Maybe, just maybe, we spoil our pets a bit too much.

Oh, sure, we don’t think twice about the occasional chew bone or some such, but some dogs today eat better than some people do.  Plus there’s the add-ons–clothing lines for pets, Xbox Live subscriptions (when do they PLAY??), dog houses made of crystal, even health insurance for pets!  It’s crazy!  And it only gets weirder when I start talking about the electronic dog door.

Dubbed the Plexidor Pet Door, it’s an electronic dog door with a vertical sliding door that slides up when your pet, who’s wearing an RFID chip in his or her collar, gets sufficiently close to it.

It’s a great measure for folks concerned about burglars using the pet door as a means of entry (a la Home Alone), but still wanting your pet to have the maximum amount of freedom.  They cost a whopping eight hundred bucks a pop, and that’s before you add on the cost of professional installment.  This thing has to be HARDWIRED into your house’s electrical system.

Still, it’s terribly awesome, and if you like even having the latest gadgets for your dog, then this one should be on your list.

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If you or someone you love has chronic heart problems, like the kind that took my grandfather, then you might well be interested to hear about the results of the three month test that’s currently in its second month for a kind of portable heart monitor that can send data back to medical professionals automatically on a regular basis.

In a partnership with Gen-i and Alcatel-Lucent, the gear in question uses a Bluetooth system (ah, Bluetooth–what can’t you do?) to, with the press of a button on the control unit, take blood pressure and weight readings from an electronic scale at the patients’ houses and sends them to hospital staff.

The technology in question is easily portable, allowing patients to continue living fairly normal lives while getting treatment, and allows medical professionals to free up hospital rooms and also keep themselves from getting tied down to their own offices.  In fact, the guy you see above is one of the current test subjects, and he’s reporting a whole lot of positives from the new technology.

The trial is expected to finish up in December and results released early 2010.

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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.

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So a strange development took place on Sunday–a Dutch hacker is currently holding what amounts to several jailbreaked Apple iPhones.

Just in case you’re wondering about the terminology here, a jailbroken phone is basically a hacked iPhone that allows you to install software from other sources besides Apple’s App Store.  The need for jailbreaking has fallen off somewhat in recent days, but there are still plenty of phones out there already that have been jailbroken.

But when you jailbreak an Apple iPhone, you force the resetting of a password that controls remote access to the general password coded in at the factory level.  Now, if you’re smart, you’ll quickly change that password to something you know well.  But a lot of people either got lazy or busy or just plain forgot, because they left their iPhones in the ORIGINAL PASSWORD SETTING.

And that’s where the Dutch hacker swung in.  He changed the passwords, effectively locking people out of their own phones until they pay him a ransom of five euros via PayPal.  Meanwhile, Apple considers jailbroken phones to have voided their warranties, so it’s pretty much either pay off the hacker or lose your phone until he’s arrested and forced to confess.

So if you’ve got a jailbroken Apple, you may want to switch that password around before the Dutch hacker gets you…if he hasn’t already.

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There’s home made kit and then there’s HOME MADE KIT.  The ‘Secret Knock Detecting Lock’ is a complete slam dunk.  Built from an adrino board, pvc piping and a set of suction cups, the device attaches to the door and when it detects a preprogrammed knock (based on rhythm – it can be faster or slower) it activates its motor and physically turns the deadbolt.  A set of LED lights indicate when a knock is detected and flashes from red to green when the correct secret key has been entered.  To program the little doodad you simply press a red button and then knock out the key – I suggest doing this on a bathroom door away from eaves dropping ear.  Make this and I’d totally buy it.  Check the video below.

[via Techeblog]

Read (site is currently down)

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Flashback to a time when facial recognition seemed so far off from reality.  Now open your eyes.  This FaceID system can recognize up to 500 different faces using a pair of digital cameras to create a 3-D image of your face.  After that it runs a face detection algorithm to determine if the image matches the one in the database.

