Prosthetic Senses

here's an interesting article on the wired website about prosthetic senses. it's interesting to think that humans have only five senses though other animals have many other senses. the article touches on the idea of sensing electromagnetic fields, ultrasound, infrared light and other things. the idea is to take these things that we cannot sense and turning it into something that the brain can comprehend. our brains will actually remap themselves.
a few tests done that the artcicle goes over is one guy that wears a belt that detects which way north is and makes a vibration in the given direction. it took a few days to get used to, but eventually his brain actually remapped itself and he had an enhanced senses of direction. he knew exactly where he was as all times and knew exactly which direction to go to get anywhere he wanted.
the article also notes a test done 50 years ago where a group of people wear goggles that flipped the world upside down. after a few days their brains adjusted and flipped everything back.
link

Use your own face to enhance car remote signal

Boost Car Remote With Skull - video powered by Metacafe
this is a video showing how to increase the signal of your car remote. i'm not sure i'll be trying this from fear of looking incrediably silly! :)

UbuntuStudio 7.04

ubuntu studio is the most recent release of the popular linux distribution, ubuntu, packed with a suite of the best open-source multimedia creation software. why do you care? well, you probably don't. but, it is cool to see that there are completely free alternatives the the insane prices of the mainstream OSes and multimedia creating software.
www.ubuntustudio.org/

Did You Know? It's Illegal to Dance in New York?

In new york, businesses that serve food and/or drink have to have a licence for dancing. that's some craziness. i suppose there was a protest or something about this in the past week.
here's a link link

How to Make OpenCola

OpenCola is "an open-source cola beverage that invites makers to create and modify their recipe to achieve a better beverage." OpenCola was originally created to act as a promotion tool to help explain freeware and open-source software. the drink became somewhat more popular than the software that is was suppose to promote though. something interesting to note is one of the co-creaters of opencola is actually a co-editor of Boing Boing.

here's a link on how to make it:
How to Make OpenCola - WikiHow

Lunar Real Estate?

Dennis Hope of Nevada sells plots of lunar real estate for $20 an acre.
"Mr Hope exploited a loophole in the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and he has been claiming ownership of the Earth's Moon - and seven planets and their moons - for more than 20 years."
this guy has a multi-million dollar business selling property to people that will never even see this property! that's ridiculous. and yet somewhat genius on his part. :)

Link to Story

EDIT: oh yeah, this guy also sells real estate on each of the other planets and their moons as well.

Salvador Dali on "What's My Line?"

an awesome clip of Dali appearing on the show "What's My Line?" worth checking out.

Shower Shock Caffeinated Soap

Hey look, it's caffeinated soap! amazing. :) wake up in the morning, jump in the shower, and get your morning dose of coffeine! the caffeine is actually absorbed through your skin. don't forget to check out the Shower Shock Caffeinated Body Wash aswell. :)

Link to Product

An Intersting Animation Commenting On Real ID

An Intersting Animation Commenting On Real ID

Follow Link

Dr. Death Released from Jail

just a quick note on the release of dr kevorkian.
link

1-800-GOOG-411

yep. keep in mind that 411 is somewhere around a seven billion dollar a year business. it costs something like $1.25 (may be wrong, that's just a guess) to use this service depending on who your service provider is. now, google is offering this service completely free of charge, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411. that's really got to make those phone service providers angry! i think they are still working out some rough spots, but defiantely give the service a try, and know that you can now dial 411 (or, rather, an equivalence) without having to worry about how much the phone service is screwing you. :)

EDIT: i did look it up and see that 411 charges start at $1.49.

xm and sirius merge

yep, for anyone who has not already heard, the two satelite radio companies are merging. this does not really effect me because i do not subscribe to either of these services, but this has got to be horrible news for anyone who does. i generally frawn upon this simply because competition is the number one thing that drives quality of any service.

Link to Story

Open Your Favorite Instant Messanger Via a Web App : meebo

Want to access your IM service from a computer that does not have it installed? jump over to meebo! there is support for aim, yahoo, google, and msn. have fun! and thank me for the great link! :)
meebo.com

oh and just a tip regarding IMs
tired of msn messenger ALWAYS launching on start-up? i personally hate anything launching that is not needed, and msn messenger drove me nuts! here is how to stop that: open my computer. go to C:..Program Files. rename the folder "Messenger" to "MessengerOFF"

Youmail

youmail is a voicemail service that serves as an alternative to the service that your service provider provides you. i have not tried this out because my phone service is not supported. if you are a verison, cingular, or t-mobile customer, you might want to check it out, there are some cool features. one example is the ability to assign different voicemail messages for different numbers. and make it so some people cannot leave voicemail at all.

www.youmail.com

spoofcard

not really condoning the use of this seeing that it could be used very maliciously, but i personally like to know that services like this exist and like to share the knowledge with people. simply put, spoofcard is a service that allows for caller id spoofing.

www.spoofcard.com

Gmail

First, Gmail is now public. you can now go and make yourself a Gmail account, i have! enjoy! i believe that it is still in a somewhat beta stage, but you no longer have to be invited to use the service. they boast huge mailbox space and bunches of other useful stuff.

mail.google.com

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is not new, but i just wanted to share it with people that do not know what it is. This is a neat little Firefox extension that makes the internet somewhat "surfable." you can flip through websites just like channel surfing. it's really useful for finding new websites that you might not know about or that you might not have thought about looking for.

StumbleUpon

Strange Statues Around the World

this is actually definitely worth checking out. Here is a collection of unique statues found all over the world. there are a lot of them! enjoy! :)

link

Teacher Convicted with Exposing Students to Porn

i've been hearing a pretty good bit about this story because it is completely rediculous. a substitute teacher was hit with bad luck and a pop-up storm while in a classroom. this happened a couple years ago when pop-up storms where really at their worse. this woman is being sentence to 40 years in prison. 40 years! that's insane.

Link to Story

How Much Are You Paying For Ink?

I just heard a crazy fact. consumers are paying $5,000 a gallon for ink. that is, when we buy those tiny cartridges for $50 or so, that is what we are paying comparably. which brings me to a tip of mine on how to get the most out of your ink. the settings for your printer default to "normal" printing quality. if you are just printing text or word documents, change it to "fast draft" it will save you a ton of ink and it prints a hell of a lot faster.