GadgetReview

You may remember reading here, back in March, about the D3O protective plasticine goo being used in soldiers’ helmets, but now it’s got a more mundane use–as a gadget protector.

Parent company Tech21 recently launched a wide array of smartphone and laptop cases that offer between, get this, “140 and 221 percent more protection for a mobile device or laptop than existing cases can”.

See, D3O is a strange sort of chemically engineered, enhanced Silly Putty of sorts that, when you pull it apart slowly, stretches much like Silly Putty would.  But if you jolt it abruptly, it hardens and becomes rigid, offering a shock absorption capability for relatively low space.

D3O cases are now available, and cost between twenty eight and fifty bucks depending on where you shop and what sizes you get.

Read

Officially endorsed by the Japanese Military, these “Japan Self-Defense Force Sunglasses” really need to be worn by the Terminator for true authenticity purposes.

Apparently capable of withstanding impact from 6.5mm object traveling at a speed of 106 MPH, so I don’t know why the above picture shows a bullet racing towards these cool guy shades.  After all a bullet travels up to 1000 MPH, and the general force of impact on your head would give you beyond a hectic whiplash, exorcist style. …Continue reading: Almost BulletProof Japanese Self-Defense Force Sunglasses

You’d have to have some seriously huge nards to wanna wear the Black Ops Throat Mic in public, but that’s exactly what they intend for you to do since it’s iPhone compatible.  Then again, nothing is worse then the geektastic Bluetooth headsets that people wear as every day jewelry.

Like iterations we’ve seen before, this headset picks up your throats vibration/audio and transfers it to the handset via a wired connection, while a small in ear headphone sends the audio to your dome.  Should work great in a convertible, though I’m not sure how palatable the $119 price tag is for most.

Read

The Punjab police, ladies and gentlemen, have stepped boldly into twenty-first century law enforcement technology by receiving a consignment of Tasers, the first of their kind in India.

They’ve become both ubiquitous and infamous in the United States, the devices fire a pair of darts connected to the base unit by thin cables with transmit an electrical current into the subject, thus incapacitating him.

The Punjab police have apparently ordered enough Tasers to outfit two entire battalions.

Tales of gross misuse of Tasers follow them literally everywhere, with the classic cry of “Don’t tase me, bro!” intermingling with stories of the devices being used for torture as they don’t leave marks on the body.  Considering the sheer amount of bad press these things have taken over the years, it’s a wonder any police department is actually looking at them.

Read

The ADE 651 is a device with an impressive marketing angle.  Over in Iraq, it’s being used to sniff out everything from bombs to guns to drugs and beyond, and detect them all from a distance of up to half a mile.  It’s a handheld device, easy to carry, the Iraqi military swears by it…there’s just one problem.

It doesn’t actually work.

ATSC, the company that makes the ADE 651, claims that they work via “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction”, which if I remember my collegiate physics courses correctly means “a bunch of sciencey terms strung together almost at random”.  Independent testing of many similar devices by the Department of Defense shows none of them work much better than pure chance.  And here’s the part that’ll kill you–they sold the Iraqi military fifteen hundred of these things at prices ranging from $16,500 to $60,000 dollars EACH.

And there you go.  The Iraqis bought at least $24 million worth of bomb detectors that don’t detect.

Read

So I was digging around when I found DARPArama, kind of a clearinghouse of prototypes and ideas and whatnot out of DARPA, or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

And I started reading about the Phraselator…and frankly, you’re not going to believe this.

The Phraselator is a voice recognition based translator device.  Basically, you speak it at the Phraselator and it tells you the equivalent of what you want to say in another language, much like the Universal Translator devices of Star Trek fame.  The Phraselator starts out with an onboard six languages, but this is only a starting point as the Phraselator can be taught many more.  In fact, the Los Angeles Police Department, which bought several of them, taught their Phraselators a whopping 224 languages.

It may well be only a matter of time before we can slip on a Bluetooth-style headset, go anywhere in the world, and be absolutely certain we speak the native language no matter what language we actually speak.