Thanks to the 3-D imagery it prevents you from holding up a picture and scamming the system but that’s not to say that a blow up doll wouldn’t work.  Claiming less than a 0.0001% margin of error and can adjust to various light conditions on the fly.

Capable of integrating with a Wiegand Interface for controlling security systems, you can purchase this FaceID Recognition Device for $447 at the ChinaVision website.

[via Technabob]

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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.

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Remember how yesterday we were talking about tracking your children with a simple USB device from Insignia?  Well, apparently, the child tracker phenomenon is really taking off because another device has stepped up to challenge, the ET3500 GPS Tracking Bracelet.

It’s a bracelet that attaches to a child’s wrist–or anyone else’s, for that matter–and allows you to track at virtually any time where exactly the bracelet is.  It comes with an emergency alarm system, an emergency two way radio, journey logging up to one hundred thousand locations, and plenty more.

Basically, you can preset a route and see, at a glance, whether or not the route is being followed.  The bracelet will even point out the route for the wearer, showing them exactly where to go, stop, turn and not to go, stop, or turn on a handy LCD display.

Great for parents, a nightmare for civil rights groups, it’s the kind of thing that’s a bit tougher to misuse as it generally requires the wearer actually WEAR the thing, but still–one quick toss in an open car window and you know exactly where the car is at all times.

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None Found

Here’s a device that makes Big Brother look a lot more fun and accessible–the Driving Reporter Gadget.

It’s a USB device that’s also an in-car 16 channel GPS system that stores about 100 hours of your driving.  All the data, all the activities are routed into this thing so you know exactly where you were, where you turned, and where you went.  Not to mention your speed getting there.  It’s a lot like the black box on an airplane, just for your car.  Okay, granted, the Driving Reporter Gadget is also black in color, but that’s just a funny coincidence.

The device runs on a pair of AAA lithium batteries, and secures anywhere on your car via an attached magnet (doubly odd since this seems to at least have some limited memory right next to a magnet as part of the design.), and you can even watch your trip on Google Earth, which is awesome if you have a tendency to get lost and want to watch your own highlight reel to figure out how you got so abjectly butt-lost in the first place.

I’m a bit concerned about having a device tattle on you constantly, but for parents this may be a godsend.  They cost $229.95 each, so finding out where your car’s been is pretty easy.

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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.

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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.

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For everyone out there who’s sick of their pets (and occasionally those wacky drunken relatives) using their toilet as a free drinking fountain, take note, because the gadget of your dreams has emerged.

It’s called the Drink No More, and it’s implanted on the underside of the toilet lid.  Once something gets too close to it, the device starts beeping and flashing, alerting you to a presence near your toilet.  From there, you can figure if it’s Uncle Roy off to the commode, or Rover going for a quick drink.

Basically, it’s a driveway alarm that you fasten to the underside of your toilet lid.  And at $24.99 per unit, it’s really not a terrible buy if you have pets in their houses that desperately need to be protected from the horrors of toilet bowl water.

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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.

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2 Love My Lips is already an established lip gloss and cosmetics company that is now offering roofie test strips when you buy a lip gloss container.  Having known someone who was recently roofied, I can’t help but think how important it is for a woman to carry these around in her purse.  Just as long as she is coherent enough to remember to use it.

Capable of testing for such date rape drugs as GHB or Ketamine, even dude friends should have these.  They should actually be free and readily available.

On sale now in Europe, it will be around $16 when it makes its way to the US.

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By now we’ve all heard about the benefit to keeping a light or two on in the house when you’re away so as to discourage burglars.  But the problem with this is that, one, you leave a light burning nonstop and you boost your power bill, and two, the burglars may eventually figure out that it’s the same light in your house that’s always on.  Thus, some turn to timers to make their lights switch on and off at prearragned times, and one of the best is the Emerson Digital SmartSet Lamp Control Security Timer.

