While we've covered the tech of morbidity before, what we have in the U.S. is nothing compared with the Japanese. Since burials in Tokyo can be so expensive (topping out at more than $100,000), some people have invented a more conservative yet radical solution, according to the BBC: converting warehouses into high-tech graveyards.
Instead of one grave per a given area (like a house on a plot), the graves are stacked (like condos) several feet high. To give relatives access to the remains, a robotic arm retrieves the urn (most Japanese are cremated) and shuttles it to a "mourning room." Think of how a jukebox retrieves a record, only it's ashes.
It's a novel concept, but it's also uniquely Japanese, and we can't really see that catching on here. But it totally makes sense in hyper-dense Tokyo where land is scarce and getting out of the city really isn't an option for many people.
Could your PS3 also be your Dreamcast?
(Credit: CNET)A whopper of a leak shot across the Internet Tuesday, reporting of a Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) meeting that discussed the possibilities of rereleasing classic Sega games as compilation Blu-ray Discs and downloads of PS2 games on the PS3. While we discussed this trend--and even suggested a few great franchises to pursue--when the God of War Collection was announced, an even more surprising and exciting bomb was dropped in these purported meeting minutes:
From the wording of supposedly leaked August 6 SCEA meeting notes found on several forums including NeoGAF, it sounds like both PS2 and Dreamcast games will soon be available over PSN, much like PS1 games are already. That is big news. With PS2, PS1, and Dreamcast titles under their belts, it could be argued that the PS3 would have a Virtual Console that, while not as retro as Nintendo's, would be nearly unbeatable in offering the best of the late '90s and early '00s. After all, back then, the Dreamcast and PS2 were the biggest, bitterest rivals in town. It hasn't been confirmed that these notes are real, but they certainly seem too detailed and logical to not be. ... Read more
One of the most enduring images of the '80s is also one of the decade's most notable gadgets: the DeLorean. Not just because Doc Brown turned one into an iconic time machine, but because there were some amazing and high-tech design elements throughout the machines, like the gull-wing doors, fiberglass and stainless steel construction, and Flux Capacitor.
All kidding aside, they're fantastic cars, yet still fairly expensive. One young man, due to the current recession, no doubt, had trouble paying for his DeLorean. So a team was sent to repossess it. Of course, a reality TV show crew from TruTv's "Operation Repo" was there to document the event. What nobody expected was that the young man who purchased the car was an insane Michael Jackson impersonator.
The fun in this video really starts at 1:50 and just keeps getting more crazy, including a Jacko-Fu kick to the repo man's undercarriage.
I feel bad for the guy and hopes he finds a way to pay for his awesome ride. I recently had a short trip in one of these cars and, if I had the extra cash, I'd be driving one myself.
(Yes, yes, we know "Operation Repo" consists of scripted--and no doubt sometimes embellished--re-enactments of actual repossessions. That said, we're just happy this video happened and like writing about DeLoreans.)
(Credit:
Triumph International)
I just got back from a trip to California, where I got to be with almost my entire extended family. I'm 33 years old and single, so the whole time I had relatives telling me to hurry up and get married. The pressure was horrible. But now that I've seen, courtesy of talk2myShirt, this "husband hunting" bra concept from Japan, I'm a little relieved.
The bra, by Triumph International, has a built-in digital timer indicating how much time's left before the woman wearing it must get married. If she's not married by the time it reaches zero, she's a "leftover," which is perhaps Japan's version of an old maid. Either way, the social stigma must be daunting.
But there's a solution: an engagement ring fits neatly into a compartment above the timer. Only then can the countdown be stopped, thus giving the useless ring a function beyond labeling someone as "taken."
If they make a man version, perhaps boxer briefs, I will not be getting it. I don't need to be reminded every time I drop trou that I'm still single. Thanks, world.
As a side note: why do I keep getting assigned stories about gadgetized underwear?
Is this Dick Cheney's "undisclosed location"?
(Credit: Newlaunches.com)I live in an earthquake-prone city. I live in this city in a very old building made out of unreinforced brick. This building is on the back of a steep hill over a freeway and then a lake. Thus, I'm likely to be crushed under tons of rubble and debris if a major earthquake hits Seattle.
