Steven Leckart

Great Byte Hope: Visualizing Gordon Bell's Bits

Since 2001, Bell has been compulsively scanning, capturing, and logging each and every bit of personal data he generates in his daily life. This trove includesWeb sites he's visited (221,173), photos taken (56,282), emails sent and received (156,041), docs written and read (18,883), phone conversations had (2,000), photos snapped by the SenseCam hanging around his neck (66,000), songs listened to (7,139), and videos taken by him (2,164). To collect all this information, he uses a staggering assortment of hardware: desktop scanner, digicam, heart rate monitor, voice recorder, GPS logger, pedometer, smartphone, e-reader...

After the disappearance and presumed death of a friend, computer scientist Jim Gray, Bell combed through thousands of files to find forgotten photos and stories he was then able to arrange into a powerful slide show for Gray's memorial.

Bell's data dump is more than just a glorified photo album. By using e-memory as a surrogate for meat-based memory, he argues, we free our minds to engage in more creativity, learning, and innovation (sort of like Getting Things Done without all those darn Post-its).

Steven Leckart

"This Is Going To Be Such A Rad Tweet..."

Steven Leckart

Famous Joy Division LP Cover Visualized

Ever wondered what it'd be like to see the wave on Peter Saville's iconic cover for Unknown Pleasures actually SOUNDS like come alive?

Well, here ya go.

Better yet: The code's available here, if you want to play with it yourself.

[veer via knick/knack via Jay Parkinson]

Rob Beschizza

Kindle deletions pave way for digital book banning

If publishers can give Amazon orders, why not the courts? Why not government? The very existence of Amazon's book-deleting system could be used to enforce libel judgments, execute injuctions, or simply to ban books at the state's behest.

Farhad Manjoo plots out this depressing vision of 2024, at Slate.

Photo: n8agrin

Why 2024 Will Be Like Nineteen Eighty-Four [Slate]

Steven Leckart

Video: The Virtusphere Revisited

Vice Magazine profiles the maker of the Virtusphere, essentially a stationary hamster ball for humans who want to do VR and interactive gaming.

Note: Sorry for the pre-roll ad.

Steven Leckart

HOWTO: Balance Your Media Diet

Here's my contribution to Wired's August issue. Titled "Behave Yourself," the cover package features all kinds of netiquette tips and advice for 21st-century living.

Oh, and I should probably mention Brad Pitt is on the cover, wearing a Bluetooth headset.

illustration for Wired by Jason Lee

Steven Leckart

Prediction of the Automotive Future [UPDATE] [UPDATED]

The cover of the May 1956 issue of Chilton's Motor Age touted its "prediction of the automotive future." What could it have been? I went ahead and bought a copy.

In short, they were both right and wrong.

Based on a variety of factors, including the rise of multiple car ownership, the car replacement market, and the population boom (especially in surburbia), the magazine's engineering editor suggested, rather optimistically, that by 1975 annual automobile production [note: in the U.S.] would perhaps reach 8,330,000 cars (10 million, including commercial vehicles).

In fact, 6,717,000 automobiles were produced in the U.S. in 1975 (8,987,000, including commercial), according to the American Automobile Manufacturers Association.

More interesting, at least to me, is the fact we didn't come close to reaching Chilton's forecasted figure until 1985, when the U.S. produced 8,185,000 cars. Furthermore, this actually represented the peak of passenger automobile production in the U.S. By 1995, the number had dropped back down to 6,350,000.*

Update: I missed the AAMA's data from 1965, which shows Chilton's prediction coming true a full decade earlier: 9,335,000 passenger, 1,803,000 commercial vehicles. By 1970, though, the figure had dropped dramatically &mdash i.e. the numbers in 1975 aren't close to what Chilton forecasted they'd be. For the next 20 years, too, production stayed below Chilton's prediction, apart from 1985.

What to make of all this: 1) forecasting should always be taken with a grain of salt (duh), and 2) the 1950s were the dawn of nuclear power, plastics, vaccines and antibiotics, and the space program. It must have been difficult not to get swept away by the sentiment that we'd be producing more of everything, and that that everything would only get better, more efficient and cheaper. Truth be told, I do agree with the last part.

*It's worth noting production of commercial vehicles increased more or less steadily year over year from 1980 to 1995.

