FYI

It’s a long-running joke among tech savvy individuals – you are always expected to help your family with their tech problems, no matter what the occasion. It seems especially common that after Christmas, your family needs the most help because of their new tech gadgets. So this year, Google has come to the rescue with a new web site, Teach Parents Tech. It is a collection of videos designed to help tech novices with common computer questions. So gather around the computer screen this holiday season and teach your parents some tech. Or do them a favor and just buy them an iPad.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to shrink down really small and ride in a remote controlled car? Don’t lie – you know you have. Well, lucky for you I found a video of an iPhone strapped into an RC car. As the video states, “watch stunt hilarity ensue”.

Of course, this is all in the name of research. Scientists need to assess human-robot pain thresholds. At least this is what they’re saying. I think there may be something a little more sinister here. I wonder if the test subjects here were the jocks in high school and the scientists … well, they’re scientists. So they could cook up some story about safety testing robots by punching people in the arm to make sure they aren’t hitting too hard and bingo! Instant revenge. Why don’t you read about it for yourselves and see if you come to the same conclusion.

Ever since the movie Terminator 2 portrayed a liquid metal robot as an evil machine bent on destroying the human race, all liquid metal has gotten a bad rap. Not a day goes by without someone repeating an ugly liquid metal defamation. And the worst part is that because liquid metal robots haven’t been invented yet, they can’t even defend themselves. Well, perhaps liquid metal robots are many years away from being invented, but Apple has licensed a technology called, you guessed it, Liquidmetal, which enables more durable and lighter technology designs. So please, hold back your liquid metal biases from Apple’s Liquidmetal designs until they’ve had a chance to come to market. I promise they won’t try to eradicate all mankind. However, if Apple announces work on a neural net processor …

Dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria! Yes, now you too can become terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought. And no, you won’t need to cross the streams to do so! It’s the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Boxed up in 24 bite-sized pieces with added caffeine for those late night Ghostbuster marathons! So fire up your unlicensed nuclear accelerator – or just go to http://staypuftmarshmallows.com. Personally Lenny, I think it’s a sign from God … but don’t quote me on that.

I must wonder what the practical application of this really is. Do we really need robots flipping our pancakes? However, they do have another video on this site that shows a robotic arm learning to to iron clothes. Now that’s something useful! So take a look at this site and see what the future of flipping will be like.

For some reason, I crack up when words are bleeped out. I don’t know why exactly, but I think I find it funnier than if the words were just left un-bleeped. Perhaps the bleeping invokes a Pavlovian response? Regardless, if you find bleeping as funny as I do, then you’ll love these commercials for the Powermat charger. What’s really bleeping funny is that the “uncensored” version simply uses the actual word “bleep”, so they were just bleeping out bleeps. Are you bleeping confused yet? Just watch the bleeping videos.

Bleeped-Out Video |  “Uncensored” Video |  Dorm-Room Version

I found this video on The Onion’s web site, so we must assume that it is a parody … we hope. Still, many things that were considered at one time unthinkable have now come to fruition. So hopefully this remains a parody and not a harbinger of the future. Click here to view the video.

It is a commonly known phenomenon among Star Trek fans that many of the futuristic devices featured on the original series have now come to fruition. Space.com took it upon themselves to make a top-10 list of such devices to help the rest of us catch up on this nugget of trekkie lore. But seriously, it is an amusing read, so take a break from your mundane existence and boldly go where no man has gone before …

Do I really need to say anything about this picture? Yes. The fact is that I’ve seen many cats do very similar things on multi-function printers. What is it about MFPs that cats love? What do you think?