By Luke Anderson Many of us in the younger generation love to pile gadgets on our desks. It’s not uncommon to see a pair of monitors, nice speakers, an iPod dock and a few others all set up at our workspace. What is interesting is that when I see someone’s desk that is a generation or […]

By Luke Anderson

Many of us in the younger generation love to pile gadgets on our desks. It’s not uncommon to see a pair of monitors, nice speakers, an iPod dock and a few others all set up at our workspace. What is interesting is that when I see someone’s desk that is a generation or two older, they tend to have more pictures, trophies and other personal objects in place of the technology. If you know someone like that, you might show them this pair of speakers that also act as picture frames.

This cool convergence device allows someone to free up a little desk space by hiding away their computer speakers behind a pair of picture frames.  I’d say they were a good buy at $50 for the pair.

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By Luke Anderson It always fascinates me that you can take something, make it look old and it’s suddenly cool because it’s “retro.” Aside from the ability to create mix tapes, there wasn’t anything cool about the cassette tape that I ever saw. This Cassette MP3 player would probably be the closest thing to cool that […]

By Luke Anderson

It always fascinates me that you can take something, make it look old and it’s suddenly cool because it’s “retro.” Aside from the ability to create mix tapes, there wasn’t anything cool about the cassette tape that I ever saw. This Cassette MP3 player would probably be the closest thing to cool that the cassette tape will ever get.

What makes this device cool is that it can act as both a stand-alone MP3 player and as a cassette tape. If you actually still have a stereo that takes the old tapes, you can put this in and it will play just the same. It’ll set you back $40, which is a bit steep considering the fact that you’ll need to supply your own SD card to store the music.

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By Andrew Liszewski It seems more people are getting tattoos these days to show loyalty to a particular brand or product than for traditional rebellious reasons. We’ve all seen our share of Nintendo, Apple or even Zune tattoos, but none of them come even close to the ink that one Spiderman fan had done. The tattoo […]

By Andrew Liszewski

It seems more people are getting tattoos these days to show loyalty to a particular brand or product than for traditional rebellious reasons. We’ve all seen our share of Nintendo, Apple or even Zune tattoos, but none of them come even close to the ink that one Spiderman fan had done. The tattoo is designed to look like the guy’s skin is actually being torn away to reveal the Spiderman costume underneath. While I personally think having the Superman logo revealed on his chest would’ve been slightly cooler, this tattoo is still an impressive piece of work.

You can check out the thread that this tattoo spawned on Emptees.com, but I have to warn you that some of the other tattoos are definitely not safe for work.

[ Emptees - Craziest Tatoo I’ve Seen (NSFW) ] VIA [ Geekologie ]

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Skype is now available on many leading mobile phones, even though depending on where you live you can’t use it to call people. The java based mobile thin Skype client works on around 50 of the most popular Java-enabled mobile phones from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. The standard feature set includes chat, group chat, presence, […]

Skype is now available on many leading mobile phones, even though depending on where you live you can’t use it to call people.

The java based mobile thin Skype client works on around 50 of the most popular Java-enabled mobile phones from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. The standard feature set includes chat, group chat, presence, receiving calls from Skype users, and through SkypeIn. The half pregnant part: Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut calls are initially only supported in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

It’s a big step forward for Skype; the company has a partnership with the 3 network and offers Skype enabled phones (and even a Skype phone) in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, Macau, Sweden and the United Kingdom, but Skype on handsets outside of these markets has been the domain of third party go-between services until now. For eBay, getting Skype on more phones means increased use of the service, and hopefully enough profit to keep it from selling Skype at the end of the year.

Skype notes that this release is “expected to last several months, after which a public version of the application will be made available to millions of mobile phone owners around the world,” by which we’d hope is a fully fledged Skype client for everyone.

