Electric eel powers Christmas tree

Fancy that - a Christmas tree that is powered by an electric eel?! Where else can you find such zanyness but in Japan, where the Aqua Toto Gift Aquarium has sparked worldwide interest with its E-tree, whereby the "E" prefix stands for Electric Eel. This is really taking renewable energy to new heights. I wonder what will we have next - electric eel-powered boats? What about a baby electric eel-powered waterproof cellphone? Anyways, the copper wire in the eel's tank is what conducts electricity from the eel to the tree every time the sea creature brushes itself against the wire, zapping all those hanging baubles and ornaments to life.

Microsoft USB Tag holder

Name tag holder from Microsoft with an integrated 1GB USB flash drive with Ready Boost.

Google eases mobile map use by locating celltowers

9:25 AM PST, November 28, 2007

From Reuters SAN FRANCISCO -- Internet search leader Google Inc said today that it is introducing a novel mapping system that uses cell phone towers to let mobile phone users locate nearby services without typing in addresses.

Google's new My Location service is being offered in test mode to U.S. users and is designed to expand the percentage of cellphone users of location-aware services, whether or not their phones come equipped with satellite-locating chips.

Google Maps for Mobile with My Location automatically informs mobile phone users where they are on a map. Users simply type the number "0" on their phone to move the map to their approximate location.

Google is offering the service for free, direct to U.S. consumers, and is expected to eventually introduce local advertising that takes advantage of the location-aware service. The company has created the service independent of carriers.

The service uses various algorithms to approximate a user's handset location relative to the cell towers nearest them. The service relies on a database of cell towers Google has constructed by using anonymous readings of mobile signals from previous Google Maps users to help locate My Location users.

How To Hide Anything ISBN: 0873642899 | PDF

With little effort and expense, you can hide cash, armaments and even family from the menacing eyes of burglars, terrorists or anyone. Learn how to construct dozens of hiding places right in your house and yard. Here are small hiding places for concealing money and jewelry and large places for securing survival supplies or persons. More than 100 drawings show how to turn ordinary items into extraordinary hiding places.

The outdoor hidies are great for those with their own land. There are several innovative ideas that the other books do not have, including a tree stash. The structural hidies are also different – these aren't just making false drawer bottoms. There are pipe, appliance, wall and even drain hidies. Furniture hidies are covered extensively as well, but this review focuses on what makes this book different from the other hiding books.

One last strong point of this book is the writing. Throughout, it talks about the psychology of the thief and why some hides work better than others to prevent theft. The main focus is not hiding things from the government or the police, who often have a whole different mindset and a lot more time than a thief does.

Standalone hard drive eraser Wiebetech eRazer

Wiebetech's Drive eRazer is a standalone
drive-eraser that you can connect a variety of hard-drives to. It writes one (or
more) passes of random junk to every block. I have a small mountain of old
hard-disks yanked from machines before recycling, trashing or donating them, and
I could really use one of these to blank them before I get rid of them. It's
kind of cheezy that you need to buy a "pro" model to run multiple
passes on the drive -- the only difference between single passes and multiple
passes is software, after all.

1. Single-Pass Mode (Standard and Pro Model)

A single data pattern is written one time across the whole disk, deleting blocks
including partitions and Host Protected Areas. Verification is also done after a
single pass.

2. Multi-Pass Mode (Pro Model only)

The Pro model offers the ability to perform multiple passes. Why? Some studies
show that there may be ways of recovering bits of data even after completely
overwriting everything on the drive. We believe the laboratory required to
actually pull off such a feat would cost millions (if not billions) of dollars.
However, if you must convince someone that there's no way data can be recovered,
a pro model with the multi-pass feature is for you.

UK iPhones having service / reception issues?

It's not clear how widespread the problem is, but a number of iPhone users in the UK are reporting serious reception issues on O2's network. Our source in the UK has told us that his O2 iPhone currently has no service in the same room as other O2 phones with five bars and an unlocked iPhone on Vodafone with full service, and Apple's UK support forums are buzzing with similar reports. Users are also reporting that replacement iPhones don't exhibit the same problems, so the problem might be with the device itself -- but that would be strange, seeing as iPhones in other countries don't have the same issues. For its part, Apple appears to be replacing units as they're brought in, and hasn't made any official statement on the matter yet -- any UK iPhone users out there care to chime in?