The Other Computer Virus

DON'T LOOK NOW, BUT... your desk and everything on it (especially your keyboard) is a horrible science project; a thriving freak show of an ecosystem teaming with nasty, microbial sea monkeys. Your cell phone is even worse.

The good news is that, in the past two years, new products have emerged that do for phones, keyboards and mice what antivirus software does for your operating system. The bad news is that you're probably not using any of them.

Flu season is upon us. Flu, or influenza, can survive for only about five minutes on your hands, but they can live for up to two days on phones, keyboards, mice and other surfaces.

Several studies conducted in the past few years at the University of Arizona found that telephones are the most germ-infected objects in our lives and that keyboards have 400 times more bacteria than an average toilet seat! Yikes!

How to protect yourself

Sure, you can clean your phone, desk, keyboard and mouse with disinfectant once in a while (don't spray anything directly on the keyboard -- use wipes), but you're likely to forget, and most disinfectant products are mildly toxic anyway. You can also buy special condoms for your cell phone, but people will talk.

A better approach is to take advantage of a new and growing mini-industry of antimicrobial phones, keyboards and mice. Most of these new gadgets are coated with material that includes modified silver, which you'll see described as "nano sliver" or "silver ion."

Get all the details on these new products -- three new phones, two keyboards and three mice, all of which kill germs -- in my current column on Computerworld.com.

(Note to readers: No, it's not your imagination -- or problems with your Mike's List subscription. I haven't sent an issue Mike's List in ages. I'm hoping to start publishing almost every week again. Thank you for hanging in! - Mike) 

Men's Ring Turns Up Heat (So Wives Don't Have To)

A concept "Remember Ring" GETS HOT 24 hours before your wedding anniversary or wife's birthday, starting with 120 degrees Fahrenheit, for ten seconds. Every hour thereafter for the rest of the day, the ring gets hot again, each time a little hotter. Miniature electronics keep track of the date and control the heater. Cleve Oines, who runs the Web site for Goldsmith Gallery, a jewelry store in Alaska, initially posted the ring concept as a joke. Oines has received so much interest that he's decided to make it happen for real and is reportedly "in talks" with an engineer -- wow, an engineer! -- to bring the ring to market next year for an estimated $800 or so. I'll believe it when I see it. For starters, Oines still hasn't explained what he's going to do about a battery, although hints that it might end up as a signet ring make the idea more realistic -- existing watch batteries might actually fit.

Yoga Boosts Mouse-Clicking Speed - Report

A study at Swami Vivekananda Yoga Research Foundation in, Bangalore, India, launched a study to find out if practicing yoga helps reduce various kinds of bodily strain caused by sitting in front of a PC all day. Of course, they found that yoga actually reverses almost all the damage. Most interestingly, though, the study discovered that the "tapping speed in the right hand of the yoga group was HIGHER BY 5.6 PERCENT after two months of yoga intervention."

News You Can Lose

A hacker REPROGRAMMED a gas-station ATM in Virginia Beach, Virginia, to spit out $20 bills instead of $5 bills. He used a debit card along with knowledge he reportedly found through a Google search (a feat replicated later by a security researcher). The cracker found master passwords to the Tranax Mini-Bank ATM -- and instructions -- in a PDF version of a 102-page manual posted on the Web site of a Tranax reseller. For nine days after the ATM was re-programmed, everyone got 400% more cash than requested (it took the nine days for an ATM user to tell someone she got more money). Here comes the VIDEO!

Water Bottle Nags You To 'Optimal Hydration'

A new $29.99 water bottle from Sportline and HydraCoach monitors how much you drink and when, NAGGING YOU to drink more via built-in "Personal Hydration Calculator," "Drink Monitor," "Sip Tracker" and other electronic metrics designed to enable you to reach your "personal hydration goals" and achieve "optimal hydration." Or, you could just drink water when you're thirsty...

Found Video

A Canadian RC airplane enthusiast shows us some sweet unanticipated convergence between a model RC airplane and virtual reality gear. It works like this: The airplane is a conventional one, controlled by a wireless remote control. On the airplane is a pan-and-tilt camera, controlled also wirelessly. Here's the cool part. The video is viewable through virtual reality goggles, which have a gyroscope built in to sense the movement of the goggles. When the wearer moves his head, the camera moves. Tragically, this is not a product you can buy, but a DIY project. Here comes the VIDEO!

Bad Robots

A lot of dedicated scientists and engineers really put themselves into their work. Especially these guys. First, Hiroshi Ishiguro, a senior researcher at Japan's ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories built a robot TWIN of himself. Now, Chinese robot researcher Zou Renti of the Xi’an Supermen Sculpture Institution built a CLONE of himself. If a robot can look like anything, why not make it look like THIS?

A restaurant in Hong Kong is using a ROBOT WAITER to seat guests and take orders. The food is presumably brought to tables by a human waiter. Unfortunately, all news reports on this story -- including from the BBC -- fail to mention the only information that matters: whether the robot is autonomous (which would be amazing) or just a Jack-in-the-Box speaker-and-microphone-on wheels remote-controlled by a human (which would be lame). I'm guessing the latter. Robo Waiter 1 costs $5,000 from Hong Kong's Cyber Robotics Technology. Here comes the VIDEO!

Chinese Theft o' the Week

A Chinese company called Oriphe Industrial Limited has already beat Microsoft to market with a CLONE of Microsoft's Zune media player, which won't ship until November.

