They have been secretly tested for 2 months and are now ready for delivery: bullet-resistant bras for 3,000 German police women who are in frontline duty. What may sound like a joke is in fact a serious safety precaution. If a female office is shot wearing just a bullet-proof vest, she can suffer from injuries sustained from metallic or plastic parts of ordinary underwear. The new bras, however… → Read More
Here’s a fun little story that ought to excite your Freedom Bone. It seems an 18-year-old was recently pulled over for speeding, with police claiming that the lad was 17 mph north of the speed limit. An on-board GPS unit disagrees. Yup, the kid had a GPS device(an RMT Rover, seen here) in his car at the time , and its data indicates that he was doing the 45 mph speed limit all the way to his… → Read More
I don’t have any children but from what I’ve heard, they’re quite a nuisance. If you have kids that are just starting to drive a car, why not purchase this dash-mounted camera with built-in GPS logger and Google Earth compatibility? You’ll be able to playback video of recent trips complete with a nice little GPS overlay on the right-hand side of the screen. Aside from keeping the driver of… → Read More
An employee at an investment firm exposed clients’ personal data while using LimeWire. One of the clients was Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Much of his personal data was stolen! Who still uses LimeWire? I mean really. It’s a big story, one that you’ll probably hear on your local news today—“How one Supreme Court justice’s personal data was stolen by using… → Read More
Generally, whenever someone calls the United States a “police state,” you can ignore them and go about your business. I’m tempted to do the same here, but here we go anyway. The FBI, in working with Lockheed Martin, is developing a so-called super database for crime prevention. You’ll find the same thing you’d find in other, My First Crime Prevention Databases, but this one… → Read More
Oh, EA. Do you even have a public relations company, or someone to put your statements through a “common sense” filter? The Byron Report in the UK recommended an overhaul of the British video game rating system. Dr. Tanya Byron, who wrote the report, says the current rating system is inadequate, and for the sake of health and safety, sound morals, etc. the system should be shaken up. Crazy… → Read More
Did you know that it’s perfectly legal for U.S. customs agents to search your laptop, cellphone and other electronic doodad without your consent, and without any suspicion of wrongdoing? That hardly seems American, or even French, but it’s true. For the time being, that is, for two do-good senators have called on U.S. Customs and Border Protection to knock it off with he unreasonable… → Read More
Chrysler, the also-ran of the Big Three in Detroit, will offer in-car wireless Internet access beginning with 2009 model cars. The Los Angeles Times says it uses 3G, but doesn’t mention anything about those of us who live in areas without 3G coverage. The service, to be called UConnectWeb when it’s officially unveiled tomorrow, is aimed squarely at passengers—Chrysler… → Read More
Would you go to a notoriously bad neighborhood to buy an iPhone you found advertised on Craigslist? As many as 12 people here in New York did, and got robbed for their troubles. A ring of four thugs lured New Yorkers to Flatbush, Brooklyn with the promise of heavily discounted iPhones, all advertised on Craigslist from March to June 4. One deal advertised 10 iPhones available for just $2,000. When… → Read More
Flickr’d “Talking, texting or playing games,” for six hours a day. Does that sound like addiction to you? Well, apparently it is. Two kids in Spain, aged 12 and 13, were recently admitted to a mental health center to treat their addiction to cellphones. Their relatives were concerned that they were unable to function without their cellphone. So, to the loony bin with them. → Read More
Look at this watch. Biggs sees it, and drools just a little; he drools a lot, though, so it might be unrelated. Known as “Vibering,” it’s a watch designed for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, and warns the wearer of incoming danger—an onrushing car, a reckless delivery guy on a bicycle, and so on. Two rings go around the wearer’s wrist, and “listen,” so to… → Read More
Sure, we all get a laugh at someone else’s expense when watching taser videos on YouTube, but did you know that the device may affect your heartbeat? That’s not cool, especially since Taser, Inc. says its devices are totally safe and in no way affect your biological functions. It all stems from a recent incident where a man was running from police and hid in a lake (?!) to escape them. → Read More
