Lullabub

The Lullabub is an innovative product that will gently rock a baby cot or crib automatically & unassisted, in a harmonic rhythm to naturally soothe & settle babies to sleep. This will help the parent attend to other duties or catch up on some much needed and well deserved REST.
Features: automatic cot rocker, automatic timer setting, user friendly remote control, etc, etc, and etzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztera.

The World's Most Expensive Car?

Forbes published a list of the 10 Most Expensive Cars in the World recently. This car, the Saleen S7 Twin Turbo is by far the most expensive car. The price tag is huge - it can be yours for $670,000 if you live in Europe, that is. In the U.S. it’s quite a bargain: only $555,000 (around 31 million Philippine Pesos) ...ouch!

Missing Lab Mice Infected with Plague

Last Sept 15 PhysOrg reported:
The FBI and New Jersey officials have started a hushed but intensive search for three missing lab mice reportedly infected with deadly strains of plague.
GOOD GRIEF! What exactly are we talking about here: anthrax? ebola? smallpox?
I thought these things only happen in the movies.

Five Funny Principles Of Marketing

(thanks techimo for image)

Seen on Dave's Daily recently.
You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say, "I'm fantastic in bed." That's Direct Marketing.
You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says, "He's fantastic in bed." That's Advertising.
You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day you call and say, "Hi, I'm fantastic in bed." That's Telemarketing.
You're at a party and see a gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour her a drink. You open the door for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her a ride, and then say, "By the way, I'm fantastic in bed." That's Public Relations.
You're at a party and see a gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says, "I hear you're fantastic in bed." That's Brand Recognition.

Innovation Makes Winners

Pizza Fork and Cutter!
Just like my grandma used to say, "Always try to hit two birds with one stone."

The World's Most Mobile TV Card!

The Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS receives digital and analogue TV signals, yet is no larger than a USB memory stick! Just connect the ultra-compact TV tuner to a notebook or PC via a USB 2.0 port – and in a flash you're able to view both all analogue TV programs available in the transmission area and the digital programs transmitted via DVB-T.
Regardless of where you are, your TV card is there with you. At a stationary PC at home you receive programs via the house antenna or the analogue cable connection. Away from home you simply connect the handy tuner to your notebook and use the included DVB-T compact antenna. And you don't ever have to go without the accustomed TV viewing comfort, as a matching remote control is also included.
You can also use the Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS as a digital video recorder for recording analogue and digital terrestrial TV programs with full MPEG 2 support.

Is There a Link Between Car Color and Accidents?

A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Auckland, New Zealand indicates that there may be a link between car color and serious injuries as a result of car accidents. Their findings were published in the The British Medical Journal in December 2003.
The study involved accidents in New Zealand between 1998 and 1999. According to their findings, drivers of brown cars had the highest risk of sustaining serious injuries caused by auto accidents. Black and green cars also had elevated risks.
Which are the safest cars? Drivers of silver-colored cars, according to the report, have a 50% less chance of being involved in an injury-causing accident than do drivers of white cars! Why? Perhaps lighter colored cars are more visible...
To see full article and table of most popular car colors, click here.
Also, try to make an image search for 'car wreck' on Yahoo or Google and you'll be amazed at how many images of brown, black or red cars come up.

Electronic Nose Sniffs Out Infections, Chemicals, Cancer

(cyborg image courtesy of the Focal Point Seminar)

Cnet reports:
Engineers at the University of Warwick say that development of an electronic nose can recognize organic compounds in infections known as MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), according to a report this week in New Scientist. The technology could help hospitals prevent outbreaks of the superbug.
Tests at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital on ear, nose and throat swabs from 600 patients showed the e-nose is close to 100% accurate at detecting infections.
The image below is the chip of another electronic nose developed at Caltech which is used in chemical sensing and electronic information processing. These 'noses' by the way don't resemble cyborg nose spare parts attached to human faces. They actually look more like scifi consoles. But electronic noses that detect viruses would be so important today, especially in the wake of WHO announcement of avian flu pandemics.

Satellite Image Wallpapers

These are satellite images that can be used as wallpaper. Satellite images are available at Jeff's Homepage.