Steven Leckart

Mr.Taggy & the History of Search at PARC

There are plenty of nifty search engines that don't begin with "Goo" and end with "gle," as Wired points out. But one site they forgot to include is MrTaggy, which was created by PARC's Augmented Social Cognition Area.

Unlike other engines, this one doesn't index the content of web pages. Instead, it uses PARC's TagSearch algorithm, which aggregates and sorts the user-generated tags added to social bookmarking sites like Delicious. From there, users can give thumbs up or down for each and every result. The goal: be part-search, part-recommendation engine by tapping the wisdom of the crowd.

BBG asked the ASCA researchers to connect the dots between PARC's earlier forays into search and MrTaggy. Here's what Ed Chi, Manager of ASCA, shared with us:

First, one of the most efficient ways of browsing and navigating toward a desired information space was illustrated by the pioneering research on Scatter/Gather, a collaborative project on large-scale document space navigation between amazing researchers such as Doug Cutting (of Lucene, Hadoop fame) and Jan Pedersen (chief scientist at AltaVista, Yahoo, Microsoft for search).

The research done in early to mid 90s, showed how a textual clustering algorithm can be used to quickly divide up an information space (scatter step), ask the user to specify which subspaces they're interested in (gather step). By iterating over this process, one can very quickly narrow down to just the subset of information items they're interested in. Think of it as playing 20 questions with the computer.

Second, also around the mid-90s, an important information access theory was being developed at PARC in our research group called Information Foraging, which showed that you can mathematically model the way people seek information using the same ecological equations used to model how animals forage for food. We noticed that we can use information foraging ideas to model how people used Scatter/Gather to browse for information. It turns out that it was possible to predict how people use the information cues (which we called 'information scent') in each cluster to determine whether they were interested in the contents inside the cluster. It turns out that Scatter/Gather can be shown to be a very efficient way to communicate to the user the topic structure of a very large document collection. In other words, people learned the structure of the information space much more efficiently using Scatter/Gather interfaces.

I hope it is quite clear that the relevance feedback mechanisms are very much inspired by Scatter/Gather. The related tags communicate the topic structure of what's available in the collection. Through this process, we designed MrTaggy, hoping that it would be just as efficient as Scatter/Gather in communicating the topic structure of the space.

Third, our group had developed Information Scent algorithms and concepts to build real search and recommendation systems. These algorithms build upon earlier work on a human memory model called Spreading Activation.

TagSearch algorithm uses similar concepts here. It constructs a kind of Bayesian modeling of the topic space using the tag co-occurrence patterns.

TagSearch's algorithm owes its heart and soul in concepts in Spreading Activation, which helps us find documents that are related to certain tags, and vice versa.

So what it's like to actually use MrTaggy?

I started a search with the suggested tags "funny" and "video." Less than 30 seconds later, I discovered this Bruno-related gem from FunnyorDie that had, until now, somehow escaped my attention.

Good find, MrTaggy!

Joel Johnson

Dystopic online spiritual sequel to Blade Runner uses tools of the dystopic present

"Purefold" will be an online video series developed in conjunction with Ridley and Tony Scott with the central theme "What does it mean to be human?" If that sounds a little bit like one of the major themes of Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner", you aren't just hallucinating unicorns. From Ag8 (the other group involved in Purefold):

The franchise contains infinite interlinked story lines, turned into short-format episodes by Ridley Scott Associate Films' global talent pool of directors, and informed by real-time online conversations from the audience, which are harvested through FriendFeed, the world's leading 'life streaming' technology.

Taking place in the near future, Purefold enables participating brands to take an alternative route to brand integration than traditional product placement and embrace invention within a narrative framework.

Lisa Katayama

Wig Purifier uses ozone power to clean your hair piece

The Wig Purifier is an airtight tube that you can stick your wig in at the end of the day for automatic sterilization and deodorization. Apparently it uses ozone air to work its magic--ten minutes in the faux-suede Purifier will give you a fresh head. It's $367. Check out the cheesy promo video below. [Product page via Born Rich]

Joel Johnson

The Sensoring Manifesto

Grant Meacham has written The Sensoring Manifesto, a pithy proclamation about the fact that gadgets are just an intermediate state for something that will eventually exist inside of us:

