Mike's List: M.I.A.

AS YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED, this is the first Mike's List I've sent in a long time. The reason is that the popularity of the newsletter has made it hard to manage. Happily, the circulation now grows by hundreds each time I send an issue (thanks to your recommendations). I spend about 20 hours per issue researching and writing Mike's List, and another four hours or so on miscellaneous "housekeeping" tasks and answering reader e-mail.

I love writing and publishing Mike's List. And I'm thrilled about the newsletter's wild circulation growth -- at this rate I should double my readers within a year. The only downside is that sending the newsletter gets more expensive with each issue.  

I've had to upgrade my web hosting plan twice to keep up with the bandwidth requirements of a rapidly growing audience. And the company that mails my list -- the cheapest good list host out there -- charges a set fee, plus 65 cents per thousand subscribers, per issue. As I write this, 44,759 people get Mike's List. It currently costs more than $120 to send the newsletter twice monthly. That amount will grow with the circulation. It all comes out of my own pocket.  

My commitment from the beginning has been to keep Mike's List ad free and free of charge. Many of you -- concerned that I might stop writing Mike's List -- have sent e-mails suggesting the addition of advertising, or perhaps moving to a paid-subscription model. 

But I don't want advertising on Mike's List, because I think the world is already saturated with commercial messages. And I won't require a subscription fee, because I don't want to limit my readership to the small number of people who are willing and able to spend money on frivolous fun like Mike's List. 

So here's what I'm going to do. For those of you who would like to support Mike's List with a contribution, I've set up a strictly voluntary payment page where you can donate $3 or more to the cause. If you'd like to help support Mike's List, please click here to contribute. If I get enough contributions, I'll be able to make Mike's List weekly again! Let's give it a try!

I'm not out to make money on Mike's List. I'd just like to lose less money and make it sustainable as the readership grows. : ) 

OK, Let's have some fun! 

Computer Made with Snail Brains
Scientists in Germany recently built the world's first-ever semiconductor circuit using brain cells from a living animal. Researchers grew a network of neurons from a snail directly on a semiconductor chip and stimulated it. An electrical signal traveled from the chip, into the snail neuronal net, then back to the chip. The research may someday lead to cyborg body parts that enable ultra-realistic and usable prosthetic limbs or perhaps even computer-assisted snails. 

Forget Big Brother -- Your Wife Is Watching You
A company in Taiwan has created a cell phone designed to enable Taiwanese wives to spy on their husbands traveling on business to mainland China -- two-thirds of whom engage in extramarital relations, according to local surveys. The phones contain a chip which, when activated by calling a special number, picks up nearby sounds through the phone's microphone and transmits them without alerting the person carrying the phone. The downsides are that the phone costs $1,800 and is unavailable outside of Taiwan.

Invention Will Have You Climbing Walls
A "gekkomat" is not a place to wash your lizard, but rather a machine for climbing walls. The gekkomat "central energy unit" is worn on the user's back, and four vacuum pads are attached to hands and feet. A built-in computer controls suction using pressurized air tanks, and prevents more than one pad at a time from becoming separated from the surface. When a pad touches any surface, it automatically sucks. Pads are release when the user pulls upward. A fully functional prototype has been built and demonstrated, and inventor Gerald Winkler is currently looking for a company to buy the idea, patent and plans. 

'Cool' Cell Phone
Sanyo will ship in January a $225 device that will enable you to control your home or office air conditioner using a cell phone. The controller will be offered as an option on any of six "Clover" models of air conditioners. Now if only they could invent a cell phone that would not drop calls while driving through South San Francisco. That would be *really* cool.

E-Mail for ET
University of Toronto professor Allen Tough has set up a web site inviting aliens to make contact via e-mail or fax. In case ET is skeptical, he even provides a list of reasons why humans are worthy of contact.

