GadgetReview

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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