(L-R) Hamburg, Germany and 1000 ft. dunes, Namib Nat'l Park, Africa


(L_R) Brussels, Belgium and New Orleans in 2001

Mood Website

A blogger friend, Wanderer, featured a funny site on his blog. At moodtap.com you can upload any image expressing your chosen feeling and they will add it to their gallery. This is an image I quickly scribbled on MSPaint and uploaded at Moodtap. Now this image is nothing but crap, but this was added to their gallery. Uploading was quick; no upload limit; image doesnt have to be a photo. I'd say this site is like Flickr without the rules. Cool!

Psychopaths Could be Best Financial Traders?

Research reveals that the best wheeler-dealers could well be "functional psychopaths." A team of U.S. scientists has found the emotionally impaired are more willing to gamble for high stakes and that people with brain damage may make good financial decisions, the Times newspaper reported Monday.
In a study of investors' behavior 41 people with normal IQs were asked to play a simple investment game. Fifteen of the group had suffered lesions on the areas of the brain that affect emotions. The result was those with brain damage outperformed those without.
This was because, the scientists found, emotions led some of the group to avoid risks even when the potential benefits far outweighed the losses, a phenomenon known as myopic loss aversion.
link

Wacky Stuff For Sale

Some crazy stuff I found for sale on the web:
Farting Toilet Paper Cover
Every time you pull the paper, the cover emits a realistic (and really funny) fart sound. Great for dorm or kids’ bathroom. This is available here.

Anti Gravity Machine

This slick piece of kit not only comes with a very cool-looking globe, but can also hold a Floating Picture Frame or a funky floating Night Light! This wacky machine can be found here.
More funny gifts can also be found at surprise.com website.

Feng Shui Motherboard!

Beijing, China - Fengtek released their first motherboard based on the ancient Chinese philosophy of Feng Shui. Many interior designers use the principles of Feng Shui to arrange furniture in rooms, so the areas have positive energy. Fengtek is the first company to move these principles to motherboard design.
Vincent Xiang, lead designer at Fengtek, explained how positioning the components away from traditional locations brought peace to the motherboard, "We put the CPU in the center, because that is the chi, or life force for the entire board. A centered chi provides better performance."
"We didn't rely on reference boards or schematics from chip manufacturers. Those designs had too many straight lines and sharp corners, which are unnatural and direct poison arrows at our soul. Instead, we tilted the memory slots and added an extra expansion slot at an angle to direct those negative energies away from the user," continued Xiang.
For further explanation on how this principle was applied, click here.

'I Hate Men' Knife Block

Saw this on Your Gift Ideas, a site I've listed in my collection of Cool Sites of the Day.
Well, isn't this the best knife block you've ever seen in your life? Forget bland polished beech, this is award winning stuff. Designed by the Italian design guru Raffaele Iannello, the 'Voodoo', is destined to find its place among the greats in the top design museums of the world. It comes complete with a set of 5 stainless steel knives: a paring knife; bread knife; carving knife and a large and small chopping knife. Each of the five knives is held in place by a small magnet in the body, and the blades are protected at the rear by a frosted plastic sleeve. Brilliant design, superb humour, what more could you want in your kitchen (and wouldn't it make the ultimate present for any number of occasions).
If you hate men, you can buy this here.

Wooden PC

This handmade redwood PC, keyboard, mouse and monitor case was carved by a Russian craftsman for a client in Moscow.
Don't you just love the CPU and the mouse? Amazing!
(go to the Russian site to see the other photos here).

Great Geek Site

Great site for geeks like me. It has an article "What is a Scoville Unit?"
A Scoville unit is a unit used to specify the hotness of food, specifically chili peppers. In 1912 Wilbur Scoville, devised a system to determine how hot foods are.
The sensation of heat that we experience from eating certain peppers is attributable to a chemical called capsaicin. The more capsaicin present in a pepper, the hotter it will seem. The Scoville scale spans from 0 to 16 million; a sweet bell pepper has 0 Scoville units because there is no capsaicin present and pure capsaicin crystals have 16,000,000 Scoville units.
Scoville units vary widely from one chili species to the next. The hottest pepper ever grown is the Naga Jolokia from Assam, India which has a Scoville score of 855,000! Tabasco sauce has a score of 5,000 units.
see full article and chili table

Ex-millionaire Sells His Body

Dave's Daily reports:
A Chinese ex-millionaire is selling off parts of his body as advertising space.
Che Hongwei, 37, from Dunhua, is displaying adverts written all over his face and upper body.
He has 'Big Lazy Bug' - the Chinese equivalent of 'Lazybones' - written across his face.
Two years of gambling were enough to wipe out the former millionaire's fortune and reduce him to bankruptcy.
But his new way of making money is not an attempt to rebuild his wealth.
Che says all of the money he makes from advertising will go to help pay teachers in poor rural areas.

