Along with selecting your music genre, Pop/Rock, Electronic/Dance, HipHop/Rap, Metal, Indie/Alternative, or everything, you can select the level of difficulty from novice to Expert.

Novice level displays the album cover, artist and album name, Intermediate level displays the album cover and album name, Expert only shows the album cover.

The accuracy and speed of your answers, along with the difficulty will determine how many points you receive in each round.

They do have drawings for 5 dollar gift cards every hour, and even an incentive to hit 2000 points so that you can be qualify to win an itouch, but the true reward is an inflated ego as a music expert.

Give Songblitz a spin, and shamefully sulk away and declare it to be a stupid game, or brag incessantly what a musical genius you are to your peers as you zip up the online vanity board.

As a youth, having legible handwriting, and cursive writing skills were a focus in the early years of education, but as technology gradually penetrated the education system and ultimately became a requirement, the value of penmanship has dissolved into the cyberspace.

I’ve heard that typing or printing thank you letters is gauche because of its depersonalization. The Fontifier service could provides some semblance of personalization in your letters through your curls, dots and crosses, if you must insist on using a computer to send a semi personal letter.

Shirley, an Asian elephant, was adopted by a small Louisiana Zoo from a Circus when she was 30. After 22 years of care at the Zoo, with no contact with any other elephants, the Zoo decided to let her go to a nearby elephant sanctuary so she can socialize with other elephants.

The tearful goodbye between the trainer and Shirley tugs at your heartstrings. But even more so, Shirley reunites with an old elephant friend, Jenny. Almost 23 years prior, Shirley and another elephant, Jenny, had worked together for only a few weeks in the circus and Shirley had been like a surrogate mother to the then baby Jenny. In their reunion at the sanctuary, its apparent they remember each other and their bond is reestablished.

Sadly, a 10 years later, Jenny became ill and passed:

When she grew too weak to roam the hills and hollows, Jenny trundled toward a shady valley, found some soft, beaten-down underbrush, and lay down. Shirley stood vigil night and day, using her trunk to help her friend to rise and even shift her weight. Also by Jenny’s side were two other sanctuary friends, Tarra and Bunny. At one point, the four spent three hours vocalizing and trumpeting—the vibrations felt by every living being in the sanctuary. In all her years of working with animals, Buckley had never seen anything like this joy-filled celebration of Jenny’s life.

The next day, October 17, 2006, the great animals continued their vocalizing. There was nothing urgent in their song. It was soothing. Still, it was too much for Shirley. About to lose Jenny for the second time, she retreated to a nearby hill to grieve alone. In her absence, Bunny and Tarra comforted Jenny by stroking her. They rested like that for some time, Bunny calmly answering each of Jenny’s rumbles with a crescendo trumpet, while Tarra accompanied the duo with high-pitched chirps. That evening, at the age of 36—young for an elephant—Jenny died. Tarra and Bunny stayed at her side through the night. But whereas Jenny’s suffering had ended, Shirley’s began.

Elephants wear their hearts on their trunks, as it were, so it was easy to tell that Shirley was not coping well with Jenny’s death—her shoulders slumped, her eyes were half shut and her trunk dragged on the ground. She wasn’t eating or vocalizing. She was depressed. Bunny followed her to the hill, where the two stayed for days before finally returning to the barn. There, a new arrival had made her presence felt. Another circus outcast, Misty is a gregarious bundle of energy who literally jumps for joy. Even Shirley couldn’t ignore her raucous spinning and loud, jubilant trumpeting. With her spirits restored, Shirley, the oldest and largest elephant at the sanctuary, began to eat and play, and even picked her trunk off the ground. She was backwith the herd, where she belonged

-Readers Digest

Shirley still lives happily at the sanctuary with her other surrogate elephant family members.

Participants will spend 90 days lying in bed, (except for limited times for specific tests) with their body slightly tilted downward (head down, feet up). Every day, they will be awake for 16 hours and lights out (asleep) for 8 hours.

Wired posted a FAQ regarding the program, answered some questions I’m sure thats come up in your minds (conjugal visits, playing video games, etc..)

Its an interesting read, her blog, as she describes her days as a ‘pillownaut’, as she describes the various experiments shes subjected to, and posts correspondences with fans around the world.

Seems like a dream job, lying in bed all day, but it may get tedious after a few weeks. Having access to video games and the Internet is definitely a plus. Having a purpose or project or purpose to occupy your time seems to be the best bet. (but isn’t that like real life anyways?)

Musicovery provides you with a graphical interface to explore various music themes and moods.

Upon selecting a artist, you will be presented with an interface that you can adjust your moods from Energetic, Dark, Calm, and Positive, then selecting the date range of the music you wish to listen to, then the music genre.

With all those options, Musicovery streams music based on your mood. You can watch the web page plot your music preferences and songs.

You have the option to rate the songs its selected and it will ‘learn’ what you like. After a while, it will have a pretty good idea of your musical preferences and will become attuned to your music personality.

Everybody has their own methods of discovering new music, plain old radio is probably the worst way to do so, since it restricts you to whats popular. These music discovery sites allow you explore music that you love and discover similar tunes to expand your music world beyond the 5 dusty cds from the 80s.

The Asus Vit W1 mouse has a built in heart rate monitor that transmits your readings to a application on your PC to show you your pulse rate, and whether you are in a stressed state of mind, or relaxed state of mind.

