This is a heat-sensitive coffee mug that changes color to tell you that the contents are hot. Kind of a good idea actually. But why On/Off? Why not Hot/Cold or Sip/Gulp or Pain/Sooth. Meh, anyway, it's cool. I like it. I like my glass mugs better though since they are ginormic, but the nerd factor is pretty decent with these. Though, I generally don't understand the idea overall. You should know what you are about to drink, and if you don't know or remember that you just put a scalding hot beverage into your drinking vessel, you might want to consider a change of pace and slow it down a bit. They run $25 bucks apparently, but i can't for the life of me figure out where or how to buy them. Charles and Marie. The only other concern would be how toxic this probably is. But meh, pollution will kill me first, or the robots will. Via Boing Boing Gadgets

My first reaction when I saw this fake window was that it is the stupidest thing I have ever seen. But you know, after a minute of looking at it, I have changed my mind. That would be awesome in a crappy little office/cubicle, or any space that just doesn't seem to have enough light. Makoto Hirahara’s Bright Blind uses electroluminescent sheets to simulate a window. You can adjust the light, by just adjusting the blinds, of course. It does exists as a prototype, but not for sale yet. via Coolest Gadgets

I just saw a cool advertisement on a popular blog (engadget). It's one of those I'm a PC I'm a Mac ads that you have seen a million times, but this one was a little different. This ad uses the banner ad medium of the web to its advantage. This ad uses both a horizontal top banner and a side large rectangular banner to get the message across. In the first scene of the ad you are presented with the PC/MAC guys doing their usual, "whats this?" routine, pointing and looking up. I didn't even see the banner ad at the top of the page, and didn't realize that was what they were pointing at. I figured something was going to drop into PC guy or something like that. Then this scene started. Immediately I noticed the flash up on the top banner, looked, and laughed. Kudos to whoever came up with that campaign. Brilliant use of the banner structures of pages. I would assume it was a special deal with the host site just because it is currently RunOfSite, and is pretty specific to their layout. You can go see it at engadget.

Dammit!!! I can't seem to press the more button ever when posting an article. I pretty much always want the article to break after the first paragraph on the home page but always forget. Anyone know of a plugin that will just automatically "more" the article after the first paragraph?

SanDisk has been toying with the idea of Write-Once memory cards for cameras. The idea being that the memory card takes a lifetime to degrade, in theory, whereas DVDs and CDs break down in sunlight and heat. Also, if they are cheap enough, why not. The apparent target price is $5.99 per 1GB memory card, which is not great if you ask me. I just bought a spindle of 100 DVDs for 30 bucks. I could store 4 full memory cards on one DVD plus a few extra photos if i wanted, for a mere 30 cents. Burn an extra DVD for dark archive storage and your only up to 60 cents (less if you shop around better than just running to target...) Of course you have to account for the original memory card cost, but that quickly becomes irrelevant after a few uses. Don't have a DVD burner? Use flickr or picassa, free or almost free. Don't have internet? um... er... a cheap DVD burner will be the better financial choice probably, though you really need to get onto the tubes. Also, if you have a Write-Once card, what happens when you take a photo you regret taking? Hopefully there is at least a "destroy photo" ability without having to stick the whole card in the microwave. Additionally, single use cards would start to make people a little more conservative with the photos they take, since currently you can just go totally willy nilly with your shooting, and pick out the good ones later. But with a write-once card, you would be back to the original problem with plain old photographic film, which is that mistakes cost money. 7mp photos will cost about 2 cents per mistake. A re-writable card costs zero when you make a mistake. I would like to hear the advantages, since I am not seeing it. Lots of people think this is a great idea, I just don't understand why. Engadget

If you have a couch in a area of the room where you cannot put an end table next to it, like against a wall for example, you will see the beauty of this gadget. It is a small tray, that clips onto the armrest of the couch. As a bonus it has a light that is 5 white LEDs so you can make sure that you are putting a cookie in your mouth and not a scorpion (i live in scorpion country). It is battery powered, which i suppose is good so you don't have yet more wires, but a plug would be nice as an option. Question is, how stable is it, and how dependent on the width of the armrest is it? Our couch, which has one side against the wall, has a quite slim, angled armrest (actually not really an armrest, since its a chaise like lounge part of the couch). I am pretty sure this thing wont work. W actually were thinking of putting a free hanging slim picture shelf over there, so you could put a glass on it. This thing would at least be a little less permanent. But the real reason to want this, is to not have to lean forward to the coffee table to get a drink. From the chaise, thats actually a pretty big pain in the ass. Get this caloric burn reducer for $19.95. via Coolest Gadgets

I already posted about my misgivings with the new zune, but frankly, I'm now getting confused. All the blogs are abuzz with praise of how much of an improvement the Zune 2 software is, but really, I have to wonder what these folks are smoking? No more tag editing. No more Smart Playlists. Interface is bigger than the screen, for absolutely NO REASON. Those three things are a huge step backwards in my opinion. Sure things got simplified, and generally simplification is better, but its not really like much changed. Maybe i'm not cut out for blogging, since I can't seem to bring myself to post a bullshit-positive review of the Zune 2. Are there some things that are better? Sure, and I mentioned those, like the WiFi sync, and some aspects of the desktop software. But I really doubt that noone was using the features they took away, and the main menu being bigger than the screen is just outright stupidly annoying. Why is no one else pointing this out and calling MS out on it? Bunch of suck ups.

