAM.

Step 7

Go to the main SAM menu and change the Method to manual. Paste the IMSI in the field.

Step 8

Connect the iPhone to iTunes. It will reactivate your iPhone.

Step 9

Disconnect your iPhone when done and quit iTunes.

Step 10

Disable SAM in the SAMPrefs app.

Step 11

Connect your iPhone to the computer. iTunes will start up and tell you it can't activate the iPhone.

Step 12

Close iTunes and open it again.

Step 13

This time, iTunes will activate your iPhone and it will be unlocked! You will be able to turn off your phone and do whatever you want. The unlock will keep working, at least until Apple releases its usual countermeasures in a firmware update.

If your push notifications stop working, go to SAM again and click on Clear Push then connect to iTunes again. More here.

Skype For Windows Phone Is Now Official

It was a long time coming, but back in February Skype made it onto Windows Phone in beta. Now, testing is over, and you can get your hands on the full, official version from the WinPho Marketplace.

Unlike the beta, the app would work best with particular phones, no such caveats seem to have been put forward for this official release. As ever, the charms of video and voice calls over WiFi or 3G are hard to turn down—so cheap!—and it looks slick enough on WinPho, too. You can download the app here.

3DS Firmware Update Promises Folders, Less Cluttered Home Screens on April 25th

Are all those ambassador games crowding your 3DS' home screen? Sit tight, Nintendo's got a fix. During the outfit's Nintendo Direct conference livestream, head honcho Satoru Iwata announced that folder organization is coming to the 3DS. Fastidiously organized gamers can expect the firmware update to land on April 25th, bringing with it the joy of creating directories, stuffing them with up to 60 items and ascribing them fitting names. Iwata also detailed a handful of upcoming titles, including New Super Mario Bros. 2 and Tobidase Doubutsu no Mori (or, "Leap out Animal Crossing") for the 3DS and a Kirby compilation for the Wii. More here.

Hydraulics Let This Lightweight Roof Automatically Adapt To Changing Stresses

Engineers design structures to withstand the maximum possible stress loads. But building with the worst-case-scenario in mind can be expensive. So researchers at the University of Stuttgart created the SmartShell which is designed to be a more affordable building technique that doesn't sacrifice safety.

The lightweight shell is just 1.6-inches thick, but it's able to withstand tremendous forces thanks to hydraulic pistons located at three of its four corners. Thanks to an array of built-in sensors, as stresses on the shell change, like from the wind changing direction, the pistons instantly adjust its shape so the stress load is evenly distributed over its entire structure.

Eventually the technology could be applied to something like the roof of a large stadium. Allowing it to be lighter and cheaper to build, but just as strong since the added stresses of wind, rain, or even snow could be automatically minimized, instead of the whole structure just collapsing. More here.

RedSn0w Updated for Mac and Windows: Adds Corona A5 Jailbreak, Other Tools

What better way to finish off your night than by updating your favorite jailbreaking tool? Now, you'll be able to do just that after the whiz-kids from the iPhone Dev-Team have pushed out a new copy of their famed RedSn0w application. In what's perhaps the biggest inclusion, version 0.9.10b7 now adds implementation of that untethered Corona jailbreak for A5 devices, making it easier for the iOS 5.0.1crowd to do bits like reinstalling the tweaked software. 

In addition, the app's now capable of grabbing SHSH blobs (you know, those tiny files that grant your phone freedom) straight from Cydia, while also giving users the ability to see if their slab carries a vulnerable bootloader or if it's exploitable. RedSn0w 0.9.10b7 is out now for both Windows and Mac, and you can grab it here.

Google Patent Application Keeps Track of Your Moves to Automate Mobile Actions

A shimmy and a shake could be all it takes to launch apps in the future, that's if this latest patent application ever pans out. Filed back in October of 2011, the folks over at Google are looking to make accelerometers useful for more than just screen orientation. According to the claims, after a training phase where in this hypothetical program would associate specific application launches with geographic location data, your Pavlovian smartphone could then automate workflows and effectively anticipate your needs. 

Essentially, you'd have a mobile device that would know what to run wherever you were, hinging upon how you hold it. At least, that's the schematic covered in this USPTO document. Will it ever see the light of day? Hard to tell. Mountain View's just a-brimming with those 20 percent time projects. More here.

