Gearfuse

Who would’ve thought that all of those AV nerds in high school would one day work on Best Buy’s Geek Squad. If geeks you know haven’t gotten a job on the squad then your next bet is to check your local Radio Shack. This holiday season, it’s not Radio Shack trying to steal your money with cheap RC cars and hearing aid batteries, it’s the Geek Squad with its gaming system set up service.

For the holiday season, Geek Squad will be offering a new service that will set up game consoles including the PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360. Part of the set up includes installing parental restrictions, controls and even the Internet. Sometimes AV inputs and a power cord can be too much for some folks. Don’t worry, the Geek Squad is here to help. No mention of the price of the service if you purchased a system from Best Buy, however, the Geek Squad will charge you $30 bucks if you bought it elsewhere. It’s almost as much of a hoax as that Bluetooth set up service it offers.

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Ryan was showing me some video of a hornet killing a cicada whilst we discussed posts about bugs. Then, I suddenly stumbled upon this video of a glowing trilobite beetle. Watch how it lights up in the dark like a raver’s glowstick. The ‘net doesn’t say too much about the creature but I did find this information on Mahalo:

The Trilobite Beetle is a beetle from Borneo that resembles the extinct Trilobite. The short YouTube video of the oddly shaped insect has been viewed more than 200,000 times. Borneo, Southeast Asian island on which the beetle resides, is renowned for its abundant flora and fauna.

I’d like to scoop 20 of these suckers up and throw them in a jar with some grass and air holes. Boom. Instant DIY night light.

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With all this RFID implant business going on, the Magic School Bus days are getting closer and closer. We already have a pill that’ll show you your insides, so what’s next? How about a robot you can swallow that attaches to your intestinal wall which can then perform biopsies, deliver drugs, or administer localized treatment to your gut? Metin Sitti, a professor at NanoRobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon, and his team were looking for an appropriate adhesive to adorn the robot’s feet with so it would be able to attach itself to the intestinal wall easily.

With no luck, the team looked to insects like beetles, directly drawing inspiration from the oil-like liquids they secrete along their foot hairs in order to stick securely to surfaces. With their homemade “beetle juice”, the team was successful in having the robot attach to an animal intestines as well as on an animal esophagus. I’d hate to be the poor animal that gets to shit that robot out.

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Volkswagen owners are really passionate about their cars. My buddy Raymond owns a GTI and puts like $10,000 into it each year. That’s a lot of money, so why not go for something a little more affordable? For $120, you can score this 1626 piece VW Beetle LEGO kit.

Based on a 1960 ‘Charlotte’ model, the VW is 16″ long and features moving parts and doors that open and close. I think that for $120, it’s a steal. You and your pals will have fun getting drunk and building it. That is, until you lose that one piece.
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We no longer live in the time of one device call management. People these days own up to four phones sometimes because of their crazy work habits! Crazy, yes, but we’ve seen it happen. The first ever Universal Phone Charger is being shown this week at CEBIT. The AnyFix charger is the product of Prof. Luigi (fitting name for one in the tech industry) Colani, an 80-year-old veteran of the field of industrial design. AnyFix can charge 80% of European cell phones, including all major brand names.

Charging your phone with AnyFix is as easy as pressing a button for the correct corresponding charge. The charger is a product of a totally bio-designed idea. It takes its sleek form from the Dytiskus Marginalis, a 3.5 cm long beetle which can travel underwater at speeds up to 4 meters per second thanks to its streamline body shape. Colani is known for his groundbreaking designs in the auto and aviation field. If the AnyFix does what it says it can, you can add mobile to that list. — Andrew Dobrow

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