BIC Ballpen Sells 100 Billionth Pen

More than half a century after honing a cheap version of the ballpoint pen, Bic, the French firm which built an empire out of making things to be thrown away, said Thursday it had sold its 100 billionth -- 100,000,000,000th --- disposable ballpoint.
The group started small after the war and now has annual revenues of around 1.4 billion euros, including sales of razors and lighters.
"The pens have been sold on average 57 times a second since 1950," BIC said.
read full article

Caring For Newborns

Yahoo! Most Emailed Photos posted this photo recently:
One and Two-day-old newborn babies listen to music with headphones at the 1st Private Hospital in Kosice-Saca. The experimental program that started approximetly two years ago, is based on using musical therapy in improving the quality of caring for the newborns shortly after birth.(AFP/Joe Klamar)

Why Men are Happier than Women

Daves Daily lists 35 reasons why this is so. Here is a sampling of the 35:
1. We keep our last name.
2. Wedding plans take care of themselves.
3. Chocolate is just another snack.
4. We can be president.
5. We can wear a white T-shirt to a water park.
6. The world is our urinal.
7. Wrinkles add character.
8. Wedding dress - $5000; tux rental - $100.
9. Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
10. We know stuff about tanks.
11. A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase.
12. We get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
13. If someone forgets to invite us, he or she can still be our friend.
14. Our underwear is $8.95 for a three-pack.
15. Everything on our face stays its original color.
16. Three pairs of shoes are more than enough.

Tiger Balm Fotos

Boing Boing reports Singapore's Tiger Balm ointment theme-park displaying Buddhist hell, in which all manner of sin and demonic punishment was depicted in tiny sculptures. Also amazing: the exhibit on "filial piety" that featured a statue of a woman nursing her aged mother-in-law from her breast. More fotos taken from a tour of Tiger Balm can be viewed in gruntzookis fotos. Believe me, the images are amazing.

Need protection?

This is an image I got from nana. I wish these devices can be bought. Would certainly spare us from a lot of heartaches in this crazy world.
Also have a new blogger friend, vasco, who also got great images.

Thank God for family and friends

In my Aug 16 post, I mentioned that I was diagnosed with gall bladder stones. Well, 2 weeks after that I went to another city to consult another doctor who specializes in gall bladder problems. He advised me to undergo a cholecystectomy (if you dont understand this word, double-click it), otherwise, within 2 years I will have complications that I wouldnt like at all. So right then and there my wife and I decided to have it. I would like to thank the Lord for helping us in our time of need. I would like to thank our friends, especially Roobs and Binky, who helped us tremendously. Of course, our family, our church, and my office mates were also a great source of support. Family and friends are gifts of God to us all. Let us treasure them.

Ran out of ideas?

Here is a site that helps you generate more ideas.
Martin Leith says, This website lists and explains every idea generation method I've encountered during the past 15 years. It is the result of extensive research; my many sources include books, management journals, websites, academics, consultants and colleagues.
The methods have been drawn not just from the worlds of creative problem solving and innovation, but also from other worlds such as organisational change, strategic planning, psychotherapy, the new sciences and the creative arts.
see the list of idea generation methods

An idiot's guide in creating a zero gravity chamber

I got this from AmaSci.
Here's a quick way to generate "zero gravity." Actually, this is really a method for generating freefall weightlessness. Zero-G means zero acceleration or zero G-force, not "zero gravity."
The space shuttle orbits at about 300 miles above the earth. Did you know that, at 300 miles above the earth, the gravity is only about 15% less than gravity at the surface? Gravity inside the space shuttle is 85% normal. It only appears to be zero. This happens because the space shuttle is falling, and the astronauts are falling as well. Whenever any container is falling free, the contents of the container will appear to be weightless. Of course the shuttle and its contents are also moving sideways as they fall, so they never hit the earth.
Our "zero gravity" generator is simply a TV camera in a box. By shifting our point of view to the inside of a movable box, we can create genuine "weightlessness", exactly the same as within any orbiting space craft.

MATERIALS:
- Camcorder or small TV camera
- Television monitor
- Long narrow cardboard box
- Light fixture and floodlight
- wooden boards
read whole article.