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Inventions / Gadgets

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  Messages 24-19 deleted by topic administrator between 10-11-2006 06:13 PM and 07-28-2006 11:18 AM
18
BookninjaPerson was signed in when posted
01-26-2006
09:33 AM ET (US)
Nerfty!

Thumb thing helps you read books one-handed. Perfect for those bothersome tomes by "Anonymous"! (From BoingBoing)


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17
BookninjaPerson was signed in when posted
08-10-2005
06:43 AM ET (US)
Great inventions of all time

Must all bow down before... the waterproof book. At last: I can leave the toilet seat up while the boy roams the house like a book destroying raptor. (From Maud)


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16
BookninjaPerson was signed in when posted
03-28-2005
08:08 AM ET (US)
Haunted bookshelf

Okay, I so want one of these. It'd be like Scooby Doo everyday in your own library. (From BoingBoing)


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15
BookninjaPerson was signed in when posted
03-01-2005
11:58 PM ET (US)
The Idiot Powered Pen

A pen that... well, it kind of... you see... They turned a pen into a fucking video game. And it's coming after your children. I don't think I'm being too alarmist when I say we are all going to burn a fiery hell for being part of the civilization that invented this idiotic device. (From Bookslut)



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14
fass
07-07-2004
12:54 PM ET (US)
the man has a roll of toilet paper wedged up his ass...then you have your fax joke.
13
kathrynkPerson was signed in when posted
07-07-2004
06:59 AM ET (US)
We have to admire them for trying? Really.

Guy walks into a bar, sits down. A phone rings and he puts his open palm to his face and starts talking. The bartender says, What the heck? The guy replies, Yeah, I was constantly losing my cell phone so I had it surgically implanted into my hand. Bartender has a look, mutters, Well, I'll be darned.

Little while later, the guy asks where the washroom is. Downstairs on your right. Guy leaves and some twenty minutes later, the bartender becomes worried and follows him downstairs. He finds him, finally, bent over double in a cubicle. You alright, man? asks the bartender. Yup, says the man, straining, Will you hang on a sec? I'm just recieving a fax.
12
BookninjaPerson was signed in when posted
07-06-2004
11:19 PM ET (US)
So when you're writing erotica, is it your arm you type on?

Microsoft, ever the bastion of ethical rightmindedness, has been granted a patent for turning the human body into a computer.

Many people today carry a range of portable electronic devices, each with its own keypad, speaker, display, processing unit and power supply. The idea behind the patent is to get rid of some of these items. If such gizmos were networked, it would be possible to have, say, just one keypad for a mobile phone, an MP3 music player and a PDA. The keypad might even be a person's forearm. As the patent puts it, “The physical resistance offered by the human body can be used in implementing a keypad or other input device as well as estimating distances between devices and device locations. In accordance with the present invention, by varying the distance on the skin between the contacts corresponding to different keys, different signal values can be generated representing different inputs.” In other words you can, in theory, type on your skin.

There's something creepy about this, in a I'm-not-Christian-but-I-was-raised-as-one-and-feel-like-God's-going-to-get-angry-and-fall-on-us-like-a-bag-of-hammers-kind-of-way.



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11
BookninjaPerson was signed in when posted
06-15-2004
11:31 PM ET (US)
A Computer Program to Write a Novel?

No, it's not Christian... It's your worst WORST nightmare. (Think of this puppy flying off the shelves and the flagrant abuse of slush piles two years later.... Egad!)



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10
BookninjaPerson was signed in when posted
05-24-2004
10:13 PM ET (US)
Scientists Find a Way to Turn Books into TVs

Damn scientists - always with the "science".

The viewer resembles a pair of spectacles on a stick or hi-tech opera glasses and is held in front of the eyes while a book is read or paged through.

Between the lenses is a camera that watches where they are looking.

Interaction is via hi-tech opera glasses
Software on an associated PC looks for distinctive features on the page to help spot what a reader is looking at.

"It then draws the computer graphics from exactly the same viewpoint," said Dr Billinghurst who heads the HIT Lab.

One of the early uses of the system has been to turn some of the books of writer and illustrator Gavin Bishop into animated works.

How long before this monstrosity is shrunk down and implanted in your cornea? Huh? Then it'll be all advertising all the time, baby - in the clouds, on your lover's skin, in passing car windows.... (Sorry, I've been reading Super Flat Times...)



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9
BookninjaPerson was signed in when posted
05-14-2004
09:32 PM ET (US)
Hell, You Don't Have to Eavesdrop on This Puppy -- I Can Wake My Kid in the Next Room Up Just By Typing Out B-o-o-k-n-i-n-j-a...

Apparently someone has developed a software to decipher what you're typing simply by LISTENING to your keyboard... My one question: why? Why must science always be so cartoonishly evil?

Each key on computer keyboards, telephones and even ATM machines makes a unique sound as each key is depressed and released, according to a paper entitled "Keyboard Acoustic Emanations" presented Monday by IBM research scientist Dmitri Asonov.

Ding ding ding! Can you say "DOD contract"? (From Clive)



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