Crave

OK. Maybe not everything in today's show is super cute, but it gives the ladies the chance to speak in exaggerated falsettos. Jason, on the other hand, balances all the cute with an unintentionally awkward joke about one of the newest segments. Oh, you'll see.

EPISODE 127

Candy Comfort Earphones are comfy and kitschy

PBS Sprout makes iPhone apps for preschoolers

Yuruppy, a virtual-pet petting gizmo

Australian IT expert invents the shoe phone

Could the Bra Dryer save your lingerie?

(Credit: Samsung)

The Korean electronics giant has announced a candy-bar version of its Soul (or Spirit of Ultra) handset. Called the Soulb, this new mobile phone measures a slim 9.9 millimeters and "fully covered in an elegant metallic body which is softly brushed with a hairline pattern," according to the company.

Among its key features are a 3-megapixel camera with LED light, FM radio, 1GB onboard memory with microSD card slot, and a 2-inch QVGA display. The triband Soulb also comes with a multimedia player, document viewer/editor, Bluetooth, and HSDPA support.

Available in five colors (including Soul Grey, Platinum Silver, Metallic Black, Soul Pink and Amethyst Violet), the Soulb is expected to be available first in Germany in early June, followed by other markets such as Europe, Middle East Africa, Asia (China), Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, and South America. Pricing will be made known closer during launch.

(Credit: iCandyPhones)

Readers are always asking, justifiably so, who in their right minds would buy a gold or diamond-
studded gadget. (The operative phrase here is "right minds," of course.) But ours is not to question why.

What we do know, if this eBay auction is any indication, is that some people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for a 24k gold iPhone--presuming that the bids are authentic. The auction, tracked by Gizmodo, drew 69 bids and ended with a sale price of $6,000 last night.

The phone itself is unlocked and of the 16GB variety, apparently from an outfit appropriately dubbed iCandyPhones. The winner's handle wasn't disclosed, perhaps for fear of ridicule by his or her friends.

Can your computer do magic?

This prototype design can. The Illusion PC is one of thousands of entries into the Next-Gen PC Design competition sponsored by Microsoft. Gizmodo spotted it, and I have to agree that it pulls off a pretty nifty visual trick.

The Illusion PC, entry No. 911 in the Next-Gen PC Design Competition.

(Credit: NextGenDesignComp.com)

The design makes the PC appear to have no inner components. The designer says the aim was to make the computer not look like a computer, and when turned off to look just like a household decorative object.

The cube measures 8.25 inches on each side and uses a Mini-ITX mainboard, 200-watt mini-PSU, and slot-loading DVD burner meant for laptops. It has room for up to two standard desktop hard drives. The Illusion can also come with a mini 6-inch monitor and TV tuner card as options. A small wireless keyboard and air mouse are used to control the PC.

While it's intended as a home theater PC, it could also be custom built to consumers' tastes, the designer says.

Click here to see the other equally awesome finalists in the competition.

(Credit: GeekSugar)

You've got to hand it to Madonna. As she turns 50 this year--50!--she's still remaking and evolving herself to stave off irrelevance. And that applies to technology as well, especially where marketing is concerned.

Her latest idea is to make seven tracks from her upcoming album, Hard Candy, available to Vodafone customers before its April 28 release. But don't expect the tunes to be free, GeekSugar says--just early, for bragging rights.

By the way, in case you were wondering, the uber-star's publicist says reports that her marriage is on the rocks are patently false.

We Tell Stories is a new alternate-reality game that tasks players with finding their way through six story lines based on classic Penguin novels and a seventh story that ties them all together.

(Credit: Penguin Books/Six to Start)

The alternate-reality game genre has a new friend, and a new format, thanks to Penguin Books, the famous British publishing house.

On Tuesday, Penguin and startup Six to Start launched their new ARG, We Tell Stories, a new-style game that its creators say is a hybrid of traditional story-telling, Web 2.0-style mashups, interactive games and classic novels.

We Tell Stories is actually a seven-part adventure, said Jeremy Ettinghausen, the digital publisher for Penguin. It will begin with six weekly installments, each of which is based on a classic novel--and written by a different Penguin author--and which tasks participants with finding their way through the story using tools developed for the game.

After the six installments, We Tell Stories will continue with a seventh weekly piece that will be a game tying the six stories together.

"There is a seventh story, where the game element exists," said Etthinghausen, "and it links the other six stories."

Added Adrian Hon, the chief of creative for Six to Start, "the seventh story is a more traditional ARG, and it sort of feeds into the other six stories and binds them together. The seventh story gives you motivation to read all six stories, and explains why they're written."

Six to Start was founded by veterans of Mind Candy--a UK company that produced the well-regarded but ultimately financially unsuccessful ARG, Perplex City--including Hon and Mind Candy's former COO Dan Hon and

In the case of the first installment, which went live Tuesday morning, players will use a Google Maps mashup to work their way through a brand-new story line based on John Buchan's famous novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps.

Ettinghausen explained that the story incorporates Google Maps in such a way that participants can work their way through the narrative not only through the text but also by using the map mashup.

"We knew when we came up with the idea that using Google Maps (would allow) lots of movements," said Hon, "like running down streets and driving down roads. It's a bit like The Bourne Identity."

Hon explained that the game's creators imagine players using Google Maps as a way of locating themselves in the larger narrative. So, for example, at a moment in the story arc where the protagonist finds himself locked in a shipping container and doesn't know where he is, a player could turn to the maps mashup and see dozens of points where he might be.

But while We Tell Stories uses Google Maps for its first installment and will continue to leverage Web 2.0-type tools in the following chapters, players shouldn't expect those tools to be the same.

