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New Phone for People Who Like Mushrooms, Hate Poisonings
Posted by Seamus Byrne at 11:49 PM on July 31, 2007
Foraging for mushrooms can be fun, but getting poisoned by the wrong species always ruins a nice afternoon. Researchers at the Hagenberg College in Austria have developed software that can identify which mushrooms are safe to eat and which are poisonous, just from a photograph. This means it could easily be run on a mobile phone with a camera, to create a handy tool for foragers. It's not sure yet clear whether magic mushrooms have been placed in the safe or poisonous category - maybe that will be a user option. [Metro]
If you didn't get enough with the 
The DeLorean, the car from Back to the Future with the gull wing doors and gleaming stainless steel finish, has come back to the future, going into extremely limited production thanks to a group of greasemonkeys in Houston who like to refurbish cars. They have about 200 of the original DeLorean 2.8 L V-6 engines on hand, and will start making the cars from scratch next year.
Niles, remote makers to the stars and NBA basketball players, has finally decided to upgrade its venerable easy-to-use Intellicontrol remote control to the IC2, an even simpler version with larger buttons and up-to-date devices.
Long a mainstay of the high-end home theater installation market, the Intellicontrol has been around for 12 years, and is the device that inspired lots of universal remotes, including our favorite Logitech Harmony line that lets you just push one button to get everything going for about a tenth the price.
If you're important enough to have one, that is. This is a small jamming device that you plug into the cigarette lighter of your car and it blocks any GPS tracking devices that might be trained on your vehicle. It's probably illegal, but hey, so is sex with your sister.
Brando is firing on all cylinders today with this eggy USB label printer from Casio. I didn't think it got any better than the iPhone battery but a girl can make mistakes. Features and price are below the gallery.
What has 28 wheels, is 20m long, weighs 130 tonnes and has as much power as two Formula One cars? This truck does, and it's been built to haul 115-tonne telescope parts 5,000m up the Chilean Andes. At that height the driver won't be able to breathe, so the seat has been designed so that a person can sit with an oxygen tank on.
Cult cartoon Futurama is coming back later this year as a full-length film. The movie, Bender's Big Score, will be available to buy on November 27 as a high-definition DVD, and will be followed by three other feature-length movies. Each movie will, however, be divided into four separate episodes and will be aired on TV.
Comedy Central will be showing the 16 episodes. Not much is known about them, apart from a few juicy tidbits from Bender's Big Score. Apparently it involves nudist aliens and the secret of time travel ñ- which apparently has something to do with Fry's buttock. [
Slightly sad people who humanize their pets will be hyperventilating at the O2 Dog from AirPress. An oxygen chamber that is identical, apparently, to the ones used in beauty treatments for humans, except for the fact that it is dog-sized.
Appian, the company behind much of Britain's surveillance madness, has released a new camera that will no doubt be top of the shopping lists of Big Brothers throughout the world. The Stinger is able to recognize license plates from any country thanks to its choice of IR wavelengths: 810; 870; and 940 NM. Then, ensuring that There Is No Escape For The Wicked, it can compare them to ones on a "hot list" stored on its internal 20GB hard drive. If it finds a dodgy plate, it contacts the police via either Ethernet, Wi-Fi or GSM/GPRS. Full stats and pricing after the jump.
A $7.99 gizmo that lets you use the Nike+iPod Sports Kit without having to buy swooshed trainers has gone on sale. The Shoe Pouch is a waterproof bag made of neoprene that you place the sensor inside and attach to your shoe via its shoe laces. There's another pic after the jump.
Chinavasion's new video player is ugly, yellow and not very user friendly, but if you need to be able to watch videos underwater it looks like your only option. You can dive as far as 3-meters underwater and it will keep on playing your AMV videos (Don't worry it comes with conversion software).
While it only has 1GB of storage space, this shouldn't be too big of a problem since the 1.8-inch screen can only show off videos at a resolution of 128x128 and at a rate of 15-fps. No word on price yet, but who cares how much it costs when you fulfill your lifelong dream of watching porn at the bottom of the pool?
TwinMOS's BooM1 speaker dock is a solution for those who want a big sound that takes up little space. Powered by two 8-watt speakers and a 25-watt subwoofer that offer a little more power than comparable speaker docks. While the name and design are eyebrow raising, it is the $199.99 price tag that really has us wondering if the thing is extraterrestrial in origin. [
This weekend, Spaniard Alberto Contador won the Tour De France mounted on a 2008 carbon-fiber Trek Madone bicycle. What is shocking is that the 2008 high end 6.9 pro frame wasn't used in this race, since it wasn't ready. No, the Discovery team rode and won on their 5.2 midrange bike, with stickers for the 6.9 wrapped around the side. Sure, it's more about the rider's manly thighs and the quality of the steroids injected into one's buttocks, but at any rate, this bike has tech that Trek can brag about.
This is an iPhone Cake.
