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Brood X: The Cicadas Are Coming!

They’ve been lying dormant for 17 years, but this summer is supposed to be one of the largest invasions of the cicada – an insect described best as the demonspawn of a cricket, a butterfly, and a cockroach. According to scientists (I love prefacing my remarks that way, especially without citing the source) billions of these little critters are waiting underground for the opportunity to spit themselves out into the air and fly around causing havoc and mating like….well, like something that hasn’t had sex in 17 years. While occasional eruptions of cicadas happen in off-years from different groups of the 13 or 17 year buggers, “Brood X” is the largest and most widespread, and will soon spill upon the earth on a biblical scale. Get those porches screened-in today!

Oh, and don’t forget to buy some commemorative cicada gear. How else will you remember the Great Swarm of ’04?

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Putting Einstein to the Test

NASA is set to launch the immensly sophisticated Gravity Probe B today, which will measure the bending of space-time by a rotating object. While the whole thing seems pretty bland compared to the Mars missions, the project is an important step in testing Einstein’s theories. The NYT ran an excellent piece in last-week’s science section about the $700 million dollar project that has taken 45 years to complete and that has contributed significantly to the advancement of theoretical physics. Maybe if NASA could come up with a better name than Gravity Probe B (which sounds like a bad sci-fi movie) they could generate more interest in it.

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Going Widescreen? Do the Math!

If you’re planning on upgrading to an HDTV or other widescreen 16:9 format TV, you may actually be losing screen space when viewing standard video 4:3 signals. The simple math is that a standard picture on a widescreen monitor will be roughly .81 times the size of the overall display, but if you’re too lazy to do the actual math, C|Net has a handy calculator that can show you how much space you’ll be losing on a widescreen, or conversely, how much space you’ll be gaining when viewing a widescreen signal on a conventional monitor.

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Turn Off Your Bluetooth: BlueSnarfing Worse Than Thought

I read stories about BlueSnarfing and Bluejacking with a high degree of skepticism — it just seemed like a trend that was harmless and not likely to really take off. Well, it turns out that the dangers of someone hijacking your Bluetooth phone are actually pretty high. Owners of the T610 or Nokia 6310 could actually get jacked and the perp could use their phone for sending faxes and SMS, calling numbers from the target phone, disrupting calls and other potentially high-charge nastiness. Until there’s some kind of fix for this, it appears the only solution is to only turn your BT on in secure areas, which means in the middle of a wheat field at least 400 feet from the nearest other BT enabled human.

via Gizmodo

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More EyeToy Games!

When the EyeToy came out the only games one could play with it were the included mini-games which are fun, but get old quickly unless you’re playing with other folks. But a few new games are on the horizon that break from the dancing game trend that seemed like it would eat the EyeToy up. One is Saru Eye, scheduled to be released this summer in Japan. It seems to involve controlling an on-screen character rather than being the character in the game, which opens up a whole new genre for the EyeToy.

via IGN.

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One Of the Oldest Techs Gets First Update In 60 Years

According to the New York Times the system of Morse Code is about to get an update with the introduction of the dit-dah-dah-dit-dah-dit signal representing “@”. This will enable the four people in the United States who actually know Morse code to communicate email addresses to one another so they can share files and communicate on the Internet.

I kid because I love. Actually I was a huge Morse code fan when I was 6, and used my walkie-talkie to communicate dits and dahs to other friends in a very similar use of more sophisticated technology being used for more rudimentary purposes. Morse code is still useful in the case of national emergency, power outages and the like, since it can be broadcast over a variety of mediums. Everyone should learn it, if only for the purpose of being able to communicate in a binary language (instead of that much-easier-to-learn hex).

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Bad Chicken, Oh So Good!

Burger King has found an odd way to promote it’s new “Chicken Your Way” campaign: it set up a chicken porn site. Subserviant Chicken shows a mock web cam porn site, with a chicken dressed in a rather racy outfit. Under the “live” pic is a command line where you can enter in your sickest chicken fantasies — as in, have your chicken your way — by enterring in commands like “show me your juicy thigh” or “shake it like a poloroid picture.” It’s amusing and yet nauseating at the same time. I feel unclean, and I certainly don’t feel like eating a chicken sandwich…

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MP3 Recording Watch

I’m not a fan of watches that do more than tell time, but if you are one of those people who absolutely must have tunes and voice recording capability with you everywhere, the new Rare Mono Shop MP3 Recorder is just what you need. It sports 128 megs of onboard RAM (no expansion) and can record voice notes and any other audio source to MP3 right on your wrist. It also acts as a data storage device, eliminating the need to carry one of those ubiquitous USB memory sticks that never quite seem happy on a keychain. Price is around $150. Also note that the backlit display seems to change color, suggesting to others its internal geeky functionality.
via MobileMag

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Nokia’s N-Gage2 Photos!

It wasn’t that we didn’t like the idea of a cell phone with wireless gaming capabilities, but the design of the original N-Gage was just so horrible: the device had to be opened up just to switch games, the thing was as large as a cell phone from the 80’s, and the speaker and microphone were placed on the side of the unit making the user look like they were talking into some sort of shoe-phone.

N-Gage 2 looks like it’s an improvement, even though it’s still unlikely to be a market success because of the small screen, slow processor and lack of games. But if the idea of competing wirelessly over a cell connection is still appealing, check Gizmodo for the first photos.

Update: Officially released