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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Every single object in our universe is composed of an infrastructure of elements, yet many children are not retaining the information which tells us the building blocks of the universe. Elementeo is a card game created by a 14-year old whiz kid, hell bent on teaching chemistry in an effective and fun fashion.

Much like games such as Magic: The Gathering, Elementeo is based around a card set, 121 cards in total, in which players must “reduce the opponents electrons to zero through strategic use of each card’s chemical properties.” The elements are given fantasy-driven names such as “Oxygen Life-Giver”, to develop a system of lore around the game. — Andrew Dobrow

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Aye, papi! When we broke the news last November that NVIDIA was gearing up for release of their GeForce 9 series in Q1 of ‘08, we were unaware that the series would include TWO new product releases. Rumor has it that NVIDIA will be dropping word of their two new 9xxx series cards soon; the top-notch GeForce 9800GX2 on 18th March and their second best 9800GTX on 25th March.

So, what does NVIDIA have in store for the 9800GTX? The leaked specs show the card offering 128 processor cores, a 675MHz core clock, a 1688MHz shader clock, 1100MHz memory clock, not to mention 512MB GDDR3 memory. The card will retail for an estimated $300-$350. — Andrew Dobrow

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Nintendo has demoed a card reader for their Nintendo DS portable gaming machine at the Toy Forum in Japan. The card reader is used to incorporate battle cards (such as Yu-gi-oh) with the game on your DS, theoratically you can also play battle card games on the network with users all over the world. The game demonstrated was Jushinten (rough translation: myth of monsters), there is no word on the availability, but expect that this should be ready real soon. — Sam Chan

Toy Forum [NikkeiBP]