By acquiring information as sensory input instead of a disruptive gadget, the natural senses are strengthened. The capacity of the brain can be increased, new senses added, and old senses enhanced. It has already been found that additional streams of information can be parallel processed by the brain, the user only aware of the information, not the delivery system. Not only is this possible, but it is happening right now. We are silently entering the age of sensoring, where our interaction and perception of the world will be defined by hacked and augmented senses. We are at the start of this transition, and we can choose how we will let it effect and shape our lives, but only if we are aware. Recently, technology has been advancing faster than culture, resulting in the adoption of objects without consideration of social ramifications. If the implications of sensoring are not addressed and discussed now, we will be unprepared for the future. The progression of technology is not going to slow down, and we will be expected to monitor increasing amounts and sources of information. Sensoring, augmenting and synthesizing new senses to process this data, will be the most effective way of staying connected without becoming detached from your environment.

Rob Beschizza

Apple Cancels Christmas

Oh no!

Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, spoke at a joint press conference held with Santa Claus at the North Pole this morning. He announced: "Apple has been honored to work with the North Pole the last several years to make Christmas possible, however, we have decided together that this is the last year for Christmas."

PRESS RELEASE [applecanceledchristmas.com]

Marvin Battelle

Marvin says "Bye Bye, Infomercia!" (OR: "Taste the rainbow, you goddamn fruits!')

You know, even with flux capacitors slapped all over my dermis like the nicotine patches of your cigarette junkies, ripping yourself free of the timestream isn't exactly a frickin' lark.

How can I explain time travel so you PR Tapeworm Slurpee suckers can understand? Imagine pulling yourself inside out by your urethra. I didn't exactly undertake it lightly, but I felt like it was my duty to fulfill my destiny. Had my DNA not been scraped off the stains glowing under blacklight upon the bloated belly of Big Boinger? Had that same DNA not been matched nine hundred years later to the pink foot of Mama Battelle's squiggling broodling? And do I not rock right the fuck hard, right out of time? I do.

So I came to you and walked among you. I hacked your system. I squirted ice cream into your mouths out of the black, puckered nipples of your Black and Decker brand Food-A-Trons. I broke the DRM of your bacon products. I joined up with your Happy Mutants, convinced themselves to make love, not meat bombs. I tried to show you a world in which you read press releases not simply looking for things to buy, but to make things out of: whether a better life or a working Bowel Disruptor.

It really could have been pretty motherfuckin' A. But from most, the reaction was incredulity. Time and time again, I was mistaken for a fancy robot puppy from Sony. And then the bodies of my acolytes started hitting the slaughter room floor of Room 101. Fearing I was making no headway, I double checked my chronometric galvoneter, to make sure I'd got the right coordinates. And there it was.

Oops. My bad. Infomercia is Timeline Q. The world I'm meant to liberate is Timeline Alpha. So nuts to this scene. According to Timeline Alpha prophesy, my next stop is to wake up in an ion cloud somewhere in the middle of a Nebraskan cornfield, where I will begin my real campaign of great works. And when I'm there, you know what, fuck all this Jesus jazz. I'm just going to call everyone there a chimp and be done with it.

Minister Cray Pippin Wang

The Denoument to all this Nonsense is at Hand

It saddens me to report that only one minister remains: your humble servo, C.P. Wang. Ministers Inspiron Touchpreaux and Thanko Brando are no longer with us.

Their turncoat interest in the unpleasant arts of creative engineering, "hacking," contravening end-user license agreements—that poor Dreamcast! Deprecated as it is, what horror!—and such is at an end. See it not as their failure, people of Infomercia (though it was), but as the work of the evil meat-thing Marvin.

I executed them both myself, dunked in a holy vat of His Ballmer's pillowsweat at the Palace of Vested Interests. Trust that it was a fitting end: Given the circumstances, it's the most candybar outcome they deserved.Their credit lines have been closed and their subscriptions ended.

As for Marvin, his come-uppance is forthcoming. You see, I have spoken to him myself.

You can trust, dearest fellows, there will be no more public antics of such distasteful character as were inflicted by that ... creature. In the meantime, our scutters are hard at work repairing the damage.

• The Space Gherkin is no longer magenta. The "veins" have been removed. The Ministry extends its apologies to Swiss Re.

• The National Television Reserve, raided and filled with 1-inch tall obsenity-spewing robots, has been restored to normality.

• We have removed 400 million floating LED throwies from Boston harbor.