Read

So originally I was going to write about India’s newfound fascination with the road spike, but then I thought better of it and discovered that Boston Dynamics was actually well on its way to making Terminators.

Aren’t you glad I didn’t go with the road spike story?

Anyway, Boston Dynamics has developed a class of robot, the Petman, that “closely mirrors human physiology”.  It’s currently being used to test chemical warfare suits, and therefore controls movement, humidity, and even a kind of sweating to get the closest possible approximation of how the gear will work with humans.  Here’s word direct from Boston Dynamics:

“Natural, agile movement is essential for PETMAN to simulate how a soldier stresses protective clothing under realistic conditions. The robot will have the shape and size of a standard human, making it the first anthropomorphic robot that moves dynamically like a real person.”

I don’t know whether to be impressed or horrified, so I’m going with both.  It MOVES…like a real PERSON.  I’m always a little squeamish when people talk about robots that look, act, or behave like people.  Too much bad science fiction growing up, I suppose, but it always seems like robot assassins are never too far behind that development.

Read

Well, here’s an interesting note to kick off the morning.

Attention Taser Owners: if you have one, don’t shoot someone in the chest with them.  You could kill them.

According to an October 12th training bulletin, Taser International–the company that makes the new must-have law enforcement gadget–says that firing one into a subject’s chest has an “extremely low” risk of causing–get this–an “adverse cardiac event”.

If you’re thinking “makes heart stop / explode / turn into a blackened lump in your chest”, you’re thinking about the same way I am.  This is the first time Taser International has ever suggested that there’s any risk of fatality with the Taser at all, and frankly, it’s downright terrifying.  The chest is a vastly bigger target than any limb–they call it the “center of mass” shot for a reason–so to claim that every time someone uses a Taser, the target just might DIE, is a reason to rethink the whole concept of issuing Tasers to cops.

Don’t tase me, bro…it takes on a whole new meaning when you know it might kill you.

Read

Well, that’s it for me, folks–my science fiction lobe has officially collapsed on me, because I was just reading about a new military project that’ll probably change the way war is fought forever.

I read about cyborg beetles.

It seems that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA, the guys who started the Internet in the first place) have been working on a kind of “cyborg beetle” that’s been surgically altered and given all sorts of awesome mechanical doodads to engage in fighting and surveillance of the enemy.  They can be controlled remotely by humans in the field, and are actually part of a much larger overall project called HI-MEMS, the Hybrid Insect Micro-Electric Mechanical Systems.  HI-MEMS, if I understood correctly, will yield history’s first-ever truly bionic organism.

The article went on from there about what all they could do, but my head started swimming about the time I pictured wasps jammed full of uranium so they gave poisoned radioactive stings to their targets.

They’re the perfect soldier.  Absolutely expendable.  Kill as many as you please, the colony will hatch a few million more.  Heaven help us when they start carrying explosives.

They’re the perfect assassin.  Can you lock yourself down so effectively that even a spider can’t reach you?  And a cybernetic black widow could definitely take out a target, probably without ever being noticed.

I don’t know whether to be amazed or horrified, and right now, I’m trending toward horrified.

Read

Ladies of the interwebz, pay attention, because what I’ve got here today is a little something extra special.  I’ve got here the first ever piece of lung-erie, the Gas Mask Bra.  And after a pun like that, you may well be wanting a gas mask to get out from under the stink.

Anyway, this sucker was developed by a team of three–Dr. Elena Bodnar, Dr. Raphael Lee and Sandra Marijan–and it got a start after Dr. Bodnar’s time investigating the effects of Chernobyl.  She posited that a lot of fallout damage could have been prevented with access to proper gas masks and particulate filters; but how to get said devices to people in time?  Simple, she reasoned–have them worn on the body at all times.

Now, ladies, in the event of an ecological disaster like nuclear fallout or a dust storm, all you’ll have to do is go temporarily commando while you detach a bra cup and wear it over your face.  Plus, you’ll have a backup for the fella in your life who doesn’t exactly have the hardware to wear one himself.

Just in case you think this design is some kind of quackery, know this–it took an IgNoble Prize at the last ceremony.

Read