For the Steve that is Fake.
Did it take a long time to Make?
I dunno, I'm not very good in the kitchen. [
Here's another of my random discoveries from the Euro jaunt, also from the unmissable 
Today, the United States and the European Union have decided to share a common standard for their next-generation geo-positioning systems, the EU's Galileo Open Service and the US's GPS IIIA. Called MBOC, it will allow companies to develop one type of receiver compatible with both networks. Will this affect your life today?
There are some Vista patches in unofficial form, leaked on the web, according to a few sites. CRN is calling it Vista 0.5, since a true SP is rumored 
Want iPhone NOW!!? Seems things are very close to a solid hack for use (sans fancy voicemail, of course) on Telstra, with calls and SMS now working for those who have tested this latest hack. It's all about doing some clever SIM hacking to make the phone think it is talking to AT&T.
A good caddy is hard to find, but a good GPS watch that has a map of your favorite golf course and keeps track of your score can be yours for $215 (in Korea). Not only useful for golfers to keep track of the relative distance between you and the ball you just shanked into the sand, the RGPS-3000 can also be used in other outdoor activities, like walking, bicycling or hiking—all things we haven't done since we discovered internet pornography. [
Geek's who eat geek food, like that 
Those Jersey residents really love their crane game. First there was the 
This design for a retractable doorknob provides extra security for your door by recessing into the doorframe when you leave the house, thereby preventing thieves from picking your lock (there are none). But if you want to get in, you use (we're assuming) the little slot below the knob to extend the knob out so you can turn and open the door. It's all very futuristic and confusing, but still won't stop FBI agents from kicking down your door. [
Seeing as we sit at our desk for 23 hours in a day, we're definitely the target market for the AimBLADE. It's a desk-mounted arm support system that gives our elbows both support and freedom of movement. It's difficult to get your chair to just the right height to support your arm with the armrest and not tower over your desk, so something like the AimBLADE looks like just the thing for "cyber athletes" and bloggers alike. [
This week on Coolness Roundup, Gizmodo's Charlie White and Sci Fi Tech's Stephen Schleicher talk about when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em—offering advice about when you should buy new gadgets and when you might want to fix up those you already have. Get these tips, along with the Rapid-Fire Roundup of Cool Products and more, all on Coolness Roundup, a free 
Dogs and cats everywhere rejoice! No longer will you be relegated to sit and bake in the backseat of the car. Instead, the Komfort Pets Carrier automatically will cool you off once your crate breaks 72 degrees. Conversely, if it goes below 65 degrees, on goes the heat to keep you from turning into a pup-sicle. Keeping your pet comfortable is going to cost you, as the smallest crate (19-inch X 13-inch) will run you a steep $399, and a medium or large sized crate will be coming out later this year.
Fans of Karaoke probably already own Griffin's iKaraoke attachment for the iPhone, but their iKaraoke TunePrompter takes singing by yourself to the next level. You can now take song lyrics and create your own Karaoke videos with them and display it on the iPod Video or the iPhone, allowing you to both watch lousy home-made videos and know what the words are to all your songs. [
The Wii has got to have some sort of record for the most gimmicky and superfluous accessories of any console. For every type of game, there seems to be a hunk of white plastic meant to hold the Wiimote to make it more "realistic." Today's entry is the Wii Airplane Controller Stand from PEGA. It makes you feel like you're flying an airplane inside a Gamecube! For only $13, how can you say no? [
Apple TV can now be "user configured" with up to 2 terabytes of external storage via a hack waking up its USB 2.0 port. Really. We 
One of Intel's latest ad's shows six athletic black dudes bowing down before a dorky white guy in khaki pants. Lousy, barely subliminal racist advertising or just plain lousy advertising? You be the judge. [
Bungie's just put out an update and given us real pictures of the Halo 3 Toys Covenant guns. The plasma rifle looks somewhat similar to the "real" thing (the gun in the game), but the plasma pistol looks really bleh. Real Covenant aliens wouldn't be caught dead with a turquoise gun. However, it will have a "super shot" mode that will register more damage to that sensor you wear on your chest. Looks like the old laser tag games we played as kids.
Contrary to what was 
The default Guitar Hero controllers are alright, but this guy's made a custom GH guitar himself—out of stuff he had lying around the house. He took the circuit board from a PS1 controller, a strap, miscellaneous household junk, and fashioned a Guitar Hero-esque guitar out of it. We would have recommended that he start with a real guitar and make something that didn't look like a cardboard monstrosity, but he says he didn't want to "sacrifice a real guitar." Point taken. [
Phillips Norelco has modernized its previous razor designs with the arcitec 1090, a slim and positively forward-looking razor that fits perfectly in your hand and promises shaving improvements. We happen to have a older Norelco razor of the previous design on hand here, and over the past two weeks have been comparing this latest Norelco arcitec's innovations with its previous generation in a hands-on, or should we say, face-on review.
