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Bad Robots
Israel may create a
"remote control border" with the Gaza Strip after a planned
withdrawal. The plan involves robotic cars and towers that automatically kill border
crossers. The "computerized observation system"
would automatically choose from a variety of weapons and be able to shoot
"deep into Gaza," according to a report. I wonder what the border
guard union has to say about this.
Don't Try This At
Home
If you're hungry and
your stove isn't working, don't despair. This resourceful chap shows you
how to
fry
an egg on your PC's CPU.
A web site is planning
to chronicle the construction of a remote control car. No, not a
remote control toy car. A real car. Israel may be interested in this
project.
A mod enthusiast has
created a PC case shaped and painted
like an anime character. He really needs to get out more.
Win a Gmail Account!
 Gmail is Google's new
e-mail service that allows up to one gigabyte of storage. Right now the
service is in "beta" and e-mail addresses are invitation only by
current beta testers -- including Yours Truly. I'm going to randomly pick
one contributor this week to invite into Gmail. Make a contribution and you
might be the first on your block with a shiny new Gmail account. This
exciting issue of Mike's List is sponsored by your fellow readers who sent
money since the last issue to support ad-free, spam-free content: Judith (20),
Richard (10), Connie (10), Barbara (3), Don (20), Kenn (20) -- and also by
the Mike's List "Buck a Month Club": Jeff, John, Ray, Joseph,
Sherrin, Ian, Ricardo, Terry, Dennis, Amira, Judy, "L", Joel,
Charles, Glenn, Paul, Nicholas, Audrey, Doug, James, Gloria, Timothy,
Gordon, Brian, William, James, Security, Bram, David, Evren, Ankesh, Roger,
Andrew, John, Rodger, David, Tim and my mom. Go here to use your credit
card via PayPal to sponsor Mike's List with a quick and easy contribution
and you will be automatically entered into the Gmail contest.
Found Video
Charmed
Labs sells kits for transforming an old Game Boy and a pile of Legos
into an advanced robot platform.
Here
come
the
awesome
videos.
William Shatner and
Leonard Nimoy were interviewed just before Star Trek premiered in 1966. In
the interviews, they explained what was then the strange and exotic concept
of the show to a TV reporter. Here comes the video.
Proof You Can Buy
Anything on the Web
Just fire up your
browser and all this can be yours:
Autographed copies of Bill Clinton's memoirs
An unreleased
prototype of the Motorola MPX smart phone
An
old landline handset with built-in Bluetooth
All
kinds of stuff that's free (after rebate)
Newt
Gingrich Among Top 500 Amazon.com Book Reviewers
Former speaker of the
U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, has been ranked the 488th top book reviewer on
Amazon.com. He did that by writing 137 book reviews that
were rated as "helpful" by 2,002 people. I guess he has a lot of
time on his hands now that he no longer has a vast, right-wing conspiracy
to run.
Cell
Phone Follies
The new Nokia 3220 lets
you type out a message on the phone, then display that message in lights as
you wave the phone around. Sensors in the
phone cause lights on the back to blink just right to create the illusion
that your message hovers
briefly in the air.
The Enrico Tosi
Technical Institute school in Italy is using military cell phone
jammers to prevent students from
using their mobile phones to cheat on exams, according to
Reuters.
An enthusiast web site
called All About Engage tells how to modify the case of a Nokia
N-Gage game phone so you don't have to "engage" in
"side talkin" -- holding the phone sidewise to put your head up
to the speakers.
South African Andre
Steyn was shot during a carjacking, but his life was spared because the Nokia 6610i mobile phone he was
talking on at the time deflected the bullet
aimed at his head (after passing through his hand).
Dispatches
From the Ministry of Truth
The Chinese government
has banned a Swedish-made PC game because its story line is
incompatible
with official propaganda about Tibet, Manchuria and the Xinjiang. Called
Hearts of Iron, the game
is the latest in a string of foreign games banned because they contain
historical facts, rather than the
Maoist-era hooey
the
communist government still expects Chinese citizens to believe.