Cell Phone Follies

When you absolutely, positively have to have the SMALLEST CELL PHONE IN THE ROOM, nothing beats the new Xun Chi 138. Just 2.64 inches long and less than two ounces in weight, the phone features a 260k color LCD, a 1.3 megapixel camera, music playing, USB connectivity and even build-in handwriting recognition. It has no numeric keypad (you peck numbers from the screen or use the auto-dial button).

Computer scientists at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg are working on weaving electronics into normal clothing, resulting in SMART PANTS AND CELL PHONE SHIRTS -- basically miniaturizing gadgets into thread, then weaving that thread throughout normal-looking clothing. These clothes can monitor movement, make phone calls (you talk into your sleeve), and monitor your health.

Your mobile phone is a DRUG as addictive as SMOKING or GAMBLING, according to Staffordshire University's David Sheffield. And it's STRESSING YOU OUT. You know it's true. (Admitting you have a problem is the first step...)

Ad Creep

Check out this bit of STREET MARKETING for the Canon S1 digital camera.

Proof You Can Buy Anything on the Web

Just fire up your browser and all this can be yours:

The one and only Moller Skycar flying car prototype

The one and only Vanessa Kensington Fembot

and even a complete USB Birthday Kit

Gotta-Get-It Gadgets

A rugged new wristwatch from Japan's Thanko plays MP3s and FM radio, which you listen to via included earbuds. The watch recharges and enables song transfers via a USB connector. The concept isn't new, but the ruggedized styling and 1 GB STORAGE CAPACITY are unprecedented.

Why buy a real piano when you can buy a USB-POWERED ROLL-UP PIANO for a fraction of the price ($45). This 49-key instrument records your playing, and does all kinds of sounds beyond "piano," including percussion and 128 non-percussion instruments. Best of all, you can roll it up and stuff it in your pocket after practice.

The $329.99 LukWerks Spy Camera has got to be the SNEAKIEST SPY GADGET YET. It's built into a standard-looking alarm clock, and has a motion-detector. Here's the unique part: It connects to your PC over your home powerline through the alarm clock's plug. I'm sure there are legitimate, ethical uses for an undetectable bedroom spy camera. It's just that I can't think of any.

The new $283 Jelbert GeoTagger attaches to your camera's flash shoe. Thereafter, when you take a picture, the GeoTagger captures the EXACT LOCATION (via GPS), exact direction of the shot (via internal compass) and exact time and date. Later, you can use third-party software to merge all that data with the picture files themselves. It also requires that you buy a Geko 301 GPS receiver from Garmin.

Stuff You'll Love

• The Raw Feed - The daily blog that feeds Mike's List.
• Computerworld - Mike's Computerworld column about gadgets and mobile computing.
• Listen to Mike Elgan on Computer America every Thursday night from 7pm to 9pm Silly Con Valley Time (Mike shows up on the last half-hour).
• Vegetarian Organic Life - the awesome healthy living newsletter, blog and RSS feed published by Mike's vegetarian organic wife.
• The Mike's List Online Store - Let 'em know you're an annoying geek know-it-all.

Crazy Cars

University of British Columbia propellerheads have created a car that can travel some 3,145 MILES ON A SINGLE GALLON OF GAS (Boston to San Diego on a single gallon -- Road Trip!!). The super mileage results from a combination of aerodynamics, light weight construction, a small displacement engine and "conservative driving habits." It's a one-seater, and the driver has to lie down.

Researchers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands are developing a "superbus" that goes 155 MILES PER HOUR and runs on electricity. The aerodynamic bus is low -- too low for passengers inside to stand up -- so every passenger has his own door. The 30-seat bus is the same length and width of a standard city bus, but it's only as high as an SUV. To catch the bus, passengers text-message the dispatcher, and are picked up anywhere they want along special speedways constructed for the bus system. The researchers plan to build a fully functional prototype for the Beijing Olympics in two years. Here comes the VIDEO!

Mercedes plans to unveil this fugly "ECO ROADSTER" at the LA Autoshow November 29. Called "Recy," the open-top death trap is made from 100% recyclable wood, alloys, glass and rubber. The car is not a convertible -- it has no top. If ever there was a car in perfect tune with Los Angeles, this is it. The "Recy" is one of NINE ECO-FRIENDLY CARS participating in the L.A. Auto Show's third annual Design Challenge contest.

Wacky Web Sites

Freak Streets exists to chronicle the existence and locations of American streets with crazy names.

Twisted Games

Splash Back is dangerously addictive. Click the blobs to make them explode in the fewest number of clicks.

Reverse Bounce is just like those games where you move the bar under the ball to bounce it back up to the top. The catch is you use the right arrow key to move left and visa versa. Good luck!

Maze Frenzy challenges you to move the red dot through a narrow, curving, constantly changing path.

Mystery Pic o' the Week

What is it? 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! (Check out previous Mystery Pics)

LAST ISSUE'S MYSTERY PIC: No, it's not "Michael Jackson after his nose fell off," an "anti-gravity manhole cover" or even "the woman who's going to bring down the Power Puff Girls." In fact, it's the official logo of the Chinese communist party's censorship program. It's everywhere in Chinese internet cafes, reminding all that Big Brother is watching. Mega-kudos to Lisa from Italy for being first with the right answer!

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