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Back after a short hiatus
Mar. 5th, 2007 12:07 pmSource: Technology Review  Results from clinical trials of vaccines to treat nicotine and cocaine addiction are due out within the next few months. A commercial product is expected to follow shortly thereafter. In addition to reducing the effects of withdrawal, these vaccines also induce the body to generate antibodies that bind to the drug being ingested and reduce the amount that reaches the brain. In effects, they inoculate the body against the effects of the drug by engaging the body's own immune system. |
Source: SlashDot Just as Australia (and more locally, Ontario) look to ban incandescent light use, General Electric has unveiled a new breed of high-efficiency light bulbs that are nearly twice as efficient as current light bulbs. They hope to push that efficiency to 4 times the current standard, which is comparable to compact fluorescent light bulbs. |
Source: SlashDot A Christian group in California is planning to unleash a smear campaign against Wii because they are, apparently, "...a portal to porno". Could it be... Satan? |
Source: CBC News  Thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small} ancalagon_tbA group of Chinese researchers have succeeded in controlling the flight of a pigeon using a microchip implanted in the bird's head. They hope to put the technology to practical use, but there is no word on what that might be. |
Source: New York Times Not feeling popular enough? Like most problems, it can be "solved" by throwing enough money at it. FakeYourSpace.com offers a service in which, for 99 cents a month, you can rent an attractive person to provide comments and photos for your MySpace account. The rest of the article discusses the legalities of this an similar services, including one that you can hire to call your cell phone at a prearranged time to get you out of inconvenient events. Ah, the Internet. So genuine(tm)! |
You're never too old to learn something new. Consider the retirement home in Chicago that has been taken over by Wii-madness. “I've never been into video games, but this is addictive," says one 72 year old resident. Not only is it increasing the activity level of the retirement home residence, grandkids visit often to help grandma and grandpa learn how to play some of the games, making this a highly social activity. Looks like a win-win situation to me.
Continuing with their plans for developing a range of nonlethal methods for crowd control, the US military is exploring the use of "...a 7.3 million candela strobe floodlight system to incapacitate crowds of people." They hope to demonstrate the product some time next year. So now you have a choice, fry or be blinded. Or stay home.
These $22(US) gloves have a place to slip your Wii controller into the back. They're also padded to protect 
Two McMaster students have developed a glove to assist in providing CPR. The glove detects the depth and frequency of compressions, and emits audio tones to guide the user in their technique. The glove can also detect a pulse, probably the most important thing the lifesaver should be made aware of.
Stick a marker into this little Remote Control bug and kids (or adults) can draw from a distance.
If you are a photographer, you may be among those that use metadata stored in your photo to keep track of it. Windows Vista may make this difficult because it ALSO wants to use that metadata. Specifically, the photo tag feature overwrites previous metadata which, in the case of RAW images, can render them unreadable. Microsoft's response was to request camera manufacturers provide them with plugins to gloss over the problem. They're response was to recommend that anyone who uses image metadata avoid purchasing Vista until the problem has been resolved. Have I mentioned the Mac is great for image processing....
After 5 years of study involving 1,650 people from 11 countries, the UN has released a new symbol to represent radiation risk. They wanted something that intuitively says "Bad mojo! Run away!". Seems to say that to me.
When you think of vibrators, shoes are the last thing that come to mind. Enter the Good Vibrations Therapeutic Vibrating Shoes that can buzz away sore feet by vibrating at high frequency for up to five hours. The $60(US) shoes are rechargeable and made flexible enough to fit men or women with a wide variety of foot shapes.
I previously reported on this interesting (yet creepy) video camera clock, but what I missed on my previous read is that the device uses the household power lines to transmit video back to the PC.
Tired of wrecking furniture with your Wii-toys? Nerf is offering soft, foamy versions of those hard, plastic Wii attachments, rendering the safe for energetic Wii-athletes.
This notepad serves double-duty as a good, old-fashioned pen-and-paper notepad, but what you write can be stored in the pen's onboard memory. This $160(US) device can store up to 100 pages and is USB compatible.
it was bound to happen. A Wii user appealed to the Internet community to make donations to his Paypal account to fix the laptop that had its screen cracked by a Wiimote. Problem is, the image (seen here) is a screen-saver; the computer was never broken. No word on how much he soaked people for before his scam was discovered.
On the more creative side of things, one user modified the Wiimote into a one-handed air drum. Beat your 'mote and generate music!
Recognize it? Someone modified a Nintendo Power Glove(tm) to hold a Wiimote to avoid the problem of things being broken in frentic play. The buttons are fully functional. Give it some time and this mod will find its way into being a real product.
Apparently, new Wiimotes will feature a stronger strap to counter claims of breakage. Good response time! That is how you keep customers.
Meanwhile, for the rest of you with the original flavour of Wiimote, a suggested fix is to use high-test fishing line to augment the Wii strap.
Ok, this is a little bit staged, but it apparently happened. According to the 