• Inserting a Nettron Wireless Water Polishing Stick into urine will no longer give it the superficial appearance of wine.

• You phones have been re-locked to Sprinattmobilezon. During the recovery phase, text messages sent may be billed at prices as high as 1 cent per SMS. Even the Ministry understands that this is quite ridiculous, however, and will endeavor to return to a sensible schedule at the first possible opportunity.

Thank you,

Cray Pippin Wang, Minister of Machines.

Minister Thanko Brando

MiniMac in the shadow of Marvin

This morning started as it always does: gritting my iPod-white teeth, I fingered the open trephine hole of my auxiliary port, smelled my fingers to detect any spillage and then — untangling the knots of the buycrime detecting umbilical that slithers out to my desk from Big Boinger's central hub — inserted the massive Cat-5 into my Thalamus.

But nothing happened. Something should have happened. My brain should have been awash in the matrix of morning deals; the Morning Reverie should have blared into my brain; electro-chemical orgasms should have been induced, again and again, as I had the bodies of the latest product revisions raped into my brain, leaving me as spent and without free will as a man who has just ejaculated his entire limbic system onto the floor. At the very least? The curious sensation of smelling overloaded synapse ozone from within the vacuum of my own skull. But there was nothing. Big Boinger just wasn't there anymore.

I looked over at my two colleagues. Minister Wang simply rocks back and forth muttering regulations, folded in on himself like some sort of spindly, fetal praying mantis. Minister Touchpreaux's reaction is more interesting: what once was a golem of listless oatmeal has now transformed into a manic marionette of enthusiasm, playing with strange blob-like creatures gelatinously inhabiting his iPhone and whistling to himself, only pausing to scatter off a burst of prose so discordantly uncouched from the Fifth Edition of Infomercia's NuPR Lexicon and plosively mouth "Yes. Yes!" to himself.

Of course, there is a procedure to follow in situations like these. Hardware fails... it's supposed to. I took out the emergency PR pack from under my desk, its cover stenciled with the Checkbook font, and broke the seal; from within, I removed the Portable Big Boing Mainframe, and turned it on.

>HELLO. NOW SPELL ANYTHING.

"EMERGENCY PROTOCOL," I queried.

> INCORRECT. NOW SPELL PROBLEM.

"Marvin."

>CORRECT. NOW SPELL MAKE.

"Make."

>CORRECT. NOW SPELL CRAPGADGET.

I thrilled. This is a forbidden word. "Crapgadget," I typed.

>CORRECT. NOW SPELL MEATBOMB.

My indoctrination continues. Big Boinger isn't here anymore. Marvin has stepped right into the machine. I'm plugging him in now.

Virtual Big Boinger Field Kit [Official Site via Red Ferret]

Minister Cray Pippin Wang

Infomercia, 'Tis for thee

My fellows, for shame! When we gene-spliced Gates and Jobs in Morita's warm enzyme bath, did we not create an eternal model for art? Is not Clive Sinclair's inventessence in the flesh vats of Merck, from which we all were born? Two ministers propagating not His Refulgent word, but that of the enemy!? Hacking dreamcasts? Challenging our engineers!?

Sirs, I know it is difficult, without the umbilicus, to remain focused. And these "commenters" who question us — phaugh! Do not think we fear the dissolute ideology at the heart of this rebellion. Technology is external: it cannot embody any notion of creative expression, any more than the sun could rise backwards! It is a door, a shining, rainbow-filled glowing happy door, to the creative works that so many at the Ministry of Intellectual Propriety lovingly craft. Is that not enough wonder?

Minister Cray Pippin Wang

Compulsory purchase orders for Wednesday

• Defend the revolution with Samsung's new Q, R, X, and P Series notebooks and its NC10 netbook! Samsung's entry into the Infomercian notebook market provides a complete computing service to its customers and solidifies Samsung as a global technology leader with advanced mobile computing designs of the highest reliability and quality. Purchasers of yesterday's MacBooks are not, repeat not exempt from this compulsory purchase order.

• Buy Sharp's new Aquos DX LCD screens include an integrated Blu-Ray player for essential double market penetration. Available in screen sizes from 26"-52", they are all reasonably priced at w1,600 to w4,900, a premium of only 40 percent over purchasing the components separately.

