Gearfuse

These adorable little devices called Poken are used to exchange social networking info among new found friends who have their own Poken. No one cares to jot down email addresses, user IDs and screen names when they’re in a rush. So, the Poken have been created as a quick way to exchange such information in a matter of seconds. All it takes is a ‘high five’ from your Poken to your new found friend’s Poken. RF technology then sends the info between the devices. The next time you log on to your favorite site, your profiles are linked.

Poken are just $20 dollars and are capable of storing up to 64 contacts before each upload. Each time you add a new contact, your Poken’s hand will light up green. When you approach your limit for contacts, an orange warning light will show from the Poken’s hand, warning you that you’re being too much of a social slut. When all is said and done, you can use your online Poken account to choose which of your profiles you want to share. A precaution in case you want to prevent a shady new friend from accessing personal information. Goodbye business cards, hello Poken!

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Target must be pissed. The company approaches the holidays with new gift cards that have a built-in 1.2-megapixel digital camera and what does its competitor, Best Buy, do? Best Buy tries a different route with gift cards that have speakers built in to them.

While not nearly as cool as Target’s concept, Best Buy has gotten this far by offering bullshit services like pairing your Bluetooth headset with your phone for $10 bucks. Being able to plug your gift card into your iPod right before you clear the $50 credit at the cash register seems pointless to me. Let’s see if Best Buy follows the way of Circuit City.

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If you’re still in to Magic: The Gathering, you’re one dedicated player. But hey, we aren’t here to judge. In fact, we want to support your “mana tapping” needs by introducing you to the ultimate glass-ware inspired by the ever so famous card game, Magic.

Craftster.org forum user Poe poe made these etched glasses out of old glade candle glasses. For a moment, I had thought she blew the glass herself, which would’ve been way cooler. Regardless, the etching of Magic was done really well. Be sure to check out the hand-painted elemental patterns, after the jump.

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Right now, in a time where the economy is complete shit and corporate raiding is nothing new, Samsung is trying to buy SanDisk, one of the largest manufacturers of flash memory. SanDisk is being resistant, so what’s a troubled company to do? In this case, SanDisk decided to launch SlotMusic, a microSD card equipped with a full album’s worth of songs from a major label recording artist. These “albums” will be available in stores like Best Buy and WalMart, ensuring they’ll collect dust for years to come.

You must remember, dear reader, that no one buys CDs anymore, let alone some fucked up microSD format. Only 29 albums will be launching with SlotMusic, making selection very limited. Om Malik has a hell of a point when he brings up that this is exactly like MiniDisk. Except that was the 1990s and everything was cool in the ’90s.

I love the above image from the SlotMusic website. I had no idea the iPod/Zune had microSD slots! Oh wait…

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This might look like a miniature Death Star but, in actuality, it’s a top secret spy cam. The DVR CamBall is the first ever digital video camera and MP3 player that’s as small as a ping-pong ball and able to record at 320×240 or 640×480 resolutions. What better way to sneak a camera into top-secret facilities than to roll it under the door. Unfortunately, once it’s out of your grasp their is little you can do to aim it.

That’s fine though, since this thing’s got the capability to hold up to 8GB of photos with an SD card. At $200, it comes with a couple of accessories including a tassel to wear the camera around your neck and an underwater case for snorkling shots that’ll turn you into a marine biologist in no time.

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Who would’ve thought all it took is an Arduino, a standard magnetic stripe reader, a display and a little code to be able to read the data stored on magnetic stripe cards such as your VISA card.  I can’t begin to imagine how this DIY provided by Instructables could be abused.  No one is doing fraudulent things with an Arduino LED hat and the worst that could happen with an Arduino KITT in your car is people calling you “The Hoff.”

Turn this card reader portable and you’ve got yourself an identification theft device that’ll fit in your pocket.  The digital age is a dangerous time, a dog eat dog world. Do your part and make it as hectic as possible for the rest of mankind.

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Here’s a great idea gone wrong. Take the piggy bank. A staple of American childhood that has taught us how to save for a rainy day. You put money in and don’t take anything out until it’s full. Enter the ATM bank. It’s a fully-operational ATM and will keep a tally of how much money you put in. Need to make a withdrawal? It comes its very own debit card so you can take out cash for fat sack of buds. I really don’t see today’s generation of children saving money with a bank like this.

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Remember the days when everyone would compile mix tapes of their favorite NKOTB or M.C. Hammer tracks onto cassette? Bet they didn’t know that all those expensive cassettes would one day be melted down and turned into a skeleton. Vintage media sharing is making a come back. Instill nostalgia (maybe even doubt) with this Mix Tape USB Stick. It’s like a gift card with a 64 MB USB drive for storing your favorite tunes.

It might look like an out-of-this-world cassette tape, but it’s merely a case and has no practical use but to serve as a gift card of sorts. Basically, you’re paying $29 for a 64 MB USB drive. You just got ripped off, kid.

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My birthday was on Tuesday and I got about three musical cards this year. Though they were good for a short laugh, I felt bad that my siblings had spent $5 on a card just because it looped a sound over and over again. Luckily, Justin from Instructables has come up with a way to turn your useless birthday card into a sweet speaker for your MP3 player.

Essentially, you’ll be dismantling the card and wiring it up to a pair of headphones. Once that’s done, you’ll do a little cutting, wiring and next thing you know, you’ll be the proud new owner of a piece-of-shit speaker. Congratulations! It’s DIY!

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Here’s an interesting little hack that will make those of you in London light up with glee. Some wisecrack DIYer went and dissolved an RFID-based Oyster card for the Underground. The result? A lot of wires and an RFID chip left behind. As you can see in the video above, the card continues to work flawlessly and can now be implemented into your hand, wallet or whatever you want to stick the chip in.

Although the method really doesn’t change anything about the card aside from appearance, it does open the door to some possible . Maybe you could replace the chip inside of a card with a different RFID chip your friend at the government lab re-programmed? The possibilities are (probably not) endless.

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