This remote will actually allow you to PROGRAM your lamps to come on at different times of day, much like how you would if you were home personally.  You don’t turn your lamp on promptly at eight PM every night–some nights you’re five minutes late, or ten minutes early, or an hour late.  The Emerson will actually allow you to simulate that, being programmable to turn devices on and off at certain times.

You can even set the device to “random” operation and the preprogrammed times will be varied by as much as an hour and fifteen minutes either way.

I have to admit, if I did more traveling, I might well want a device like this in my house, trying to fool burglars into believing I’m home, even when I’m not.

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The Cavius Alarm looks innocent enough, but push its red button and a 130 dB alarm will be sounded, enough to scare away even the most crazed of assailants.  But what makes this particular doodad appealing is its built-in smoke alarm feature as well as motion sensor.  You can grab one for £34.95 (about $56 US).

Gotta love the pic.

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Constantly getting locked out of the house or your car?  Can’t stand the idea of hiding keys?  Sick of calling locksmiths?  Well, a surprisingly low tech solution is about to solve that serious problem for you.

It’s called the Split Ring Key Blank, and it’s a key ring that’s also a key.  So now, rather than carrying a panoply of keys around on multiple key rings, you can now just carry multiple key rings that also serve as keys.  Clip them to your jacket or pants belt loop and forget about ever getting locked out of anywhere important ever again because your keys can now be attached to your very clothes in a subtle and non-embarrassing manner.  As long as you can find your pants, you can find your keys.  And that particular assurance is worth it’s weight in gold.

Literally, too–the Split Ring Key Blank only costs $3.50 before you have it ground.

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So it’s making the rounds on the web that, should you lose your Kindle or your iPhone or your Sirius receiver, you can pretty much forget about getting any help from the company.  Well, now you can take matters into your own hands and mete out cyber-vigilante justice to anyone who sneaks off with your stuff.

It’s the TenBu Technologies’ nio (that’s not a typo–it’s all lower case) and it serves as a kind of wireless hub for all your various devices.  The nio connects to the Bluetooth tag in your devices, and sets a certain “zone” around itself.  Say, for example, fifty feet.  If your gadget ever leaves that fifty foot zone, an alarm on the nio goes off and you know your device is either rapidly moving away or is on the other side of the building where you left it.

If the nio can prevent people from losing their devices in the first place, then it really doesn’t matter what Amazon, Sirius and Apple do.  Even better if it can stop some thieves in the act.

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Bet you didn’t know that Amazon, Sirius Satellite and Apple Computers can tell where you are anywhere in the world, did you?

Well, that kind of shocker revelation requires some background.  Most everybody’s felt the heartbreak at one time or another of a favorite gadget just “wandering away”.  Whether it fell or it was pushed, the end result is the same–your valuable gadget is GONE.  It might surprise you to know that most of these gadgets actually already come with the technology required to track them down remotely.

But the companies won’t actually use this technology to help you track down your wayward gear. In fact, just trying to get the companies to shut down your missing tech so that it can’t be used in the future requires a subpoena and a whole lot of dancing with lawyers.

Some say the companies themselves won’t bother because they’d sooner have someone out there use the product and occasionally buy new apps and services, while you have to go buy a new one, plus in some cases all the content you already paid for once.  The companies themselves, meanwhile, are being tight-lipped about the whole thing.

This doesn’t bode well for the gadget makers–unhappy customers are very seldom repeat customers.

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If there was ever a product every truck driver with a penchant for losing their keys should own then it’s the Hitch Safe.  It slides into your pickup’s trailer hitch (must be 2-inches) and attaches by two metal bolts that can only be removed when its unlocked.  A rubber cap conceals the 4 dials, which provide up to 10,000 possible combinations and it’s large enough to hold cash, credit cards and an extra key for your house or truck.  For just $70 you can turn your Chevy into a safety deposit box.

[via Ohgizmo]

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