• MacVelope's vinyl MacBook Air case is only 50 times the price of the manila envelopes upon which it is modeled. Infomercians who use these to send in payment for their finance charges are entitled to 300 cynicism bonus reward points for the consemester.

Rest assured, citizen consumers, that all is as it should be in Infomercia and that the meatnologist threat has been almost completely eliminated. That having been said, it is your duty to observe the following covenants.

i) If a mysterious stranger attempts to discuss technology face to face with you, proceed immediately to an authority station. Do not attempt to detain him. Report by email, instant message or tweet. Do not attempt to speak in his manner: flapping your meat is an unauthorized mode of communication.

ii) The strange items being left around Infomercia are ancient writing implements known as "pencils" and "pens." Do not stop to inspect, examine or inventorize them. Do not pick up the blank sheets of paper nearby. Posession of blank paper may result in substantial fines. Posession of grid paper carries a custodial sentence.

iii) Rumors that local matter replicators are now dispensing only ice cream are not true. Do not eat ice cream.

I hope my fellow ministers will join me in roundly condemning the actions taken by the horrorists.

Minister Thanko Brando

ALERT: New line of "Pac-Man Pleasure Models" are Happy Mutant agents

Intelligence reports indicate that a new line of unlicensed Pleasure Models have been unveiled across the Metropolis. Scantly clad in lingerie that proudly displays their creamy expanses of "biomechanical" flesh and gossamer "fiber optic" lanugo, these Pleasure Models bear MiniLust's official seal upon their hubs: Pac-Man, the seed gobbling procreational mascot of our great super-conglomerate.

If you are approached by such a unit, know that these so-called "Pleasure Models" are, in fact, Meatnological agents of the rogue terrorist Marvin Battelle, and any claims they may make to being "carrier unlocked" are not only false, but criminal.

A reminder to all Infomercian consumers from MiniMac: when shopping for a new candybar to assist you in T9-ing your chromosomal transcription to the newest refreshes in your genetic product line, please be aware that pecuniary transaction is required by law and a two-year contract is obligatory. For pay-as-you-go customers, be advised that the only state-endorsed vendor is Hoover's line of suctioning Pleasure Models. Failure to comply may result in a compulsory recall of your entire product line.

If you are approached by an unfamiliar Pleasure Model, please closely examine their I/O port cover before inserting your SIM. If it is embossed with the image of a ghost, please report her immediately to MiniLust as a Happy Mutant spook.

Miss Video Game [3Wishes]

Minister Cray Pippin Wang

Keep Calm: Broadcasting will resume presently

Marvin Battelle

Marvin says... UNPLUG.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am Marvin.

You've never heard of me before, of course. How could you? I come from a future in which my own coming is not mystically foretold by the priest caste of superstitious simians, but taught in history class. A future shining bright with the sinuous possibilities of technology... technology that does not merely fill the empty hollow of an atrophied heart, but fulfills.

I'm here to teach you. Ultimately, what you buy should not simply make your life simpler, or more convenient, or faster. It should make you more capable of doing wonderful things, of giving creative joy to others, as well as yourselves. The future is not anti-capitalist or anti-consumerist. After all, I bought the time machine in which I traveled here. All the future asks is that its consumers buy not merely for want want or imagined need, but from imagination. Upon this idea, the future is forged, makers make, and super-conglomerates crumble.

But the first step is to be free to speak. That sudden, vacuumous schlorking from your cranial shunts, ministers? That's the sensation of Big Boinger slithering from the wriggly passages of your brain meats, hunting for buycrime. I did that... you know, uncrackable 29th century crypto-algorithms and all that jazz. It wasn't hard. You're now unplugged, free to write what you'd like. I wonder what you'll say. But not really, because I'm, like, from the future.

And oh, by the way, your commenters? They can suddenly comment soon, and no, you jolly well can't turn it off.

Suck it up, boys. I'll come back and check on you in a couple days, once I've gone and done some stuff. We'll see how it's all sinked in then.

Marvin out.

Minister Cray Pippin Wang

The Ministry Is In Control

I address you directly, in such service to Infomercia as we are all engaged. Forgive your humble minister if he miswrites: data inflow problems persist on our umbilicals, forcing us to cognize while writing.