YouTube Wants More Videos to Have Background Music, Adds Audio Editor

Need something to fill in the awkward silence between your vlog's unscripted stuttering? YouTube's got your back. In yet another attempt to make your crummy videos just a little better, the streaming outfit has revamped its audio editing suite, giving users access to over 150,000 tracks and a simple sound mixer, to boot. Sure, YouTube's tracks may not be as catchy as your favorite Flaming Lips single, but at least you won't have to worry about copyright infringement.

Microsoft reveals the fourth version of Windows 8: Enterprise

As detailed in an official blog post, the new unique feature in Windows 8 Enterprise is Windows To Go, which is Windows on a stick. Basically it allows you to run your corporate image on a home PC or other personal devices -- the opposite of that USB disk you carry to work with portable versions of your favorite unsanctioned apps. 

Also new is the ability to automatically sideload internal Metro apps as well as enhancements to the virtual desktop client. Of course Windows 7 Enterprise features like DirectAccess, BranchCache and AppLocker are still there, but some features like BitLocker are now available in the Pro version of Windows 8 too. 

If you were thinking you might like these at home, don't forget that Enterprise is only sold with Software Assurance (Microsoft's perpetual upgrade program), but that does bring extra abilities too, like a free Virtual Desktop Access license -- you didn't think you got that for free did you -- and the optional Companion Device license that extends your VDI and Windows To Go rights to four more personal devices. 

Now, if it just included the ability to boot directly to the desktop, then most corporation's biggest concern with Windows 8 would be appeased. More here.

Electrons Can Split Into Two

Until now, electrons have been regarded as elementary particles—which means that scientists thought they had no component parts or substructure. But now, electrons have been observed decaying into two separate parts—causing physicists to rethink what they know about the particles.

The electrons split into two separate parts, each carrying a particular property of the electron. In layman's terms? The first, called a "spinon" carries its spin—which causes electrons to behave a bit like compass point. The second, called an "orbiton" carries its orbital moment—that's what keeps electrons moving around the nucleus of atoms. The result is reported in this week's issue of Nature. Jeroen van den Brink, one of the researchers, explains:

"It had been known for some time that, in particular materials, an electron can inprinciple be split, but until now the empirical evidence for this separation into independent spinons and orbitons was lacking. Now that we know where exactly to look for them, we are bound to find these new particles in many more materials."

The observations were made in the copper-oxide compound Sr2CuO3, a material peculiar because the particles in it are constrained to move only in one direction, either forwards or backwards. The electron-splitting was measured using X-rays to measure the energy and momentum of particles in the material.

Though the electrons can split, the resulting two parts can't escape the material in which they are produced. Regardless of that, the finding should transform our understanding of superconductivity—and could even eventually make high-temperature superconductivity a real possibility. More here.

How We Identify Single Voices in a Crowd

There are plenty of human abilities that we take for granted, but which are actually insanely complex. Like picking out a single voice buried amongst the noise of a crowded environment, a problem which has troubled scientists for decades. But now they've worked out how we do it—and it could revolutionize speech recognition technology.

The phenomenon—sometimes called the cocktail party effect—allows us to pick out the voice of somebody when all around us is noise. Now, a team of scientists from the University of California, San Francisco has performed experiments on patients undergoing brain surgery to discover how that works. The findings appear in this week's issue of Nature.

During the surgeries, a thin sheet of 256 electrodes was applied to the temporal lobe—the auditory cortex of the brain—of the participants in order to record neuronal activity. Post-surgery, patients were played audio tracks with multiple voices, and asked to identify the words uttered by particular speakers while their brain activity was monitored.

The researchers then used software to reconstruct the brain's activity and assess how it varied when the patients were listening out for different speakers. Amazingly, the neural cortex only seems to respond to a single voice at a time when we're concentrating on making it out, effectively shutting out the rest of the acoustic environment which surrounds us. In other words, selective hearing is very much real—we only hear what we want or need to.

While it's a neat insight, the researchers are also hopeful that it could be a useful tool in assessing hearing impairment and attention deficit disorder. Not just that, they also hope to develop devices for decoding the intentions and thoughts from paralyzed patients that cannot communicate.

And then there's one last, and potentially very lucrative, application: voice recognition. One of the major stumbling blocks with Siri and its brethren is their inability to cope in noisy environments. If scientists can get to the bottom of how the temporal lobe itself filters out extraneous noise, consumer technology could make a huge leap forwards. More here.

This Is How the Tupac Hologram That Wasn’t Really a Hologram Worked

We already knew that the Tupac Hologram wasn't really a hologram but actually just a modern regurgitation of the old mid-19th century trick known as "Pepper's Ghost". If you were confused on how that illusion worked, be confused no more! Here it is.