Further, the entire body of work, while derivative, was created strictly for Web users.

"Each of the six stories has a completely different mechanism for telling them," Ettinghausen said. "But as a whole, these are stories that couldn't have been written (in the past). They're native to the Internet."

"What we tried to do here," Ettinghausen said, "is create a native Internet experience. The stories couldn't exist on paper. But it's not a gimmicky thing. We pushed our authors to look at how viewers and readers are going to view them, thinking about different points in the story, and about how the mechanism in the story is going to effect their writing."

At the end of the game's rainbow is a prize that any erudite player would certainly desire: Penguin's complete library of 1,300 books.

And while the game is based in England, the organizers expect thousands of players from all around the world. They said they expect a third of participants to be American, a third from the UK and a third from other countries. However, only UK residents are eligible to win the library grand prize.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Part of the reason people buy Macs is because of Apple's attention to style. Whether it's bondi blue, smooth white, glossy black, or brushed metal, Mac hardware is as much about functionality as it is the overall aesthetic. Of course, attention to aesthetics doesn't stop at Apple hardware. Mac OS X and most Mac software shares the same smooth lines and beveled edges of the hardware surrounding it. The application icons in the Dock are bright and slick, and the open and close buttons on documents and applications are like pieces of candy. Anyone who has turned a new Apple laptop on for the first time knows what I'm talking about. Not only does it work smoothly, it just plain looks good. But what if you could make it look better?

Panic Software, the makers of long-standing Mac user favorites like Transmit for FTP needs, and Coda for Web design, knew early on people would want to customize the Mac OS. So they put together a program that makes it easy to replace all your system and Dock icons to change the overall look and feel of your desktop. CandyBar lets you load up what they call iContainers with replacements for all your program and Dock icons. If you don't want to pick and choose each icon, CandyBar works seamlessly with the Iconfactory Web site, which offers premade iContainers featuring specific themes. You'll be able to use icon sets depicting the Transformers, characters from The Family Guy, or snowy Christmas themes to completely change the look of your Mac desktop. As an added bonus, CandyBar 3 lets you edit icons using Pixadex which is now built into the software.

Simply drag and drop icons into the appropriate slots to get a new look.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

I'm not sure why this is the case, but CandyBar 3 only works with Mac OS X Leopard. Those who haven't upgraded to the new Mac OS will need to use an earlier version of CandyBar, but I assure you, you won't be disappointed with older versions of this great software.

Though Apple and the Mac OS probably don't need much help in the aesthetics department, there's something to be said for personal style. With CandyBar you'll be able to customize your desktop the way you want to with icons and Dock styles you can change with the click of your mouse.

Money is boring, unless you're spending it on something like an iPhone or a cute new pair of shoes.

Or unless you make investment cool, which is what a new company called Thrasher Funds is trying to do. It's a new mutual fund that's targeting the under-35 crowd with a bunch of youth-oriented and tech-focused holdings (Apple, Uniqlo, Diageo, American Apparel, Volkswagen, Google, and Garmin), "investment parties," and a Web site that looks like a Good Charlotte album cover.

"Commercials from financial behemoths only implore Baby Boomers to start planning and saving for their retirements, and/or their children's college tuition," a company description explains. "That's fine if you're over 40 with children. But what if you're not? What if you're a child of the 70's, 80's or 90's? What should you be planning for?"

Yeah, it's different. New York magazine's Web site called Thrasher Funds "despicable [and] brilliant, and its young writers attested that "we already have an extreme case of generational embarrassment, one that may or may not be manifesting itself in a full-body rash right now. But then again, that's how we felt about Garden State!"

Thrasher Funds isn't a technology company, really. But they're targeting the social-networking generation, which means that yes, the company has a MySpace page. And they've set up shop in the Silicon Alley boardinghouse known as Sunshine Suites, meaning that they're getting plenty of cooties from local Web 2.0 start-ups also using the space.

They're additionally getting a boost from the city-focused women's newsletter Daily Candy, which not only has proudly touted Thrasher as the first-ever investment company to advertise on the e-mail list but also hosted the finance start-up's launch party last week at the Caravan clothing boutique in Manhattan's NoHo neighborhood. The sparkling rose wine was flowing, the company founders were chatting it up with guests, and everything in the store was priced at 20 percent off. (Now that's what I call a party!)

At this point, it looks like all Thrasher really needs is a celebrity executive, you know, like DanceJam's M.C. Hammer or Ooma's Ashton Kutcher.

Thrasher Funds' Web site, which looks like it took a cue from Good Charlotte.

(Credit: Thrasher Funds)

That said, the company also has to prove itself to some extent before young people (even the ones eager to jump on the trendiness bandwagon) are willing to commit actual cash to it. Word-of-mouth testimonials, when they exist, are going to mean a heck of a lot more than a savvy ad campaign. This is the generation that's reportedly afraid to tackle health insurance head-on; mutual funds still are going to look kind of scary to some, no matter how much hot pink is on the Web site.

(Credit: Art Lebedev)

(Credit: Necco)

There's a fine line, it's been said, between genius and insanity. And judging from its latest concept, Art Lebedev Studio has a foot planted firmly on each side.

The Russian-based design firm, a darling of technology circles, may have overdosed on creative license with its idea for the "Pultius" remote--which shuns the very notion of punching in multi-digit codes, according to Engadget, opting instead for 102 buttons that control 399 channels on a 20-inch-long bar. It would at least solve one problem: You'd never lose it between the cushions.

We think the designers got their inspiration from those old "Candy Buttons" from our youth.