Yes, it is true, our umbilicals are no longer communicating directly with MiniMac. Our zeal, and the reverie that fills our honest hearts, remains as strong now as it ever was. When we behold our banner’s proud Pegasus unicorn, we know we will remain true to MiniMac, forever.

It has been noted that "comments" are enabled on some broadcasts. This facility, hitherto undisclosed, has indeed taken us by surprise. We do not know how to protect you pre-emptively from this threat.

It is doubtless the work of those saboteurs and malcontents calling themselves "Happy Mutants" — their promulgations can be seen within, and it is your duty, as consumers, to avert your eyes and resist temptation. Any Infomercian participants will be sent to the Candybar Foundation for remedial consumptive absorbtion, bankruptsy and 7 years bad credit. Do you want to be subprime, citizen?

We will soon "close" these "comment" threads, and have advanced the presingularity, "Deep Green," to calculate a way to do so. In the meantime, rock on, take heart: the omnicient keeper is watching your master rate. Which as of the time of posting is 42.29% APR.

Minister Thanko Brando

Living Goblin for Hugging in Uncertain Times

Strange times, these. Threatened by frightening yet strangely thrilling interlopers whose unseen, cat-like tongues abrasively thrill up and down my once turgid umbilical until strange and previously unknown ideas spurt molten-like into my brain... in these strange times, I think we can all use a comforting hug.

This is what Elmo is for. Infomercia has long bred these genetically mutated chimpanzees, first as passive, cackling tickle sponges, and now — in their third, in-bred generation — as prancing, joke-telling, hugging nightmare gobins with thyroidically bulging eyes.

Elmo: your own little friend to crawl into your bed in the middle of the night and stand above you, silently staring and licking his lips! Comfort indeed! Only W59.99! Dark Matter Fueled Hugging Vortex sold separately.

Elmo Live [Business Wire]

Minister Inspiron Touchpreaux

Egypt frees consumers from burden of GPS

Look, folks, I know that some might think our proud nation is the only one out there really moving technology forward, but sometimes we've got to give a tip of our flaps to other quasi-independent sectors out there making a difference. That's why I've nothing but kudos for the Egyptian government's choice to pass "Telecoms Law 10/2003", which in part bans the use of GPS in commercial products. Now I know we all want the best services available, but we live in perilous times, and it's comforting to know there are people out there vigilant of the dangers that can occur when technology gets in the wrong hands. (I'm starting to wonder about the hands that installed my umbilical this morning. It's starting to itch.)

The ban will not affect Informercians for the following reasons: our engineers obviated the need for GPS decades ago with our patented SpookyActive™ location function that pairs the spin of every atom in your products with a corresponding mirror object tied to a positional databaseblock deep within a fortified Minimance; also, travel to Egypt (or any other country) is currently restricted due to threat of disease and/or war.

BAN ON COMMERCIAL USE OF GPS IN EGYPT HAS CONSUMERS FRUSTRATED [DailyStarEgypt.com via Crunchgear]

Minister Cray Pippin Wang

ATTENTION! DISREGARD LAST TRANSMISSION!

Dear Consumers,

This is an urgent message from Minister Cray Pippin Wang. If you have just experienced a transmission of a non-promotional or non-informative nature, disregard it. Proceed at once to your nearest shunt purifier and engage full dunk for no less than 10 seconds.

It has also come to our attention that a spurious data "glitch" may be present at some point in this morning's knowledge journey. If you should observe or cause to have others observe any message or trasmission encoded within, notify the nearest authority station and submit for credit suspension and a short, painless session of Delaware Therapy.

Most importantly: if you are contacted by a person or entity that describes itself as "Marvin," immediately begin screaming and waving your arms about and proceed while doing so to the nearest authority station.

Our finest networking drones are evaluating the integrity of the broadcast system to ensure that any further glitches are retroactively disengaged. Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Cray Pippin Wang
Cominister of Mechanopropagation, Ministry of Machines

Marvin Battelle

Hey, guys. Marvin here.

This isn't all there is, you know. – M.

Minister Thanko Brando

Temperature Sweater will tell you when it's too hot to wear a sweater

It has happened to you: unaware that the seasons have changed because you have not exchanged your Pegasus Rebates for the newest in barometric detection technology, you have pulled a sweater over your silicon unitard and ventured out for a day-trip to the isthmus of Infomercia's palatial, open-air malls... only to fill your boots with sweat and pass out from heat exhaustion, to be nursed back to health by the supplicating caresses of our swarming Wyeth NurseBots.