Roxanne Palmer at the International Business TImes made this infographic that clearly illustrated how the whole hologram shenanigans worked. AV Concepts, the company behind the fauxlogram, used Musion Systems Ltd.'s Musion Eyeliner setup to project a 2D animated Tupac onto an invisible (to the audience) screen to make him look 3D. More here.

Why Friday the 13th Is So Unlucky

The origins of Friggatriskaidekaphobia (the fear of Friday the 13th) are a little muddled, but it's often associated with two ideas: that thirteen is an unlucky number, and that Friday is an unlucky day.

In numerology, the number twelve is favored for its association with completeness: twelves months in a year, twelve hours on a clock, twelve Apostles, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve gods of Olympus, etc. Thirteen, then, is the perversion of this perfect completeness; twelve's a party, thirteen a crowd. Some believe that seating thirteen people at a table will result in the death of one, a superstition inspired by both The Last Supper and an old Norse myth.

But why Friday? Bad end-of-week vibes can be traced back to as early as the 14th century, in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Stock market crashes and other disasters, since the 1800s, have been associated with Black Friday, and many believe it is inauspicious to begin projects, embark on journeys, or release products on––you guessed it!––Friday.

Friggatriskaidekaphobia affects an estimated 17-21 million people in the US, of which many are to scared to travel on planes, go to work, or even get out of bed. Either that, or it's just as good an excuse as any to play hooky.

Oakley Is Making Its Own Google Glasses

As dorky as you'll look wearing Google Glasses, the idea of augmented reality specs is dripping with potential awesomeness (and guaranteed hilarity). So it's not a surprise that Oakley, sunglass king, is working on its own Google Glasses competitor. Maybe they won't be as ugly as Google's?

If you're wearing glasses, it's a good idea to get the lenses right, right? This could work! Oakley told Bloomberg:

As an organization, we've been chasing this beast since 1997. Ultimately, everything happens through your eyes, and the closer we can bring it to your eyes, the quicker the consumer is going to adopt the platform.

The beast being Oakley's "heads-up" technology which puts smartphone features into glasses. According to Bloomberg, the glasses will function on its own while also working with a smartphone. The whole system might be controlled with Siri-like voice commands and is currently targeted for athletes first and branch out later. More here.

Prize Winning LED Lightbulb to Arrive Just in Time for Earth Day

Philips, the Netherlands-based lightbulb manufacturer who won a 2007 congressional contest to create an energy-saving replacement for the incandescent 60-watt bulb, plans to start selling their LED bulb (the "L bulb") in stores just in time for Earth Day, this Sunday.

It will retail for $60 at stores like Home Depot, with an instant $10 rebate to consumers, bringing the cost down to $50 for 30,000 hours of LED light. If used for four hours per day, that works out to 20 years of light! More here.

Magnetic Super-Paper Can Shrug Off Water and Bacteria

Without changing its physical or functional properties, researchers at Italy's Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia have created the superhero of papers that's waterproof, antibacterial, and magnetic. Which will completely revolutionize how your kids can stick their artwork to the fridge.

The secret lies with a special mixture of individual molecules, or monomers, in paper fiber and the future of seemingly all technologies—nanoparticles. The resulting compound, known as a polymetric matrix, is actually made with different types of nanoparticles, and when applied to regular paper it completely covers the fibers on the microscopic level, creating a protective shell.

When iron oxide nanoparticles are added to the mix, the resulting paper has magnetic properties. And when silver nanoparticles are added, the paper fights off bacteria and other microscopic organisms. The paper can even be turned fluorescent using the right particles, and is completely waterproof making it ideal for high security applications like bank notes, or for printing long-lasting historical documents. More here.

Samsung To Unveil Galaxy S III on May 3rd

Finally, after much rumour and speculation, a "new Samsung Galaxy" is officially coming. It'll be showing its presumably pretty face on the 3rd of May in London at a "Samsung Mobile Unpacked" event—if that doesn't scream Galaxy S III I don't know what does.

The event invite is a bit vague, of course; there's no mention of the Galaxy S III specifically, just a "come and meet the next Galaxy" strap line. There aren't many other Galaxy models Samsung would use an evening event in London to launch, apart from a flagship device.

If it's launching on May 3rd, we could expect it to hit the shops pretty soon after. It looks like those rumours of a late April launch weren't all that far off after all. More here.