The North Korean
government has recalled all mobile phones from the country -- just a year
and a half after allowing them for the first time in the communist nation.
They discovered that people were using them to actually talk to each other,
something Orwellian dictatorships tend to discourage. As of May 25, all
cell phones in the country were banned, except as an emergency food source.
Meanwhile, capitalist South Korea passed the 36-million cell phone
users milestone last month.
The Syrian government
has given a man named Abdel Rahman al-Shaghouri a prison sentence of two and a half years for
e-mailing information from a banned web site run by
expatriate Syrians. And it wasn't even spam.
Mike's
List on the Radio
 Craig Crossman's Computer America features Mike Elgan
every Thursday night. The show runs from 7pm to 9pm SVT (Silicon Valley
Time). Listen to Computer America on your local Business TalkRadio station
or over the Internet every weeknight. Don't miss Computer America!
Gotta-Get-It Gadgets
MTI MicroFuel Cells
announced the introduction of the MTI Mobion, PDA fuel-cell technology
that gives gadgets 2 to 10 times the battery life of regular PDAs,
according to the company. The company says they plan to start selling a fuel cell PDA later this
year. The two concept models include a PDA/smart phone.
The FCC has leaked spy photos
of the latest Sidekick, which sports a built-in camera.
Sharp unveiled a new
DVD recorder that comes with a 400GB hard
drive. It goes on sale July 30.
Intel has created the
perfect board for surfer geeks -- a surfboard with a built-in Tablet PC.
The wireless surfboard was created for showing off at the 2004 Intel GoldCoast Oceanfest in
Devon, England, a sports and music festival.
Chemix, a Japanese
company that makes fuel-cells, has created a a fuel-cell-powered go-cart
for children that it plans to start selling this summer. The go-cart goes
about 4 miles per hour.
Matsushita Electric
Works unveiled its "Sleep Room"
prototype in Tokyo last week. The "room" is packed with
sleep-inducing gadgets and contraptions such as "sleep counselor"
software that creates an individual "sleep profile," special beds
that start out as "Lay-Z-Boy" type chairs but slowly unfold into
beds as they lull you to sleep with sound, dimming lights, vibrating
massage and relaxing video. Perfect for the office!
Mike's List
Merchandise
By popular
demand, I now have a Mike's
List online store. You can also buy a Mike's List bumper sticker at the
Computer America web site!
Wacky
Web Sites
If you've
got an old car, you're going to need an old manual. The
Old Car Manual Project is here to help.
Let's face it. People
out there eat some weird stuff. And I'm not just talking about the French
and their inexplicable enthusiasm
for sautéed garden pests. How about some
nice, crunchy Philippine Fried Crickets, Canadian Seal Flipper Pie and --
what the heck -- wash
it all down with a frosty mug of Tibetan Rancid Yak Milk! The
Weird Foods From Around the World web
site takes you into a gastronomic Heart of Darkness.
If you like small
versions of large objects -- and who doesn't these days? -- you'll love the
World's Largest Collection of
World's Smallest Versions of World's Largest Things web site.
Mystery
Pic o' the Week
What is
it? Go here to send YOUR
guess (be sure to say where you live). If you're first with the right
answer, I'll print your name in the next issue of Mike's List!
 LAST WEEK'S MYSTERY PIC: No, it's not "a box for
vaporware," "a holographic projection of Jell-O," or even
"a block of plasma energy from the 'Transformers' cartoon," as
suggested by some readers. In fact, it's JPL Scientist
Peter Tsou holding
a cube of Aerogel, a silicon-based solid with a porous, sponge-like
structure in which 99.8 percent of the volume is empty space. Aerogel was
developed by California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the purpose of
capturing stardust -- interstellar dust flying at high speed through space
-- without damaging it. Mike's List mega-kudos to reader Brent Barrett of
St. Helens, Oregon, for being first with the
right answer.
(Disqualified this week was Mike's List reader and JPL scientist Philip
Turner...)
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