A look at the wackiness of technology

Stud school
Regular readers of the ’babble know my deep appreciation for the ingenuity of the Japanese. Here comes yet another completely outside-the-box product to help shy men (and lesbians)—the Miterudake or Just Looking DVD.

Fifty women “look” into the eyes of the viewer for a total of 96 minutes, supposedly helping us less-than-Casanova types become comfortable with the gaze of an attractive female. If they are all as good looking as the woman in this sample video, I might have to do further research. Search “ezvl21” on YouTube.

Spin another MP3
I gave away all of my albums shortly after it was obvious that CDs were the new medium for distributing music (albums and compact discs are two technologies that were used to deliver music back in the day; look them up on Wikipedia).

For those of you who still have your grooved vinyl, Ion Audio has a cool turntable with an iPod dock for $250. The LP Dock is not the first album-to-MP3 converter on the market but it’s the first I have seen that lets you dock your Apple music player directly into the hardware. www.ion-audio.com

Pop the trunk … err, the car
Imagine you are running late for work only to find your car is flat. No, not that it has a flat but the entire car is flat! I’m not sure this is what would happen with XP Vehicles prototype inflatable car, but the whole idea sounds kinda bizarre. Drivers assemble these electric polymer fiber or NASA-grade inflatable cars themselves in two hours, according to XP’s Web site. This bubble mobile will run up to 300 miles on a single charge with a possible 2,500-mile range with hot-swappable battery technology.

Of course, the problem with this scenario is not with the estimated $5,000 car that will get you from Chico to Pittsburgh on swappable batteries. I’m just trying to picture a 70 mph, head-on collision with a civilian Hummer or Chevy Suburban. www.xpcarteam.com

Hard(ly) working
From the “How Not to Work at Work” files, I bring you the Fake Progress Bar. Download this freeware program and set it for the length of time you need to reply to your Facebook messages, read Craigslist’s “rants and raves” or play a little Donkey Kong. When the boss comes by, show him or her the progress bar and tell him it will be another 10 minutes before the “database” is fully loaded. Pure brilliance. www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/fakebar

Wacky Web site of the week
This is where geek meets gastronomy. Now I know there is a Web site for everything. www.eatgeek.com/