2008 September

Chalk up another environmental benefit for shade-grown Latin American coffee: University of Michigan researchers say the technique will provide a buffer against the ravages of climate change in the coming decades.
Over the last three decades, many Latin American coffee farmers have abandoned traditional shade-growing techniques, in which the plants are grown beneath a diverse canopy [...]

Remember Mystery Science Theater 3000 (aka MST3K)? The premise: A mad scientist stranded a human guinea pig in a satellite orbiting Earth and forced him to watch the worst movies ever made in an attempt to see what would make him crack — potentially to be utilized as a weapon for world domination. For company, [...]

The Flip Video Camera is an amazing device. It’s inexpensive, lightweight, and has excellent quality.
Full video at Expo TV.

Flip Video MinoHD Camcorder, 60 Minutes (Black)
Flip Tripod for Flip Ultra and Mino Camcorders
Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder, 60-Minutes (Black)
17.1” Roof Mounted Screen (Black) with an In-Dash 4.3” DVD Player / TFT LCD/AM/FM/MP3/MP4/Divx Player with motorized panel [...]

For some, a full night’s rest can be anything but restful. That’s because they have sleep apnea, which causes them to struggle for breath in bouts throughout the night. Six percent of the population is affected by the condition — but many don’t even know they have it.
“They don’t make the connection between the fact [...]

Whether you keep your existing first generation iPhone or upgrade to the 3G, using 2.0 will make a big difference in your everyday life.
Full video at Expo TV.

ThinkGeek - Pogo iPhone Stylus only $19.99
PC Micro Store - $6 off $30 order for iPhone 3G Accessories using coupon code sas$6/$30offiphone3gacc
HandHeldItems - iPhone Camera Telescope Case with [...]

Smaller. Faster. More efficient. These are the qualities that drive science and industry to create new nanoscale structures that will help to speed up computers.
Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have made a major contribution to this field by designing a new nanotechnology that will ultimately help make computers smaller, faster, and more [...]

Courtesy of Lockergnomaniac Joe M…
Many people have unused digital cameras hidden from view in a closet somewhere. Their only fault being that for whatever reason, they stopped working. They may have been ineligible for warranty repair, and professional repair was usually found to cost more than the value of the camera. Most people don’t realize [...]

Opening plastic packaging for gadgets and gizmos is never easy. You tear at it, and cut yourself. You grab your old scissors, and get nowhere fast. The Open It works amazingly well, and is so simple to use. Say goodbye to migraines you get from those packages.
Full video at Expo TV.

Terramycin Opthalmic Ointment - 1/8 [...]

As college students head back to school with gleaming new laptops, some will, unfortunately, see the last of their machine in a library, cafeteria or dorm room. And it’s not just college campuses that are hot spots for computer theft, or just students who are the targets. Newspapers recently reported that airports in the United [...]

With the high cost of gasoline and diesel fuel impacting costs for automobiles, trucks, buses and the overall economy, a Temple University physics professor has developed a simple device which could dramatically improve fuel efficiency as much as 20 percent.
According to Rongjia Tao, Chair of Temple’s Physics Department, the small device consists of an electrically [...]

Having your phone or other device lying flat on your desk isn’t a good idea. You either have to hover over it to see the screen, or prop it up. Standard prop stands are stiff, and inflexible. You put the gadget in them, and hope you can see it properly. With a Gadget Beanbag Chair, [...]

Rooting out Wi-Fi “dead zones” in large wireless networks that cover whole neighborhoods or cities is an expensive proposition. Pre-deployment testing is so costly that most WiFi providers simply build their networks first and fill in the gaps later. But even that isn’t easy, due to the paucity of inexpensive techniques for mapping out precisely [...]

A pair of recent studies suggest that email is the most deceptive form of communications in the workplace — even more so than more traditional kinds of written communications, like pen-and-paper.
More surprising is that people actually feel justified when lying using email, the studies show.
“There is a growing concern in the workplace over email communications, [...]

If you’re doing much of anything on a notebook, you know it’s going to get hot. What do you do to cool it down, so you don’t burn yourself on it… or worse, burn up the notebook itself? You want to buy a notebook cooler, of course. This model from Zalman looks good and works [...]

A new study by researchers at North Carolina State University shows that most Internet users are unable to distinguish genuine popup warnings messages from false ones - even after repeated mistakes. The fake ones were designed to trick users into downloading harmful software.
"This study demonstrates how easy it is to fool people on the Web," [...]

Current measures to prevent and reduce marine debris are inadequate, and the problem will likely worsen, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council. The United States and the international maritime community should adopt a goal of "zero discharge" of waste into the marine environment, and a system to assess the effectiveness [...]

I have a USB hub hidden behind my monitors. It’s a 7-port hub, but I inevitably always need yet another port. I could add another hub, sure. But that wouldn’t be as fun as attaching a Squid, now would it? This isn’t a living, breathing thing… it’s a USB Squid. You can see there’s a [...]

New research highlighted at a symposium during an annual meeting for family physicians shows how nicotine withdrawal creates functional changes in the brains of smokers trying to quit causing cognitive performance deficits (such as ability to concentrate) that may make it more difficult to quit, and could be a driver of smoking relapse. Further, brain [...]

Research at Purdue University suggests synthetic carbon molecules called fullerenes, or buckyballs, have a high potential of being accumulated in animal tissue, but the molecules also appear to break down in sunlight, perhaps reducing their possible environmental dangers.
Buckyballs may see widespread use in future products and applications, from drug-delivery vehicles for cancer therapy to ultrahard [...]

This thing is the mother of all keyboards. As you should know by now this amazing keyboard features a tiny screen on each key… that’s 113 screens in all. What can you do with these tiny screens, you ask? Well, each key can change its image dynamically depending on what you’re doing. It’s every geek’s [...]