If that does happen, it might take rescuers hours--or even days!--to get to me. And when they do, they'll have to get me to safety somehow.
Hopefully by that time they'll be using this amazing Japanese safety robot tank stretcher thing we spotted on Newlaunches.com. Rescuers put an injured person inside and it protects them as they're whisked away to safety. All the while, it constantly monitors their vital signs.
The device has a dual-tread system to get across all kinds of post-catastrophe wreckage and a motor powerful enough to carry a person who weighs up to 240 pounds. It even has infrared cameras so it can operate around the clock. It's a powerful robot.
Not that humans couldn't do the job. It's just that if my apartment collapses on me, I at least want to be rescued by Japanese robots. Is that too much to ask?
Yes, that is a slice of toast.
(Credit: CrazyPC)We love toast. And by we, I mean you. Everybody loves toast. Even if you say you don't love toast...you still do. It's a fact, an irrefutable fact. What's that you say? Don't put words in your mouth? Or toast either? You really don't love toast that much? It's just all right you say? Well, I have proof that you love toast.
Here we have the PC Toaster Bay from CrazyPC. (What's so crazy about it?) It fits into a standard 5.25-inch drive bay and makes, well, toast--toast from the comfort of your computer. To hook it up you need an available USB port and a four-pin Molex power connector. Your familiar toaster controls for light to dark and time are available via a Windows-based software interface. The generated heat is ventilated through the back of the case.
High-tech toast.
(Credit: CrazyPC)So, there is the undeniable truth: people love toast so much that toasters are now everywhere--even in your computer. To further that chain of logic: You're reading this on a computer, right? And this is about a computer drive bay being used to make toast, right? Therefore you love toast. Case closed.
Oh, everybody loves toast except Mac users; the software isn't available for them (yet).
(Via Cooking Gadgets)
It's the notebook for neurotics.
Asus, the Taiwanese computer maker, will come out with a notebook that sports two 500GB hard drives from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. Combined, this will give a fully configured Asus M70 notebook a terabyte of storage.
Put another way, the notebook will be capable of storing 1,000 hours of video, or more than 350 feature length movies, or 250,000 four-minute songs. That will probably tide you over for even the worst airport layovers. A terabyte also holds about the same amount of data that could be stored on the paper from 50,000 trees.
Asus will also release notebooks with a single 500GB drive.
Behold the Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.
(Credit: Hitachi Global Storage Technologies)Hitachi's Travelstar 5K500 drive, coming in February, is the highest-capacity 2.5-inch drive to date, according to Hitachi. The drive, like most cutting-edge hard drives being made these days, features perpendicular recording, which allows more data per square inch than conventional drives.
Hitachi will also come out with a 400GB version in the first quarter. These drives record data on three platters. The prices on the drives and the notebooks were not revealed.
A related drive, the Travelstar E5K500, is due by the end of the second quarter, also in both 400GB and 500GB versions. The "E" in the model number apparently stands for "enhanced availability"--this drive is intended for lower-transaction environments working round-the-clock, including blade servers, network routers, point-of-sale terminals and video surveillance systems. Clarification: We were initially unclear on the drive that's due in Q2. As noted in this paragraph, it's the E5K500.
A few years ago, a terabyte of storage was an astronomical amount of storage. Sony showed off a home storage device at Ceatec in Japan in 2004 with a . The unit cost about $5,000.
Hard-drive manufacturers, however, have managed to double the amount of storage on their drives about every two years. (During the late 1990s, they were doubling storage capacity annually.) Thus, the astronomical becomes conventional pretty quickly. Desktop terabyte drives with larger 3.5-inch-diameter platters started appearing last year. (Hitachi came out with the first.) These drives sell for around $400.
Analysts and self-employed experts often scoff at the increase in storage, claiming customers won't need more storage. Drive execs, however, note that the public continues to gobble up as many gigabytes as they can shovel out the door. The advent of high-definition video and digital video recorders has been a boon for hard-drive makers.
