fishing

Tool-using fish creates underwater kitchen gadget

Cats like iPads and laser pointers and can carry around their own tracking sensors. Dogs dig treadmills and have translator devices that turn woofs into words. Now fish are getting in on the gadget action, too.

Fish aren't yet ordering iPhones or hooking up HD television sets underwater, but a recent paper published in Coral Reefs, the journal of the International Society for Reef Studies, dove into some interesting behavior from an enterprising black spot tuskfish.

A diver at the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia observed a tuskfish breaking open cockleshells on an anvil to get at the tasty tidbits inside. A series of images show the clever critter in action. … Read more

Kind of fishy

Fish are a popular theme for screensavers; the computer screen lends itself well to aquarium-like graphics, and screensaver developers have taken full advantage of that fact. We like this trend, too; these screensavers bring some of the beauty and relaxation of aquariums to your desk without the hassle of cleaning tanks and adjusting pH levels. Free Desktop Fish Screensaver is one of many such programs, and it didn't do much to impress us. It's not awful, but there are many similar programs out there that we like better.

The program installs easily and appeared in our Display Properties … Read more

Fishy free desktop animation

Artdocks' Animated Fish Desktop Wallpaper is freeware that animates your desktop wallpaper with a realistic-looking tropical fish. The fish swims around your desktop in an overhead view like you're looking down into a pond. The program's own background image is a soothing view of water, but you can use the fish with your own wallpaper pictures, too.

Animated Fish Desktop Wallpaper can be activated from its desktop icon, a Start Menu entry, the system tray, or the program's Start Menu Folder, but not from the usual Desktop Background control on Explorer's Personalize menu. Opening the program … Read more

preGame 26: Drawn II, Shank

Today on preGame, we demo a gorgeous point-and-click adventure-puzzle game for the PC and Mac as well as slice up some baddies in the latest 2D side-scrolling beat-'em-up title for the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.

As promised, today we finally demo the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network title Shank. The game is heavily influenced by graphic novels and edgy, campy movies that feature over-the-top action. We'll play the first few minutes of the game and show off some of its unique art style.

We'll also take a look at Drawn II, the highly anticipated … Read more

SereneScreen Marine Aquarium

SereneScreen Marine Aquarium is a realistic, high-definition screensaver that converts your computer screen into a vibrant, colorful saltwater aquarium. You can choose from 27 different exotic fish species--from the Addis Butterflyfish to the Yellow Tang--and SereneScreen can display up to 30 fish at a time, with an easy interface for creating and customizing your own sets of fish (including an option for random species). You also have settings for autopanning, framerate, iTunes playlists, and a bubble column (from a virtual aerator, with optional bubble sound).

SereneScreen has an optional "crystal" paperweight in the tank, too, which you can … Read more

The right turner for tough jobs

Certain foods are simply delicate: moving them around, even if you're just adjusting their place in the pan, can be tough. The Slotted Fish Turner, however, is designed to make that process significantly easier. It's not just meant for flipping fish, either: it can handle anything you need to take care with, down to making paper-thin crepes. And if you want to use it on heavier foods, like a grilled cheese sandwich or a burger, it's certainly sturdy enough for such tasks. The turner is stainless steel with a triple-riveted poly handle. It can go through the … Read more

Robots infiltrate fish schools, garner followers

Are fish smart enough to tell the difference between real fish and replicant fish? Apparently not. Researcher Maurizio Porfiri is developing robot swimmers that can interact with schools of fish and even lead them around.

You might think Porfiri, an engineering professor at Polytechnic Institute of New York University, might be aiming to use these infiltrator bots to lead large groups of fish into a net for a free aquarium. That seems to be theoretically possible, but the goal of Porfiri's project is to get robots to help fish avoid hazardous areas like power plant turbines.

The prototype robot … Read more

Five killer apps for your docked iPad

Does your iPad pull a lot of desk duty? Does it adorn your kitchen counter or even your nightstand? Do you routinely leave it on a dock or charger? If so, you should put that sucker to good use--even when you're not using it. After all, a big, beautiful screen is a terrible thing to waste.

As you learned yesterday, the iPad already knows how to function as a photo frame--and a damn fine one at that. But not everyone wants to look at photos all day. Maybe you'd prefer stock updates? Tweets? How about fish? Here are five apps to keep a docked iPad interesting:

Bloomberg: Want to keep tabs on the stock market? It's hard to imagine a lovelier window on Wall Street than Bloomberg for iPad. It delivers news, equity indices, a personalized stock portfolio, currency exchange rates, and plenty more, all wrapped in a gorgeous interface--and updated at regular intervals. Best of all, it's a freebie!

Chirp Frame: Twitter addicts, this one's for you. The app serves up tweets as they arrive, effectively turning your iPad into a big, beautiful Twitter frame. You can choose from one of three slick backgrounds, swiping as desired to read earlier tweets. Of course, when you're feeling the need to send out your own status update, all it takes is a tap of the screen to tweet (or reply). Chirp Frame costs 99 cents.

iQuarium HD: Real fish are kind of a pain, don't you think? You have to feed them, clean the tank, yell at people to stop tapping the glass, and all that. iQuarium provides all the joys of fish-tank ownership with none of the hassles (or expense--it's a mere $1.99). Actually, the app is as much a Tamagotchi-style game as it is a virtual fish tank, as you have to feed your fish daily--eventually earning "fish points" to decorate your tank with accessories, backgrounds, more fish, etc. If you want more instant gratification, check out Marine Aquarium (also $1.99).… Read more

Get three BluScenes Blu-ray discs for the price of one

You paid big bucks for that HDTV and Blu-ray player, so you might as well utilize them to their fullest, right? That's the idea behind BluScenes, a series of Blu-ray discs that turn your TV into an aquarium, a fireplace, and, um, a space telescope.

Each disc usually sells for $14.99, but from now until April 23, you can score all three BluScenes discs for just $12.99 (plus $2 for shipping).

The Coral Reef Aquarium is pretty straightforward: it offers three different aquarium views, all of them shot in 1080p using one of those fancy RED One … Read more

Google working on speech translation for phones

Google already runs a successful online translator, Google Translate, but they've got far-loftier ideas than simply converting the written word. They want to translate languages spoken over the phone, according to their head of translation services.

Speaking to The Times, Franz Och, Google's head of translation services, said:

"We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years' time.

Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that's what we're working on.

If you look at the progress in … Read more