Technobabble

Video game draws real blood
From the pages of Who Says Videogames Are Bad for Us comes Glucoboy. Dressed as a mild-mannered Game Boy, Glucoboy is actually a lifesaver of children, in disguise. The “highly accurate and precise self-diagnostic” blood glucose meter attaches to a Nintendo Game Boy Advance System or DS and becomes a device that rewards testing and good-health management for young diabetics. The system gives points to those properly monitoring their blood sugar control for two full-length video games or a mini-arcade system. It’s covered under most medical insurance policies.

Join the Mile High Club!
We’ve been hearing about it for some time now, but as you read this there are airline customers searching the Web or e-mailing and IMing with others in that plane above your head. That’s right, the Interwebs can now be had a mile high in the sky. JetBlue introduced e-mail and IM services Dec. 11 (I ♥ JetBlue) while Virgin America, American Airlines and Alaska Airlines plan to launch Web services in the coming months. So now you might not only be stuck in the middle seat, but the loud woman at the window might be gabbing away on Skype with her new boyfriend while the super-sized businessman on your left surfs bestiality Web sites. No really, I am excited about this.

SuperHacker
Those pesky junior high kids have done it again: hacked into not one but two of the United States’ most important science labs. Actually, the labs don’t yet know who breached digital security at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, but I wouldn’t be shocked if it was a group of adolescents bored with Halo 3. If you haven’t guessed it, these labs deal with homeland security and military research—you know, stuff like top-secret nuclear-weapons research, not to mention home to one of the world’s fastest supercomputers. Not fast enough, I guess. How secure have these people made our homeland?

Name that tune
I saw an ad the last time I was at the movies (which is a rant for another column) for a cell phone that, when held in the air for 15 seconds near a song playing in the area, will identify the name of the song and text the information back to the phone owner. A little more research found that it is a service not unique to that major carrier. Any cell phone owner with SMS (texting) can call 866-411-SONG and for 99 cents, have the name of the song texted to them. And for the over-achieving music detective, unlimited service can be had for $3.99 a month.

Wacky Web site of the week
This fortnight, a Web destination that’s more functional than funny. Did you fly anywhere this last holiday season? How was your aerial travel experience? Now you have a place to vent or hear the flight horror stories of others. The site includes statistics such as best overall flight experience and worst. www.mybadflight.com