The Zune software and firmware update was today and i'm not exactly sure this is a step forward for MS. They changed StarRatings of songs, to love/hate/meh as a little heart icon, which I actually think was a good move. Anyone actually set a song to 4 or 2 stars? good/bad/meh is how most people think so good move there. Wireless sync, works great. Yeay, this is big plus, but not enough by any stretch to carry the Zune2 up the competition ladder. They eliminated ID3 tag editing. Seriously, its gone. No more bulk editing of incorrect ID3 tags from within the zune software. you can change the title, the artist and the album, 1 at a time. DUMB. They eliminated "Smart Playlists". WHY? Pretty much every MP3 player out there allows you to make a playlist which can automatically add new songs that fit the rules. Such as, most played songs, or songs in a genre. No longer on the zune. DUMB. The interface got fat. Why did they pick the font size they did? The interface scrolls because half of Podcasts and all of Settings is below the fold. um... why not make the font a few points smaller and get it all to fit? Is there some future feature coming that would cause the list to extend beyond the edge? If so, why not just scale the font with each update, if not DUMB. Although I hate the main menu of the zune2 firmware, why the hell is it not also applied to the sub menus?!??! consistency is apparently not king. DUMB. The I do like the change in the desktop software music browsing. All at the same time you can browse by artist, album, and songs. GOOD. Social was simplified as well, but haven't had a chance to mess with it. Everything else I could care less about, since these are features I use. But the one that REALLY hurts, is the lack of Smart Playlists. That really sucks. I would even be happy with a "randomly fill my zune with music" button, but really that would just be a pansy solution.

Look just like the little grooves that are to wake you up right before you smash into that tollbooth, or careen off that cliff. Warning ripples, rumble strips, whatever you want to call em. Well, the Japanese have gone stolen my idea from many years ago when I was driving in massive wind and kept getting blown towards the shoulder of the road. I kept hitting the rumble strips, and it started to sound like really bad music. I thought, 'why not put messages into the road?' Like, 'Hey jackass, tollbooth ahead' or 'slow down or die, cliff ahead'. Alas, the Japanese had the brain ray pointed at me, but made the idea, well, "typically Japanese". As seen above and the grooves are between 6 and 12mm apart: the narrower the interval, the higher the pitch. These stretches of road, each playing a different tune, and can be found in 3 places in japan, with the optimum musical speed being a terrifyingly slow 28mph. Here is a video of the slow speed grating noises you can experience at that breakneck pace... I want my royalties! 5 cents per meter is fair i think. Viadeputydog

Starwars is on TV, yet again. Episode IV, you know, the original that is meant whenever you just say Starwars. Something has been bugging me for quite a while and I finally gotta say something. WHY THE HELL DO ALL DROIDS NOT SPEAK??! For pete's sake. That is just stupid. You got your spaceships that can go "point 5 past light speed". You got space fighter planes. You got a giant ass artificial moon that shoots a big honking laser at planets, blowing them up. You got lightsabers. You got hovering cars. You got laserguns. BUT The droids don't speak?!?! (except C3PO) Seriously, WTF?! I understand that a droid may need to speak some specific binary bleep bloop bink bonk language which is faster than just speaking english, but why in the hell can't you put two communication methods into the damn things? Fine, speak your bleep bloop when you speak to each other, but when you speak to me, speak my damn language. There is no excuse. This is an example of overthinking the future. I get it, though, if R2D2 was to actually say out loud, "oh shit my head just got blow off" when flying through the trench on the deathstar, that would kinda lower the believability. Instead, the shrill high pitched scream still comes across as "oh shit I..." I know it's just a movie, and trailblazer for that matter. Today it's the roomba. But see, a roomba is not really interactive. R2D2 is. Could you imagine if your roomba had a mind of its own, and decided it didn't want to vacuum today? If all it did was answer you with a "beeeedoooop", you'd smash it with a hammer. But because today robots are so primitive, and really just dumb automations, there is no tech for it yet. when im 80, in bed, and my servant bot comes to enslave me or kill me, it better be able to tell me why and not just rudely beep some nonsense at me.