Geek In Me

by Terrence O’Brien via switched.com

People love to talk about how smart their dogs are. They’ll tell you about how Fido can identify their car just from the sound of the engine, that he knows when he has done something wrong and that he’ll punish himself, or that he can do so many amazing tricks. The sad truth of the matter, however, is that dogs are stupid. Adorable? Sure. Friendly? Sometimes. But smart? Not so much.

Take the case of Nero, a Doberman-Great Dane mix, from Valhalla, South Africa, who got himself into a little hot water when he swallowed his owner’s cell phone. Driekie Boojens, daughter of the dog’s owner Marie Matthews, was feeding Nero when he snatched the woman’s Nokia handset right out of her daughter’s hands and swallowed it whole.

Nero was rushed to the local animal hospital and had surgery the next day to remove the phone. While they were in there, vets also found a small collection of rocks in the dog’s stomach. More evidence of the intelligence of our canine friends.

Nero is fine now. The twelve-year-old mutt has a large scar on his abdomen, but is otherwise healthy. The Nokia on the other hand, had to be put down. Nero’s stomach acid simply proved to be too much for it to handle.





via homotron.net

I can’t wait to be so disgustingly rich that I can afford to blow money on super-cool stuff like this personal submarine shaped like a dolphin. Seriously, I only need to get people to click on my Google Ads, like, 53,477,634,111,236 more times… you know, just a round about figure.

This Seabreacher Mini-sub acts as both jet-ski and submarine all in one, getting up to 45 mph on the surface and up to 20 mph under water. You can even pop out of the water and do “tricks,” which is just damn cool. If you go too far or stay under too long, the craft will auto-float to the top, and it will even itself out automatically if you flip over. All this for the low, low price of about $60,000.

I think this is pretty spiffy, and personally can’t wait for the cheaper, inflatable version to hit the market. It will do just about everything this one does, except go fast, or dive, or sit multiple people… Or be cool. But whatever, it’ll still rock!





by Peter Mychalcewycz via switched.com

Before anything else is said, we feel obligated to state the obvious: This is the single greatest technology ever created. Now moving on…

The geniuses at Mixed Reality Lab, Singapore, have devised away to provide your pet poultry with all the TLC it can handle, from wherever it is you might be. Simply put, they have made it possible to pet your chicken/rooster while away from home. How is this possible? We’re soooooo glad you asked.

Essentially, this is an advanced, two-part cybernetics system that uses both visualization and tactile sensation to achieve its goal.

Part one is the office system. This consists of a “doll” (model chicken) which moves around on a mechanical positioning table. The doll moves around according to the actual chicken’s movements in its respective location(your home, backyard, etc). The owner pets the doll. This leads us to part two.

Part two consists of a “pet dress” worn by the chicken which actually transmits tactile sensations to the chicken when the doll at your office is petted. When you pet the doll at your office, the chicken in your backyard gets the sensation of being touched. It’s a real-time interaction. Cool right?

We understand there is probably no market for this, and frankly my dear, we don’t give a damn.





by Darren Murph via engadget.com

Though not quite as bad as toting the GPS module around with you, one particular marijuana farmer had to be mighty embarrassed / wondering what he ever did to deserve such bad luck when a GPS-equipped turtle meandered into his crop. As the story goes, a close friend of the police — a box turtle with no fear of Big Brother — just happened upon a pot stash on US park property. Clearly, Mr. Isiah Johnson (the culprit) was heavily stoned when choosing US land to farm his ganja, and now he’s in custody until he’s “extradited back DC to face drug charges.” And you thought all you had to do was dodge those CCTV cameras…





via ubergizmo.com

Wood and tech seem to go down well together, with Marubeni InfoTech of Japan rolling out its range of Animal USB flash drives. Unfortunately, these cute-looking storage devices won’t be able to tote around much information with a 1GB capacity. I suppose you could always toss it out to the garden once it is spoilt since they’re biodegradable - to a certain extent, that is. You will be able to choose from 10 different types of animal-shaped silhouette. At $72 each, pricing is pretty steep but you won’t have a competitor when it comes to an interesting USB flash drive. They’re available in Japan from September 1st onwards.





by Evan Shamoon via switched.com

In what can only be seen as a triumph for stuffed animals everywhere, a teddy bear was used as a spying device — specifically, a teddy bear with a small video camera positioned inside one of its eyes — and was used to catch a caretaker criminal in Liverpool, England. The plan was put into action by a forensic science graduate (no coincidence there) and her father, who caught his mother’s caretaker stealing from her. Who, it should be noted, was terminally ill with cancer.

The thief, 28 year-old Yvonne Allen, was sentenced to six months in prison.

“We can confirm that a former health care assistant, employed by the Provider arm of Liverpool Primary Care Trust has been arrested and convicted of stealing from a patient,” said Bernie Cuthel, managing director of Liverpool PCT Provider Services. “Following information from the courts that the employee involved was pleading guilty to all charges, an internal disciplinary hearing was held and this person is no longer employed by Liverpool PCT.”

Having marked the bills in her grandmother’s wallet and installed the consumer-grade camera in the teddy’s head, the daughter made sure the evidence was incontrovertible. The convicted has agreed to pay £60 — or roughly $120 — compensation to her victim. Which, to be honest, doesn’t really seem like all that much.