Besides being a diagnostic tool, this wireless mouse is has five buttons, a small USB receiver, 1200dpi sensitivity and a maximum working range of 30 feet.

It would be interesting to see how this could be leveraged for productivity and general workplace mental health wellness.

By tracking the heart rate and stress level of individuals during the day you can gauge their productivity level and micromanage their work load by adding more until they get to a certain stress level. Since it varies for each person, you can custom the work load based on their current state of being. ‘You’re too relaxed, heres more work!’

A Internet enabled computer, a webcam, along with some free cam software, turns your cpu into mini webserver that can stream a live video feed from your part of the world to the masses. Unfortunately, that usually limits you to your desk area, and that aint very exciting.

Another option is to purchase a webcam that has a built in webserver . This provides flexibility in the placement of the camera, and doesnt require a dedicated computer attached to the camera. Most webcam’s with built in webservers has wifi capabilities, so you wont have to string a network cable to the location. The more advanced (read: pricier) webcams allow you to pan and tilt the camera remotely.

If you have a windows mobile phone, or a Nokia N60, Qik.com allows you to stream video directly from your phone! from their website:

Qik is a little piece of software that enables you to stream videos directly from your phone to the Web. Use it to stream engaging videos to your friends in Facebook, Twitter, etc. or as your camcorder to capture entertaining and special moments.

Recently, manufacturers have also introduced mobile robotic webcams that would be able to roam and stream videos through wifi.

WowWee has introduced its WiFi robotic camera, Rovio, which can roam houses and yards.

IRobot, a familiar manufacturer name in home robotics, is in the planning stages of releasing a roving webcam, ConnectR, an offspring of its ever-popular vacuum cleaning predecessor, Roomba.

Like blogging, these technologies make it easier for random people to broadcast their lives and living spaces on the Internet, but unfortunately, like blogging, 99.9% of it will be fairly mundane. Remember, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should

The traditional Bento boxes lunches originated in Japan dating back to the early 1100’s. Bento’s are portable meals that are packed into compact boxes to be brought to school or work.

The compact nature of the container format required a careful placement of the food items into various landscapes and configurations for an appealing eating experience.

The Japan, there is an long standing history in its study for food as an art form , although the bento box art presented in this post doesn’t follow that discipline, it does reflect on the Japanese culture embracing the art form.

Enjoy!

	Bowser also known as King Koopa, nemesis of Mario
	Playstation PS2 Controller wrapped in Nori
	Bill Gates Eat your Favorite Microsoft OG
	Star Trek Tricorder The original Fanboy SciFi TV show Tricorder
	Windows XP Laptop Even included a trackball!
	Linux Penguin It ‘could’ be the linux penguin
	Homer Simpson The Nori spreckled rice Beard is a nice touch
	Super Mario III Our favorite mario in flying form
	Star Wars Jawa Diorama Tatooine scavengers in bento format
	Pacman Dot Eating videoGame patriarch captured in bento format

With a some creativity and artistry, you can turn your lunch time meals into a fleeting temporary art masterpieces, like sand castles and ice sculptures.

Related Links:

http://www.e-obento.com/
http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/kasumin_yorosiku

Two notable projects that creative individuals implemented that use an animal to deliver electronic information between two locations.

Realsnailmail is a project by creative individuals from Bournemouth University in the UK who developed a way to send email using snails as a means of transmitting the information.

From their website:

Our snails are equipped with a miniaturized electronic circuit and antenna that enables them to be assigned messages from hardware located within their enclosure. The moment you click ‘send’ your message will travel at the speed of light to our snail server where it will await collection by a snail agent.

Once associated with the tiny electronic chip on the snails shell your message will be carried around until the snail chances by the drop off point. Hardware located at this point collects the message from the snail and forwards it to its final destination.

I love the quirky randomness of the snails that provide an unpredictable time length of your email being delivered over the gastropods. (actually, its almost simulates the predictability of Internet email, only slower!) Gives the term ’snail mail’ a literal meaning.

The creators of realsnailmail give credit to anther snail-based data transport project called SNAP (SNAil-based data transfer Protocol), which is a paper extolling the benefits of a snail based data delivery system. SNAP is based on a chariot-like device tied to the back of a snail and the speeds and reliability of the data on such a system.

Pigeons as a means of transport

Back in April 1990, RFC 1149 was written. It specified a protocol for IP over avian carriers, CPIP (carrier pigeon internet protocol). It was an proposal of using pigeons as a method of transferring network data.

Then in 2001, several individuals in Bergen, Belgium gave the proposal a try and posted pics of their successful attempts.

As broadband Internet integrates into almost every household, even dialup modems is unheard of for the current generation. The blazing speeds transferring terabtyes of terabytes of data is often taken for granted by most Internet users, but these projects, albiet seemingly silly, bring light to the actual technology that underlies the Internet and perhaps a greater appreciation of the network technology necessary to bring you that random streaming youtube video that you mindlessly watch. (or not)

Currently in beta and downloads only available to a select few, the Camspace program loads on your PC and allows you to use any object as a controller for existing and custom-made applications.

Once the application is loaded, you define any bright colored object as a controller, you will need to program the interface to the game or application of your choice to define the mappings.

This is a video of the application interfaced with google earth:

Camspace has alot of interesting potential because of its available APIs that will enable you to create your own applications to interface with random objects around the house.  It would be cool to see if fitness items such as barbells, exercise bicycles and such could be fitted with the sensors to enable them to become interactive exercising interfaces to various games on the PC.