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By Andrew Liszewski If you’re an avid cyclist who’s always been frustrated that your local lakes, rivers and ponds are off limits to your bike, then Hammacher Schlemmer has the solution for you. The Performance Water Cycle is a single seat bike designed for use on water instead of land. You’ll have to sit in the […]

By Andrew Liszewski

If you’re an avid cyclist who’s always been frustrated that your local lakes, rivers and ponds are off limits to your bike, then Hammacher Schlemmer has the solution for you. The Performance Water Cycle is a single seat bike designed for use on water instead of land. You’ll have to sit in the same position as if you were riding a recumbent bike, but the pedal-powered 15-inch 2-blade propeller will allow you to reach speeds of up to 7 mph. I guess that’s where the ‘performance’ part of Performance Water Cycle comes in. While you won’t be hydroplaning across the surface of the lake, it’s apparently faster than an Olympic swimmer or a traditional paddle boat.

The Water Cycle can support up to 350 lbs and the fiberglass-covered high-density foam core features precisely balanced pontoons on either side for a stable ride. It needs at least 2 feet of water in order to operate, but it can apparently remain upright even in waves as high as 3 feet. You can get it from Hammacher Schlemmer for $2,995,95, which is smart pricing because if they had listed it for $3,000 I would said it was too expensive.

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By Andrew Liszewski For a while now, shower manufacturers have been trying to one up each other with models that feature more jets and more functions than the competition. But I think the battle for luxury shower supremacy may have a new front runner with the Pure Satin Steam Shower. It features a standard over head […]

By Andrew Liszewski

For a while now, shower manufacturers have been trying to one up each other with models that feature more jets and more functions than the competition. But I think the battle for luxury shower supremacy may have a new front runner with the Pure Satin Steam Shower. It features a standard over head shower plus an adjustable shower on a slide rail for positioning at the appropriate height. Adjustable back massage jets. A steam module with time and temperature settings. An ozone sterilization system that will clean the shower at the push of a button. A tri-protection safety system which features an automatic cut-off to prevent burns. And even a foot massage device designed to target the acupuncture points on the sole of your feet with hydraulic, mechanical and magnetic massages.

And if you’re the type who finds showering to be a bit boring, the Pure Satin even features a built-in FM radio with a waterproof speaker and a wireless transmitter for listening to a CD or MP3 player that’s not water-friendly. Best of all, the shower’s many functions can all be accessed from a wireless and water-safe remote, allowing you to turn everything on before you even set foot inside. Not surprisingly this luxury will set you back about $2,189, and that’s the sale price.

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By Luke Anderson If you’ve ever watched Star Wars (please tell me everyone here has) you’ll remember that the location of the rebel base was outed when Vader and Tarken decided to put a homing beacon aboard the Millennium Falcon. Well if you’re ever paranoid that someone might be tracking you in a similar fashion, […]

By Luke Anderson

If you’ve ever watched Star Wars (please tell me everyone here has) you’ll remember that the location of the rebel base was outed when Vader and Tarken decided to put a homing beacon aboard the Millennium Falcon. Well if you’re ever paranoid that someone might be tracking you in a similar fashion, you might want to pick up one of these GPS Tracker Defense devices.

This is quite simply a GPS jammer. You need only to plug it into your car’s cigarette lighter and every GPS device within a 5-meter radius will be disabled. This of course means you won’t be able to use your own GPS to guide you to your location, but that’s the price you pay for paranoia. Well, that and around $300.

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Chilirec is a new Swedish music site found through Go2Web20 that extracts individual tracks from world wide web radio stations. It then lets you either play them back in the browser or download them as MP3 files for later use. You start with Chilirec by choosing from a preselected set of a few hundred channels. Two downsides: you […]

Chilirec is a new Swedish music site found through Go2Web20 that extracts individual tracks from internet radio stations. It then lets you either play them back in the browser or download them as MP3 files for later use.

You start with Chilirec by choosing from a preselected set of a few hundred channels. Two downsides: you can’t load your own channels and you can’t listen to them normally before choosing to record. But once you to begin recording, Chilirec will start loading the songs into its Flash-based player so you can play them back at your convenience (somehow it knows just when songs begin and end, and which ones they are).

After you’ve built up a recorded collection, you can search through your songs using keywords that will match artists, titles and genres. You can also play recordings by channel, artist, and playlist. A “toplists” feature will presumably display the songs that are most popular across your selected channels, but it takes at least a day of recording to work.