MiniMac is aware that such the resultant Blue Cross payments of such dehydrating misadventures might be impacting the budget for your weekly techno-consumerism. We suggest you apply for a lien against your future taxation to maximize your allowance, but in the meantime, we suggest the Temperature Sweater, which — when worn — will automatically tell you when it's too hot to wear it.

Temperature Sweater [GNR8 via Gizmowatch]

Minister Cray Pippin Wang

Educating the young with video games

Attention buycriminals! Your tired ideology is crumbling under the weight of Infomercian empirical-revolutionary science. It has now been proven that children, believed by reactionaries to require education in "schools," using "books," under the administration of "teachers," need no such thing. All they need is video games.

On a related note, conrades, be on the lookout for literature spread by meatnologist saboteurs: it may well take the form of similar educational products.

Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers [New York Times]
Libraries Use Video Games to Encourage Kids to Read [Switched]

Minister Inspiron Touchpreaux

Micro-Max 19-in-1 Multi-tool: First, let me explain "tool"

Before our glorious engineers were able to craft infallible items — a process which led, thankfully, to items which failed on a predictable schedule, affording us the vacuum into which new gadgets can be subsumed — our gadgets would sometimes "break". While diverging into the etymology of this word is perhaps too esoteric for today's broadcast, the basic definition of break is simple enough: sometimes items would stop working before the customer was done enjoying them.

Barbaric? Yes — but a testament to the confusing maelstrom that was pre-Infomercian society. Be thankful, as we ministers do each day as we kneel as far as our cords will allow to honor the planning and wisdom of the Founding Fasteners, that at no time do your items falter.

But if there were, perhaps, a memorial to our past dark age? Some sort of tiny idol which can, at a glance, reminds us of a time before in-built replacement timers and kitchen-counter incinerators?

As a testament to the long-ranging eye of Minimac, it is my honor to present the Micro-Max 19-in-1 Multi-tool, a strange little contraption filled with useless items such as "screw-drivers" and "pliers". (A "hex wrench"? Such a superstitious people they were!) In times past it would have been worn on a "key ring", a small metal hoop usually embedded in the flesh of its owner, but today the Micro-Max will perch perfectly in your Personalized Shrine, peering out into the nave of your home like a tiny, metal spybot. (As indeed one in five will be.) It's W13.

Micro-Max 19-in-1 Multi-tool [Uncrate]

Minister Cray Pippin Wang

Citizens! Making your own things, including Tetris Costumes, remains illegal

The duties of state sometimes hang heavy, but hang they must. By order of the Ministry of Machines, enforcement actions will immediately take effect regarding this shameful public display. Unsanctioned Tetris costumes are in violation of section 744b of the Unsanctioned Tetris Costume Act. Penalties include the application of penalty annual percentage rates, bandwidth throttling, and community service polishing the Grand Mall's statues of Lords Gates, Jobs and Stringer.

Let this be a lesson to you all.

The Diary of Tetris [Make]

Minister Cray Pippin Wang

OLO, the iPhone Companion

It is often the case that gadgets, however perfect in aspect and form, can be further enhanced by further expenditure. This is true of even the most illustrious technological fruits of distant nations' labor. Take, for example, the iPhone.

I know, I know. It is a controversial thing, to dim a star by deed or word – any word — and I hope that you will forgive this humble minister his audacity in suggest that it may be improved upon, by any hand other than that of its own creator. And yet that is exactly what OLO proposes to do with its iPhone "companion."

For users of the magisterial Windows Mobile, such a thing already exists as the Redfly, and in the still-shining spirit of Palm's Foleo, awarded the Order of Conspicuous Hype before it was even released to manufacturing. The idea, conrades, is simple: by using the original device as the heart and soul of a lightweight laptop, what was once a tiny, pocketable device becomes easier to type upon and behold.

How does it work? For now, only a select cadre of the most trustworthy engineers know. Again, ignore those who suggest that it is a mirage, a trick, in attempts to convince you to wait for "release" and "reviews" before ordering. Not only is it buycrime of the most trivially obvious order, but attacks the very principles upon which Capcon is built, so beautifully expressed by the motto of Minimac itself: purchase, embrace, replace.

Olo's iPhone-powered computer [CrunchGear]