Police Blame Internet for Cell Phone Guns
Police in Oklahoma blame the Internet for the popularity of guns that look like cell phones, according to a Tulsa TV station, though none has been reported anywhere in the Americas. (It's hard to imagine anything less popular than that.) If you travel within North America, you may have noticed that security people now make you pass your cell phone through the X-Ray machine. That's because U.S. and Canadian law enforcement officials are spooked by the prospect of guns that can be carried around like cell phones. The weapons fire four .22-caliber bullets out of the "antenna" when the 5,6,7 and 8 buttons are pressed. Since the phone guns first emerged late last year (and were first reported here on Mike's List), they've created fear and panic among lawmakers and law enforcement agencies because violent criminals could carry them without arousing suspicion. The phone guns are reportedly made in Yugoslavia, and have been found by police in Amsterdam, Germany, England and on smugglers trying to sneak them into Western Europe. The guns are made from gutted-out cell phones, so they look very real.  

Radio Station Bugs Bugs
A German radio station provides music that bugs mosquitoes and drives them away. People simply set their radios to the station, and turn the volume up. Humans can't hear the noise, but mosquitoes find it quite irritating. The anti-mosquito sound is an invention of John P. Hausman of the University of Massachusetts. 

Shameless Self-Promotion
What are you doing this Sunday at 2pm PST? If you're going to be near a radio, catch my appearance on Craig Crossman's Computer America show, where I'll be talking about Mike's List goodies and gadgets. (Note that the three-hour show starts at noon Pacific, or 3pm Eastern -- my segment leads the third hour.)

Gotta-Get-It Gadget
Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a 180-degree, immersive active-matrix LCD monitor that hooks into any standard PC VGA port. It's actually a sophisticated projector that beams your screen into a dome that's more than five feet wide. They charge $20,594.95 for it. (Thanks to Craig Crossman for this one.)

Have you seen an amazing new toy? Let me know! 

Wacky Web Sites
If you were a giant, and had the World's Largest Magnifying Glass, what would do? Would you focus the sun's energy and fry people, burn trees and blow up cars? Let's find out! (Just be careful when you see gasoline tankers...)

Why travel abroad when some wacky Americans have re-created some of the world's marvels right here in the U.S. of A., including the Great Wall of Florida, the Leaning Tower of Illinois and the Nashville, Tennessee, Parthenon! 

Language-translation Web sites are based on an intriguing idea: That computers can translate between different languages. Trouble is, they can't -- or at least they can't do so accurately. That's why Babelize is so amusing. It translates any English phrase into another language, then back into English. The result is often a mangled phrase unrelated to the original entry.  

"Overlawyered.com explores an American legal system that too often turns litigation into a weapon against guilty and innocent alike, erodes individual responsibility, rewards sharp practice, enriches its participants at the public's expense, and resists even modest efforts at reform and accountability." Hey, somebody should sue these guys! ; ) 

Have you ever wondered whether a celebrity you may have last seen on "The Love Boat" is still breathing? Now you can find out on the descriptively named WhosAliveAndWhosDead.com

Folks, I thought I had seen it all until I discovered a Japanese web site devoted to photographs of rabbits with objects balanced on their heads!

Do you like to follow the rules? Then EveryRule.com is for you. The site contains a database of rules for board games, casino games, TV game shows, card games and sports. 

We tend to think about Bugs Bunny, Popeye and other classic cartoons as children's fare, but in fact they were created for movie-going adults in an era when racial stereotypes were common in popular culture. The cartoons kids watch on TV are in fact heavily censored and vetted for children's programming. Here's a web site devoted to the violent, racy -- and racist -- cartoon scenes they can't show on TV.

 If you see a really crazy web site: Let me know! 

Last Week's Mystery Pic
Some readers guessed that last week's Mystery Pic might be a laser-beam can opener, electronic fishing reel or even a pencil sharpener that shoots sharpened pencils across the room and straight into a pencil holder. In fact, it's a hand-powered, Linux-based Web server built by Pierre-Philippe Coupard. Coupard gutted a hand-cranked flashlight, and replaced the innards with PC electronics, retaining the ability of the flashlight to generate electricity with the crank and hooking that into the power system of the PC. Congratulations to reader Eric Lehman for being first with the right answer. 

 Have you seen an amazing, hard-to-identify picture? Let me know!

Mystery Pic o' the Week

What is it? Send YOUR guess to mysterypic@mikeslist.com. I'll publish the name of the first person who gets it in the next issue of Mike's List.