This is a little $17 USB gadget that lights up whenever you receive new email. It can turn green, blue, or red to indicate which account the mail is from and looks like a little envelope. Neat. Oh, it's blinking! Oh boy, oh boy! Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:04:33 +0000 From: "ives abdulkaf" mail@camelbak-deals.com Subject: Upsize your hotdog into a french loaf To: tips@geekologie.com Top 10 sellers for organic pharmacology today Hell yeah French loaf, I'm starving! USB webmail notifier lights up your life when you've got mail [engadget] Thanks to Julian, who receives his email the old fashioned way, by horse.

Now boobs are an issue I can get behind. And by get behind I mean mush my face in between. Official Website Thanks to Jason, who knows that breasts are our nation's most valuable resource.

Now boobs are an issue I can get behind. And by get behind I mean mush my face in between. Official Website Thanks to Jason, who knows that breasts are our nation's most valuable resource.

Mac OS X only: Free preference pane application Fruux syncs Address Book, iCal, and tasks between different Macs. To use it, just install the preference pane and create a new account with Fruux. Once you've verified your account, go ahead and run your first synchronization. Fruux uploads your contact and calendar information to the cloud so it's ready to sync to any of your other Macs. Just wash, rinse, and repeat with as many computers as you want to sync with. Fruux is smart, too, supporting sync conflict resolution when a record has been changed on both computers. You can already roll your own contact syncing with Address Book and Google Contacts or push contacts, and Google Calendar syncs with iCal without too much effort, but if you'd prefer a more streamlined alternative, Fruux provides a dead simple install-it-and-forget-it syncing setup.

Even better, the Fruux roadmap reveals more ambitious goals, including Safari bookmark syncing and—more importantly—preferences syncing. Essentially, then, Fruux is aiming toward building a homegrown MobileMe. If this app remains free, it's got crazy potential written all over it. Fruux is a free download, Mac OS X only.

A guy named Vin Marshall along with a team of nine talented but misguided individuals have constructed a 2000 pound pedal-powered Panzer tank replica complete with a pneumatic cannon that fires water, wieners or whatever onto unsuspecting crowds. Then they painted it pink—making it the most effeminate war machine ever constructed.

The "Pink Panzer" is capable of cruising along at 15 mph thanks to pedals re-claimed from six ten speed bicycles and a steering system cobbled together from an old Geo Metro and a Ford 150 pickup. All-in-alll, the tank took 11 days to build at an expense of $3000. Not a bad project for anyone who really, really hates parades. [PopSci]

Filed under: Transportation

There's not exactly a shortage of options out there for parents that want to keep watch on their kids' driving, but Ford looks to be taking things a bit further than most with its new MyKey system, and it's making it standard issue, no less. Set to debut in the 2010 Focus Coupe and plenty of other Ford vehicles shortly thereafter, the key-based system will let parents limit their car's top driving speed to 80 miles per hour, cut off the stereo's volume at just 44% of its max output, and set a persistent chime to go off if the seatbelts aren't being used (the stereo also gets muted until everyone buckles up). As if that wasn't enough, it'll also provide a low-fuel warning at 75 miles to empty, start issuing a surely annoying reminder as the driver inches up past the 45 mph mark, and make it impossible to disable some of the Focus' usual safety measures like Park Aid and Cross Traffic Alert. Also not able to be disabled: your kid's resentment.

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Parents! Are you looking for a way to make sure your teenagers are safe while they drive? Also, are annoyed while they drive? Well Ford has your back. Its new MyKey system is sure to make driving an infuriatingly annoying ordeal.

When enabled, MyKey can cap the top speed of the car to 80MPH. That's not too bad, really. But it can also chime whenever the car reaches 45MPH, 55MPH and 65MPH, apparently to "alert young drivers about their acceleration." Oh-kay.

It can also limit the volume on the car stereo, which would piss me off to no end, and chime every five minutes when the seat belts aren't buckled. Lastly, it'll chime when the car is 75 miles from empty.

Essentially, it will beep at you all the time and keep you from listening to music loudly. Just the idea of driving down a road at about 55MPH, dipping below and above that speed frequently, hearing a beep every time I do, is enough to bring me to the brink of road rage.

Look for MyKey on the 2010 Ford Focus and later on other Ford, Lincoln and Mercury models. [Ford via CNET]

After getting resoundly swatted in court by Tivo time and again for walking all over its patent for a "multimedia time warping system" (cool retro-future speak for a DVR), Echostar (now just Dish) is finally admitting defeat once and for all. Following its loss to TiVo in a US Appeals court earlier this year, Echostar appealed to the Supreme Court, which just decided not to hear the case, leaving Echostar nowhere else to turn.

So Echostar has decided that it will in fact be handing TiVo a check for $104 million plus interest, though TiVo is looking for further damages apparently, due to "EchoStar’s continued infringement of our Time Warp patent." More importantly, their victory here opens the door for TiVo to start hunting down everyone else selling a DVR, so the real ugly might still be on the way. [Zatz Not Funny]

The Wall Street Journal says that big discounts and hilarious bailout-themed marketing has failed impress consumers, and retailers are expecting sales to worsen before they get better. Restoration Hardware launched a "bailout" themed promotion offering $100 off purchases of $400 or more at the home furnishings chain, while Steve Madden posted signs depicting "a declining stock chart and implored shoppers to "Sell Stocks, Buy Shoes."

The deep discounts backfired, says the WSJ:

When they report September sales this week, many retail chains are expected to show big drops in sales at stores open at least year, a key measure of retail performance, according to analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

Shoppers, it seems, have become jaded:

Some consumers are becoming hardened to retail claims of "last chance" and "final sale." Katie Ertel, 30, a La Jolla, Calif., counselor, said she's begun to tune out. "Every week it's the same 'last minute sale.' Eventually it's like 'Ha, ha. You are not getting me this time,'" said Ms. Ertel.

Big Discounts Fail to Lure Shoppers [WSJ]

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