Some drive makers, notably Seagate Technology and Western Digital, are even making money, which can be rare in this business. (Hitachi, which bought IBM's drive business, often loses money and is looking at ways to sell of its hard drive division.)
Casinos are also big consumers of drives, according to hard-drive execs. What do you think they store all that surveillance video on?
Lots of kids expect to score video game gifts this holiday season, but they also expect to be highly disappointed by said gifts, according to a new nationwide survey.
(Credit:
Game Crazy)
While 80 percent of 8- to 17-year-olds polled by video game specialty retailer Game Crazy say they'll ask for a video game for the holidays, 60 percent anticipate getting a game they don't want, getting a game for the wrong system, or not getting any or all of the games on their holiday wish list. It's tough being a misunderstood young game aficionado in today's title- and console-laden world.
The kids' downtrodden expectations come from experience. According to the survey, nearly half of all those polled (49 percent) said they were let down by a video game-related gift they received last year.
Game Crazy, of course, is ready to help out. It has produced a parents' guide to video game buying (PDF) that walks uneducated moms and dads through game genres and types of game systems. It also has created a video game wish list that kids can complete online and e-mail to parents, grandparents, patrons, Secret Santas, or Hanukkah Harrys. The list also indicates each video game's rating.
For its 2007 Holiday Gift Tracker survey, Game Crazy polled 1,000 male and female participants online. Breaking down the meta disappointment, the poll finds that:
• 45 percent of those surveyed expect to get a game from their parents that they simply don't want.
Whatever you do, Mom and Dad, don't get them this game.
(Credit: Atari )• 75 percent of kids think they won't get all of the games on their holiday list; 33 percent think they won't get any.
• 62 percent of kids will ask for at least one video game they know has an ESRB rating over their age level; 58 percent think they will get a game rated above their age level.
• If it meant getting their favorite game, 29 percent of kids would agree to the not-always-fun task of teaching their brother or sister how to play it; 28 percent would agree to listen to their parents' favorite radio station in the car. Get ready for lots of Celine Dion, youngsters.
The good news? If kids go into the holidays with such truly dreary hopes, they'll just be happy you didn't get them 1982's ET: The Extra Terrestrial for the original Atari.
"Sometimes you just want to go out immediately, with reckless abandon."
So says the front page of CrazyBlindDate.com, which aims to get people together on sporadic blind dates with very little notice. The site--whose creators also are responsible for OKCupid.com--was soft-launched in Austin awhile back and officially entered a beta phase on Tuesday with new urban centers in New York, Boston, and San Francisco. The interface is sleek, and the concept is cool, but with this kind of thing it's really all about the people who use it.
Short version: You fill out a bunch of forms, get alerted, and then go on a date with someone whose photo you've never seen. (Eek!)
Longer version: CrazyBlindDate is pretty methodical. You select your city, tell the site whether you'd like to go on a solo date or double date and narrow down the times and neighborhoods that work for you. The site then asks you how much notice you need pre-date. I live in New York, and CrazyBlindDate was even courteous enough to ask me if I were an NYU or Columbia student who wanted to be set up with a fellow student. (They require a university e-mail address to confirm.)
Then you get to be picky, selecting preferred age ranges, ethnicities, heights, body types, and education levels (Grey's Anatomy freaks, you can choose to go on a date with someone who has a med school degree!) If you're too picky, a little alert box will pop up and say you might want to loosen up. But come on, really, I wasn't being that finicky by requesting an athletic guy under 35 who's over 6'1", has a graduate degree, and could meet me in Tribeca, right?
Let's face it: This site is going to get used by a whole lot of lonely people who want to get some tail (and by Grey's fans who want to go on dates with cute doctors).
Fortunately for CrazyBlindDate, there are a whole lot of people who fit that description. I smell a successful dot-com brewing.
Street luge is for wimps. If you really want to get the adrenaline pumping, all you need is a Rollersuit and a map of the Swiss Alps. Just try to stay in your lane. Watch Rollersuit inventor Jean-Yves Blondeau push the boundaries of sanity in the video below.
[Via Glumbert.]
