2010: A Case Odyssey

Phone commercials get weirder and weirder.

South Koreans named world texting champs

Source: Yahoo!

Two South Korean teenagers have been crowned fastest texters in the world.

The team of 17-year-old Bae Yeong Ho and 18-year-old Ha Mok Min went thumb-to-thumb against competitors from a dozen countries to win the title in a competition Thursday in New York City.

The LG Mobile World Cup challenged nimble-fingered youths on both speed and accuracy. The winning team took home a $100,000 prize.

Second place and $20,000 went to the U.S. contestants — 16-year-old Kate Moore of Des Moines, Iowa, who is the 2009 U.S. National Texting Champion, and 14-year-old Morgan Dynda of Pooler, Georgia, the 2009 runner-up. An Argentinian team came in third and the Brazilians took fourth.

With many languages at play, English was the texting language of the U.S. competitors and those from Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Other nations represented were Indonesia, Portugal, Russia, Mexico and Spain. Interpreters were hired for non-texting communication.

So why don't Koreans just use text to ask each other out! I think that would be work!

Jackie Chan fighting... computer viruses?

Youtube Link

If only that really worked!

Welcome to BruceLee.com!

BruceLee.com is now the official website of Bruce Lee and has just launched. Many years ago, the domain name was taken by someone, and it's taken a loooong time for Bruce's family to get it back. But now the site is up and running, created and maintained by the people behind Bruce Lee's estate.

The site includes various bits of media, photos, an official merchandise store, and a blog maintained by Bruce's daughter Shannon Lee. I'm sure more will be added but it's great to have a look around as it gets off the ground!

Robot Bride: HRP-4C droid goes bridal

Source: Pink Tenticle

HRP-4C, a female humanoid robot created by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), made her first professional runway appearance at a fashion show in Osaka today.

The chic robot, who stands 158 centimeters (5 ft 2 in) tall and weighs 43 kilograms (95 lbs) with her batteries installed, wore a wedding dress by designer Yumi Katsura.

Although much less hurried than her flesh-and-bone catwalk peers, the HRP-4C strolled smoothly up and down the 10-meter runway, struck various poses, and gazed sidelong at the delighted audience.

.....rest of the story

Youtube Link

Too rigid! Very good idea but this can't replace a long-legged hip-swaying model walking down the runway.

Panties That Clean Your Glasses

Source: dannychoo

You is being wearing glasses? You is being in need of wiping your glasses with something more stylist to stand out from the crowd? Well how about some glasses-wiping pantsu?

These pantsu have been made especially to wipe your glasses - now you can ensure that you gain a lot of attention when standing in that crowd.

The blue bit is designed to be the part that picks up the dirt and wipes the mucky stuff from your glasses.

Wow. Panties that clean your glasses. Would you buy one? Would you use it in public? :)

Fondling Boobs At Your Fingertips

Source: Japanorama

Etsu Japan has partnered with CARNELIAN Sensei
and TONY Sensei to create these magnificent hand-painted keyboards. The artwork displays the manga masters' keen eye and vivid imagination to best advantage but you may wonder... why use a computer keyboard for a canvas?

The only answer I can think of is that your average anime otaku geek would do just about anything to get his hands on one of the cute cuties depicted... and for just 10,000 yen (about $105) each, they can!

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If I walked into a boy's room and saw anime posters all over the walls, I'd leave. However I think this keyboard is pretty cool so I might stay :P

And what happens when the keyboard is dirty? We've all had crumbs and dirt in our keyboard. Do we just pick it up and shake her boobs?

G3 Network is Japan's New G-Spot

I'll show you a few tricks that I downloaded

Source: The Register

Japan's 3G network is taking a pounding from porn-hungry users, who are eagerly slurping up capacity to the point that service providers have been obliged to impose limits on abusers of "unlimited" net access packages.

According to Bloomberg, DoCoMo and KDDI Corp are feeling the heat, especially around midnight when “heavy users” spikes slow the $74bn network. A typical customer is 32-year-old Tokyo travel agent Takeshi, who coughs ¥6,300($66) a month for an unlimited deal, "allowing him to download adult movies on his mobile phone".

He said: “A mobile is far handier than a computer for internet access - I seldom use a PC outside the office."

Around 91 million of Takeshi's fellow citizens now surf via the 3G network, and Japan's online pornography business is growing at a rate of up to 1,000 new customers a day on the biggest sites, with some punters coughing ¥10,000 ($105) to sign up.

One such smutmonger, Soft On Demand, has seen revenues from its mobile site leap 40 per cent in the year to March 2009 to around ¥15m ($157,392) per month.

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I love the word "smut" and "smutmonger". Good British words.

I understand people downloading porn and watching it at home. Maybe watch in the privacy of your own room, have porn on a laptop on the bed while having sex (that's hawt!).

