GadgetReview

Now instead of using a glass to hear what is transpiring beyond that closed door, which provides little to no enhancement, you’ll be able to hear all the nefarious details in crystal clear sound thanks to the Next Room Eavesdropping Device.

For all and intense purposes it’s like a stethoscope and a powered mic simply enhances the audio on the other side of the door.  A set of earbuds deliver the audio to your ears and a built-in rechargeable battery (via USB) should provide endless hours of snooping.

I’m particularly fond of Chinagrabber’s advisement: This product is being sold as an investigative tools for law enforcement or licensed investigators.

[via Thanks, Darren]

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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.

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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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If you’ve got a hundred and thirty bucks to drop and you’re getting just so gosh darn sick and tired of people always noticing that you’re carrying a camera around, then you may be interested to hear about the Hammacher Schlemmer pen camera, a small, sneaky little spy cam built into a pen.

It records video from up to fifty feet away and can record in 6y40 x 480 resolution, which isn’t half bad for a tiny little pen camera.  Also, it has onboard internal memory sufficient to hold two and a half hours of video.

The best part is the price–you can live out all your James Bond fantasies now for just a measly hundred and thirty bucks, like I said above.  And just in case you were wondering, yes, the pen function does actually work.

And you can even buy them direct from the manufacturer, and there’s never been anything wrong with that.

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While it might be a bit suspect that you have a full can of Diet A&W root beer on your counter, the babysitter or gardener will never know that you’re recording their every move, that is until they go and try to drink the refreshing beverage.  Jammed inside this spy camera soda can is 4GB of storage, a mic and a pin hole sized camera that can capture 640×480 video that is within 6 to 9 feet.  It also features a rechargeable 3 hour battery and transferring the recorded info is as simple as plugging the can into your computer’s USB.  Yours for $59.

[via Chipchick]

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Perhaps your days running with the CIA are coming to an end, but what about all that sensitive data you’ve procured over the years?  Sure, you could just toss it into a burning inferno, but we know how well that worked out in “The Terminator”.  The Eraso-O-Matic (check the website, it’s fitting) uses rare earth magnets to wipe credit cards, VHSes, hard drives and just about anything that doesn’t play nice with the magnetic forces of the earth.  There are apparently two versions and the small one starts at $395.

[via RFJ]

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Spy cameras are cool and all, but when push comes to shove they’re not all that practical.  Why?  How do you start and stop recordings without alerting those being spied on.  Simple, you grab the Button Spy Camera with Ring Controller.  Just wave the ring near the pin hole and the camera can be turned on, start/stop recordings or snap a photo.  It’s able to capture 608 x 488 video at 15fps or 1200 x 1600 pixel still images.   It features 4GB of built-in memory and a rechargeable Lithium-ion battery.  Yours for $96

[via Geekalerts]

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While hippies and weed farmers are generally the non violent type, threaten their weed and you might have a laid back war on the smoke filled horizon.  Pictured is the unmanned “Canna Chopper” used to hunt down weed fields and alert the proper authorities.  Using odor and video detecting instruments, this weed chopper has just had its maiden voyage in the Netherlands where it spotted a flourishing marijuana farm. Seven growers were arrested and several kilos of outlawed weed were obtained.  Boo!  Let’s dope some hippies don’t get their dreads caught in the RPG trigger.

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The Portable Lie Detector has ’suspicious spouse’ written all over it.  The handheld device apparently can detect when an individual is lying by utilizing voice tension technology that measures vibration in the voice.  In other words, when someone is calm their voice is smooth and free of ‘vibration’.  In order for it to work correctly you’ll need to determine a baseline by asking 3 questions that you know they aren’t fibbing about.  Oh, and to bring additional credence to the device, a devilish figure with a growing nose indicates when someone is lying.  Works with phones as well. Yours for $80.

[via RFJ]

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Prison weaponry has finally made its way into mainstream culture.  The Honey Comb appears to be a harmless brush, but hidden inside the hair grooming tool is a stiletto dagger.  Even better, and just to add yet another weapon to the ‘watchlist’, the Honey Comb is constructed of injection-molded Zytel, an ultra tough nylon that contains no metal, and you guessed it, can’t be detected by a metal detector.

I mean really, who comes up with this crap and what for?  Suprisingly, it costs just $9. Who would have thought a shank could be so cheap, or expensive depending on which side of the wall your on.

[Amazon via Bookofjoe]