If you want to play a song outside of Chilirec, you can click on an icon next to it and it will be saved as an MP3 on your desktop. It would be great to see them add a feature for bulk downloads in addition to the ability to load your own channels (for your local radio station, for example).

Chilirec is a nice tool for when you don’t know exactly which music you want to add to your collection. Other music search sites like Songza and Skreemr are superior when you have an artist or song name in mind. And of course, Pandora and Jango are great for when you want to find music related to the stuff you already know you like.

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By Luke Anderson When I was a kid I loved Batman, heck he’s still pretty cool in my book. I tried a few times to make my own Bat Signal by taping some paper to a flashlight, but it just never really worked out too well. Thankfully someone has finally put together a working Bat Signal […]

By Luke Anderson

When I was a kid I loved Batman, heck he’s still pretty cool in my book. I tried a few times to make my own Bat Signal by taping some paper to a flashlight, but it just never really worked out too well. Thankfully someone has finally put together a working Bat Signal that you can buy.

Granted, this device isn’t going to light up the night sky, but it’ll at least make a good signal from across the room (around 16 feet).  You’ll need to have some Bruce Wayne-like funds though, as this light will set you back $309.

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As the Web swells with more and more data, the predominant way of sifting through all of that data—keyword search—will one day break down in its ability to deliver the exact information we want at our fingertips. In fact, some argue that keyword search is already delivering diminishing returns—as the slide above by Nova […]

As the Web swells with more and more data, the predominant way of sifting through all of that data—keyword search—will one day break down in its ability to deliver the exact information we want at our fingertips. In fact, some argue that keyword search is already delivering diminishing returns—as the slide above by Nova Spivack implies. Spivack is the CEO and founder of semantic Web startup Radar Networks and is pushing his view that semantic search will help solve these problems. But anyone frustrated by the sense that it takes longer to find something on Google today than it did even a year ago knows there is some truth to his argument.

“Keyword search is okay,” he says, “but if the information explosion continues we need something better.” Today, there are about 1.3 billion people on the Web, and more than 100 million active Websites. As more people pile on, the amount of information on the Web keeps growing exponentially to accommodate all those seekers, and they themselves feel compelled to put their own personal and social information onto the Web as well.

At a certain point, with billions and billions of Web pages to sift through, keyword search just won’t cut it anymore. It’s a needle-in-the-haystack problem, with the haystacks just getting bigger and bigger every second.

Spivack explains:

Keyword search engines return haystacks, but what we really are looking for are the needles . The problem with keyword search such as Google’s approach is that only highly cited pages make it into the top results. You get a huge pile of results, but the page you want—the “needle” you are looking for—may not be highly cited by other pages and so it does not appear on the first page. This is because keyword search engines don’t understand your question, they just find pages that match the words in your question.

So how do we get beyond keyword search and Google’s PageRank? There are many approaches being tried: social search, tagging, guided search, natural-language search, statistical methods, open search, semantic search, and (way out there) artificial intelligence. They all have their problems. Tags are too messy and inconsistent. Natural-language requires too much computing power, is difficult to scale, and doesn’t deal with structured data well. Semantic search is perhaps the most promising, but it essentially requires every single Webpage to be re-written.

Spivack covered these issues during a presentation earlier this month at the Next Web conference in Amsterdam. It was one of the clearest explanations of the semantic Web I’ve heard so far (I’ve embedded his full slide show below). The semantic Web is nothing more than a set of standards that, if broadly adopted, would help computers extract meaning from the flood of data on the Web. But instead of a brute software approach, it puts intelligence into the data. “All you need to use that data is carried by the data itself,” says Spivack. Dumb software, smart data. That is an approach that scales no matter how many billions of Web pages are created.

The point, says Spivack, is:

To do for data what the Web did for documents.

You are turning the Web into a database, and your data becomes a part of it. Your data becomes part of the worldwide database. The semantic Web will let you move from data record to data record, just like you go from Web page to Web page.

There are many obstacles to the adoption of the semantic Web, but its goals are something worth striving for. What is certain is that search needs to evolve, and Google and Yahoo and Microsoft with it. Of course, they can adopt whichever approach or combination proves most effective.

The question is: Will they, or are they too wedded to keyword search to move beyond it?

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