No better way to get beat in the ghetto than by pulling out this Swiss Army Knife and accidentally switching to the 8GB flash drive instead of the knife proper. (Yes, it’s run-on sentence Monday.) The utility knife, which costs $44.38—how precise—also features such 21st century necessities as a pair of tiny scissors, a nail file, pen and screwdriver. The fun never stops! → Read More
A new study has found links between cellphone use during pregnancy and behavioral problems in children later in life. Just the type of news the cellphone industry wants to hear, I’m sure. The study, conducted by UCLA and a Danish university, sampled some 13,000 kids. It found that children whose mothers had used a cellphone “two or three” times a day had increased likelihoods of… → Read More
Do you own a man-stopping Taser? According to today’s New York Times magazine—where’d I put my elitist latte and copy of Harper’s Bazaar?—more and more consumers are buying Tasers, especially the recently released C2 model. Available in a variety of colors, including a leopard skin print (tacky?), the consumer-level Taser does just enough to knock out any would-be… → Read More
Despite having more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in Europe, UK police have solved a whopping 3 percent of London robberies with them. Considering that all those cameras cost somewhere in the billions of pounds, or infinity dollars, that’s not exactly the return on investment many had wanted to see. As to why the cameras aren’t being used to solve crime, New Scotland Yard says police… → Read More
Wired hates that, even though our cellphones are wicked cool, there’s a distinct lack of development in the area of practical gadgetry. Umbrellas—really, there’s no way to improve that? (Oh, right.) And so on, and so forth. Capturing that zeal, Wired lists 12 gadgets that, and I quote, are “just crazy enough to work.” Super! Included therein: a solar cooker, which I… → Read More
It’s not all fancy, yet pointless, touch-sensitive tables and shoddily constructed video game systems for Microsoft . Nope. Now Redmond is getting involved in the gritty world of law enforcement, having developed a thumb drive that helps Johnny Law quickly extract information, encrypted or otherwise, from computers. The drive, adorably named COFEE, which doesn’t stand for Computer… → Read More
There’s an experimental necklace developed by the Georgia Institute of Technology that reminds you to take your medicine. Users must first ingest a special pill, along with your other pills, that contains a small magnet, which then activates the necklace. The necklace then records when, exactly, you swallowed the pills. That way, your nurse or caregiver can know when, or if, you’ve… → Read More
This video supposedly shows an Australian kid stuck inside one of those claw games you find at malls and bowling alleys. Conveniently, or perhaps suspiciously, the news report doesn’t explain how the lad got stuck in their in the first place. But, thank God, someone was there to record the dramatic rescue using their cellphone. The kid gets out safe and sound. Remember, if it’s on the… → Read More
Gold digger Credit crunch got you down? Looking for gold in all the wrong places, like, say, the innards of your computer? Don’t! Unless you want to die! A Tulsa man died last week (news travels fast…) as a result of mercury poisoning. He was trying to use the chemical to extract gold out of his computer parts. He accidentally inhaled the mercury, leading to his untimely demise. Your… → Read More
[photopress:calmdownuk.jpg,full,right] A little present showed up in my iTunes Podcast section a few minutes ago. The Game Theory podcast interviewed Dr. Tanya Byron, who’s recommendation to restrict the sale of violent video games shook the Earth to its core. She made it quite clear that her recommendation shouldn’t preclude adults from enjoying games like “Grand Theft Auto… → Read More
[photopress:healthwarningvgs.jpg,full,center] As we all know, violent video games like “Grand Theft Auto IV” turns children into trained, merciless killers like the guy from “No Country for Old Men.” It’s such a problem that a proposal in the UK will force game makers to put cigarette-style health warnings on packaging. Furthermore, if retailers don’t… → Read More
[photopress:pmphearing.jpg,full,center] Teens don’t give a damn about losing their hearing as a result of listening to their portable media player too loudly. That’s the conclusion of a Dutch study published in the March Journal of Pediatrics, which says that kids willingly crank their PMPs to the loudest volume level despite knowing how harmful it can be. The researchers suggest users… → Read More
http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/271552990 I met a guy at a friend’s birthday party who works for Raytheon out here in the Boston area and he was really dodgy when I asked him specifically what he did for the defense contractor. He took an interest in the fact that I wrote for a gadget web site and mentioned that he “sorta works with gadgets” but… → Read More
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