These are the walls of a Human-Computer Interaction Institute lab at Carnegie Mellon, and as you can see, they provide plenty of opportunities to create such interactions on the fly when you snag your sweater on some spiky solder leads or that ZIF socket handle. Chris Harrison, a PhD student, bought old motherboards on eBay by the pound to completely adorn the lab in mo-bos. And while this is great for the computer science lab and maybe OK for the garage (maybe), don't even think about doing this in your bedroom if you ever want to have sex again. It does look pretty sweet, though.

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Yes there are pool treadmills, desk treadmills, and water-resistance treadmills for dogs, but the Treadwall throws the horizontal nature of previous treadmill innovations out the window. For 10-grand, you can climb yourself to death in your own living room without getting higher than 10 feet or so, making the inevitable fall when you fail to keep up with the scrolling handholds all the more manageable. But let's see how some drunken Jackass wannabees fare in the following video.

AU: Wow. I was climbing something very similar to this at the local rock-climbing centre when I was in Cadets back in 1996. Unlike the US to be so out of date...

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Microsoft's getting some competition for its Surface device. Panasonic is showing off a very Surface-like product it's calling Digital Wall, and it's exactly what it sounds like. While at this point it doesn't appear to offer all the the features of Surface it could also come in much cheaper that the Microsoft version, and for many people that's the key. Hit the jump for a short video of the Digital Wall in action. [Digital World Tokyo]

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This is what happens when you get a couple of cheap RC cars and add proximity sensors, extra batteries, robot brains, and name them Steve McQueen and Burt Reynolds: totally-automated racing all around your house. These electric robocars can detect the walls around them and race against each other for as long as the batteries last. The resulting Tron-lightcycle-like action is impressive.

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Bocci's wallplugs are a DIY project, but the end result is stunningly minimal and clean, especially compared to the ugly plates we're all used to. Just a sparse power outlet, floating in your wall. It's totally geeky to rave about power outlets, but I really love this. Sadly, I'd have to mar it with a honkin' plug for a massive strip with battery backup. [core77]

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