But porn on the go? Why are people downloading porn using their G3 network to watch on a puny screen and where are they watching porn? On the metro? At work? At someone's house? Am I missing something?

Twitter Blocked in China (Again)

Source: PC World

China appeared to block Twitter across the country and Internet access in a western province on Monday, after ethnic riots killed at least 140 people in the remote region.

The moves were an apparent bid to stanch the flow of information out of Xinjiang province and to prevent further rioting there. Over 800 other people were injured and the official death toll is likely to rise, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.

The government actions added to long-standing efforts to control online discussion of sensitive topics, especially at times of crisis.

"They cut off the Internet to shut down communications," said Wu'er Kaixi, an ethnic Uighur who fled China after helping lead pro-democracy protests there twenty years ago. The Uighurs are a minority concentrated in Xinjiang province that China has struggled to assimilate.

Beijing did not want Internet users to upload pictures and videos like they did after deadly riots last year in Tibet, Wu'er said.

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Seems a silly reason to censor the internet. If people are rioting and the police is handling it, than there's nothing to hide. China should show off their they're doing a good job beating rioters!

Japanese music video featuring fans with webcams!

Artist: Sour

This music video was shot for Sour's 'Hibi no Neiro' (Tone of everyday) from their first mini album 'Water Flavor EP'. The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed purely via webcam.

Director: Masashi Kawamura + Hal Kirkland + Magico Nakamura + Masayoshi Nakamura

Youtube Link

That's really cool! Must take alot of coordination and editing!

Watch Your Teeth On TV!

Source: Japanorama

To Tell The Tooth, Mickey Mouth, Dr. Philling and Tarter Trek: The Search for Plaque can be yours, commercial-free and broadcast live! Admittedly, the scenes of oral exploration offered up by the Miharu Dental Intraoral Plaque Detection Camera are less than suspenseful - unless you're surprised by the size of that chive nestling along your upper gumline. So that's what your co-workers were giggling about!

The Miharu Dental Intraoral Plaque Detection Camera allows you to avoid such embarrassing exposures while in the process discovering how good (or lousy) a job you've been doing in the fight against plaque and the evil gingivitis. It accomplishes the latter by employing a simple one-touch mode changer that lights up plaque like a five-alarm fire.

Here's how to work it: pop in a pair of AAA batteries and plug the included 6ft. long cable into your TV's video input jack - it's plug & play. Put a disposable cover over the Miharu's lens and prepare to direct "Deep Throat: Electric Boogaloo" - starring you!

Along with the camera you get 125 disposable lens covers, an English instruction book and an "adapter lens for skin", which sounds kinda creepy. Not that the basic concept of a mouth-cam isn't, but each to his or her own, right? Betcha can't wait for the endoscope version!

Until then, you can order the Miharu Dental Intraoral Plaque Detection Camera online from Japan Trend Shop for $119 plus a worldwide express flat rate of $18. Lights, camera, salivation!

Hmm no thanks. I don't want to see my bleedin' gums in HIGH DEFINITION!

Damn! Green Dam Sucks!

Did you know bad stuff on the computer will turn an angel into a devil? :)

Source: CNN

China's last-minute decision to postpone a controversial content-filtering application on computers sold there is the latest example of the trouble that Western technology companies face doing business in the world's fastest-growing economy.

Businesses and Chinese computer users are up in arms about the Web filtering plan -- ostensibly meant to protect young online users from pornography, but criticized for leaving businesses vulnerable to cyber attacks.

The "Green Dam Youth Escort" software application unleashed a flood of complaints toward Beijing, making strange bedfellows of human rights groups such as Amnesty International, Chinese computer users and trade groups representing the largest international businesses in China.

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The government wants unlimited control and wants to know what you're doing at all times. It has nothing to do with porn.

Geisha’s Dice for iPhone and iPodTouch

Source: Tokyo Digital News

Geisha's DICE is a very simple dice game. The Geisha dealer faces one to about 10 players from behind the tatami table.


Youtube Link


Youtube Link

Looks like a pretty cool game.

I wonder if it could match the greatest movie scene ever involving dice :D


Youtube Link

Electric Bikes Are Swarming

Source: TIME

Of all the things that have changed in China over the past 30 years, transportation has undergone one of the most obvious of transformations. Where city streets once swarmed with bicycles, they are now full of automobiles. Cars clog intersection and expressways. Their exhaust clouds the sky and the air is full of the sound of horns. But zipping through the congestion is the vanguard of another transportation revolution: vehicles that use no gas, emit no exhaust and are so quiet they can surprise the unwary pedestrian.

