Gearfuse

Even if you turn your computer and electronics off, they still suck power from your outlets. This is known as vampire energy and it can really add to your electric bill if you’re like us and own a lot of consumer electronics. For $100-130, this power strip from Monster lets you tap a button to switch it into sleep mode. A test was done with 200W worth of equipment. After hitting sleep, the outlets only drew a combined total of 6 watts. Impressive. The GreenPower Center might be on the expensive side for a power strip, but it could save you some serious bucks, essentially paying for itself.

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Chik-fil-a. Let’s see. I think it was my second job when I was 14. Terrible experience if I recall, but the free food was a plus. Unfortunately, the kids toys always sucked. Since Chik-fil-a is a bible-thumping restaurant chain (never open on Sundays!), most of the crap children got in their Kids Meal was religious-based propaganda or a crappy book.

Looks like the company has done a 180-degree turn by partnering with the Kennedy Space Center. Science? What’s that?

Until November 22nd, you’ll be able to collect all four pieces of a space station that slightly resembles the ISS. Each part comes with cool trivia cards and even a $5 coupon that can be used at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Not too shabby! All Chik-fil-a needs to do is offer up Darwinian chicken nuggets and we’ll call it a day.

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This portable entertainment center is the only one in existence advertised with the Ice Hockey game for the NES playing on it. Despite all the expected features of a portable DVD player like a 14-inch crystal clear TFT LCD screen, multi-format disc play (including MP3 and DivX) and a high quality TV tuner for use all over the world; this DVD player is packing more than meets the eye. Again, why else would they advertise Ice Hockey for the NES on it?

That’s because this thing comes stocked with an 8-bit NES emulator. It could have been advertised with any game on the NES, but they chose Ice Hockey. Um, where’s Blades of Steel? For $246.25, it’s the most expensive emulator you ever payed money for. Oh right, it also plays DVDs.

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We haven’t covered much cloaking technology and that’s a shame because it’s starting to come into its own. Stefan Enoch at the Fresnel Institute in Marseille, France says that established cloaking principles, such as steering microwave light around an object, could be applied to ocean waves. Because cloaking technology is still in its infancy, scientists are still working on tackling 3-D objects, but we’ve got 2-D down. This works in our favor because waves are essentially 2-D.

To put this theory to the test, researchers built a prototype. The image above is the said prototype which is tested in a wave pool. Acting like a whirlpool, the device produces forces which pull the water along the concentric corridors as a result of the waves repelling off the pillars. This causes all the water to go everywhere except the center of the cloak. Think of the possibilities.

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It figures. A year after I move to NYC from Philadelphia, the Comcast Center is completed and the finishing touches it has are beyond spectacular. When I go back to visit, I’ll have to get some footage of this $22 million high-def video wall in action. It’s 27′ x 87′, features 10 million pixels across various modules, has six LED digitizers and a boatload of video processors. Oh yeah, it contains 27 TB worth of data.

The purpose of this huge video screen? To one-up One Liberty Place and to keep security guards entertained. The 3-D animations are apparently a real hoot to see in person. Peep the video above or stroll over to Center City to witness all that video goodness.

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