The Weather Outside Is Frightful...

These incredible outdoor space heaters not only create less CO2 emissions (according to their manufacturer) but also come with lights built in or (bizzarely) an media player that you can use to play videos or music from your iPod.

A Better Mouse

Many inventors dream of building a better mousetrap.

Apple thinks they've built a better mouse.

The "Magic Mouse" is, in Apple's words, the world's first "multi-touch" mouse. According to PCMag.com, "The mouse doesn't feature physical buttons, instead relying on touch, taps, and swipes. As Apple puts it, "the mouse itself is the button." Users can scroll, flip through Web pages and photos, and can click or double-click anywhere on the mouse's surface." Mark Kellner at the Washington Times said that the mouse "truly is magic." I don't know... kind of sounds like the touchpad on my aging Dell XPS to me... I guess it's time to go to an Apple store and test drive one to see if Apple really did build a better mouse.

:-)

Emoticons are ubiquitous. Which is impressive, considering hardly any of us had even heard of the word just ten years ago. But where did emoticons come from?

Some suggest that the first recorded instance of an emoticon is in the transcript of a speech given by Abraham Lincoln, published in 1862, wherein a semicolon and parenthesis in sequence wink at the reader from the printed page.

But in more modern history, the combination of colon, hyphen, and parenthesis to convey emotion when read sideways was first proposed in an 1982 memo by Scott E. Falman, then a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University. He proposed smiley faces and frowny faces to mark jokes and not-jokes.

Contact Lens or TV Monitor?

Maybe both and it's not so far fetched. Advances in technology is making everything smaller and more portable. In about 10 years, you'll be able to pop a contact lens and watch TV. Your own body heat would power the TV/lens and you can change channels by waving your hand.

People would not be able to tell what you're watching. Like any other contact lens, you'd be able to pop it out at night. Experts say the technology already exists.
In some states you need a hands free device to use your cell phone while driving. How do you think contact lens TV will affect drivers?