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Top 10 Pervasive Tech Myths That Are Only Wasting Your Time We could all use an extra ally at the office, which is why Man created the Bob Machine. At the flip of a switch, Bob will rattle around your desk, powered by a few watch batteries. And when you are done being bored by Bob, you just turn him back off. Look—the Bob Machine doesn’t do much. We know that. But until Johnny 5 or ET join us for drinks after work, Bob’s the best we’ve got. So live with it. Cough up the $30 for an overpriced preschool toy or freeze yourself for a day when we have better friends. Your choice.
[product page via tfts]
The iPhone Calamari commercial was tantalizing enough to tempt our own Brian Lam to write up his seafood cravings. But apparently he wasn’t the only one jonesing for the stuff after seeing Apple’s ad, as the commercial’s featured restaurant, Pacific Catch, was forced to add the dish to their menu because it was never there in the first place. This from SFGate:
To better protect hard drives in mobile devices, from laptops to cameras, Sony has issued a patent on a mini liquid airbag. And here’s how it works.
A water or silicon oil bag surrounds the drive like a skin. “Biasing units” connect the hard drive to the bag, maintaining the drive’s orientation under duress. Meanwhile, the bag has an inner lining of irises. When the bag is put under pressure, these irises are pushed closer together, creating more bag resistance by putting more pressure on the liquid.
So as we understand it, the “airbag” never actually deploys, but is always wrapped around the protected device. As long as liquid is being used, we’d love to see this technology tied in to cooling systems. Two birds, one airbag. We’re just wondering if they use really tiny dummies for testing.