In China, electric bicycles are leaving cars in the dust. Last year, Chinese bought 21 million e-bikes, compared with 9.4 million autos. While China now has about 25 million cars on the road, it has four times as many e-bikes. Thanks to government encouragement and a population well versed in riding two wheels to work, the country has become the world's leading market for the cheap, green vehicles, helping to offset some of the harmful effects of the country's automobile boom. Indeed, as engineers around the world scramble to create eco-friendly, plug-in electric cars, China is already ahead of the game. Says Frank Jamerson, a former GM engineer turned electric-vehicle analyst: "What's happening in China is sort of a clue to what the future will be."

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That's fine in China when you're going 2 miles an hour. Don't think that would work in Canada. I don't want to be on a electric bicycle when it's -40 degrees!

Cool idea though, anything to save gas. More gas for me!

Some Asswipe Invents A New Asswipe

Source: Japanorama

What's an eco-friendly way to recycle used office paper and botched photocopies? Here we might mulch it to be used in farming. In Japan they're turning it into toilet paper.

Paperless office? That's what the computer was supposed to usher in but as any office worker knows, it just hasn't happened. Memos, reports, handouts and photocopies just keep coming and coming, much like Publisher's Clearing House Day at the post office. It's enough to make anyone go postal... but now Japan's Nakabayashi Co. has come up with a brilliant solution: recycle the scrap paper into crap paper!

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It's a good idea. The amount of papers going through an office is remarkable. So if there's a way to make it into nice and soft toilet paper for my delicate tushy, then woohoo!

Chinese Computers Will Come Anti-Wanged

Say goodbye to these lovely ladies

Source: Google

China is requiring personal computers sold in the country to carry software that blocks online pornography and other Web sites, potentially giving one of the world's most sophisticated censorship regimes even more control over the Internet.

The software's developer said Monday the tool would give parents more oversight by preventing computers from accessing sites with pornographic pictures or language. Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co., which won a government contract to develop the "Green Dam-Youth Escort" filtering software, was compiling a database of sites to block.

Although porn sites are initially targeted, the software could be used to block other Web sites, too, including those based on keywords rather than specific Web addresses.

Parents can also add their own sites to the blocking list, Zhang Chenmin, general manager of Jinhui, told The Associated Press.

"If a father doesn't want his son to be exposed to content related to basketball or drugs, he can block all Web sites related to those things," Zhang said.

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Basketball?! Is there something racy and violent about basketball that I don't know about? (Kobe Bryant notwithstanding)

I don't think the Chinese really understand. If you can't download porn why bother having a computer?

Yubi-Poki, Virtual Dual Purpose Knuckle Cracker Toy

Source: Japanorama

"Stop doing that!!"... One of Mom's favorite and most frequent expressions (often followed by "You'll put your eye out!") can be provoked in so many ways, especially by cracking your knuckles. That slightly liquid sounding SNAP seems to rub the human pleasure center both ways - much like the stroke of fingernails
on either one's back, or one's blackboard.

Funny how something that provides so much pleasure to one can cause so much annoyance to another... such is the case with cracking your knuckles. The Yubi-Poki virtual knuckle cracker will keep on cracking even after you've run out of knuckles.

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holy! They only thing more annoying then someone cracking knuckles is a fake knuckle-cracker!

Japan's earthquake rescue robot

Source: BBC

Earthquakes are a fact of life in Japan and so is a fascination with robotics.

At the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Professor Shigeo Hirose is developing a robot that could help rescue survivors after an earthquake.

The BBC's Richard Black took the opportunity to take a look at the robot and some of the professor's other creations.

This would be very cool. The saddest things I hear during earthquakes are victims who aer buried alive and aren't saved for 4-5 days! Having these little snake-like robots would help rescuers alot! Especially since they are often afraid to go deep into the rubble for fear more could collapse!

Plastic Spoon Chandelier by Daisuke Hiraiwa

Source: Cube Me

Japanese designer Daisuke Hiraiwa transforms everyday objects into striking examples of found design. Each Lamps are composed of clear plastic spoons that have been punctured with hundreds of tiny holes to allow light to filter through them in beautiful ways.

Japanese 'Buddha phone'

Source: Crave

The Odin 99 has landed on the streets of Japan, and a single tap of the phone's dedicated lotus-leaf button will load a private, customisable, animated altar.

The idea is to allow Buddhists to perform their dedications and rituals conveniently when away from home. You can simulate incense burning, purification rites and play music to help you meditate wherever you happen to be.

As far as our knowledge goes of inventions that seamlessly converge religion with phone calls, this takes the gold medal. Gold paint has been taken to the phone too, encrusting the otherwise conventional-looking device. Also interesting is that it comes with a metal Buddhist charm to be carried by the user, and two batteries -- the extra one considered 'a gift'.

That's pretty cool to be able to listen to chants at anytime. It could calm a person down uring the times they get really pissed off!

Of course I'm never sure what they're chanting. Sounds like "a la ba la a la ba uuuuummm" to me :)