Gearfuse

News agencies from around the world are reporting that Google’s ultra-popular Gmail service has been down since this morning. You can still send and receive mail using a third-party program, like Mail.app or Outlook, but apparently, for most international users, the web service isn’t working. I tried logging on at 9:30am here in New York and had no problems. But it seems that the major outages have occurred in the UK and Australia mostly.

Keep updated with Google’s official Gmail blog and support team. We’ll see how Google handles this fiasco. Maybe some extra storage for free?

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Praise be to Beetlejesus! If you’re like any normal human being, chances are there’s been a time where your cellphone has started to die and you bring up the age-old question: “Hey, does anyone have a charger I can use?” Of course not! You’ve got an LG and I’ve got a Samsung. Ray has a Motorola and Christie has the Nokia E63. Do you see the issue? There’s no standardization on mobile phone charging, but luckily, all that is about to change.

The GSM Association announced at the Mobile World Congress that all of the UK’s mobile phone companies have signed up for the idea of a universal charger. Hopefully, American companies will follow suit. The new charger will use 50-percent less energy when standing by and features a microUSB connection as the charging port. The idea is that by 2012, most phones around the world will use the new universal charging standard. I think it’s a fantastic idea; let’s just see how well it gets executed.

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Those brits! Always inventing such crazy stuff like Fawlty Towers and The Office!

This time around, researchers at Cambridge University have designed an LED-based lightbulb that costs a mere $3 and has a 100,000 hour lifespan. Very impressive, considering that my current fucking lightbulbs tend to burn out after three months. Researchers say the bulb could also help lower electricity bills.

It should be available in, let’s see, about two to three years. Not too shabby, but not soon enough.

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Look, I could sit here and tell you all about how this guy went and built a shed in his backyard. And then in said shed, he built a V12 Lamborghini replica from scratch. Yeah, I could tell you all about it, or you could read it for yourself at this Englishman’s fine website, v12diablo.co.uk. He’s even posted instructions on building one. Fancy that. Better start saving, though. The base car he used for the project was a BMW 750iL, which is going to set you back a few bucks, pounds, what have you.

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While actually called the “pistol shrimp,” its characteristics make it more befitting of the title: banshee. Despite their small size, pistol shrimp are capable of letting loose a sound of 218 decibels that stuns their prey before they devour them. The pressure wave produced by such a sound is capable of killing a small fish. It’s like a gunshot emanating from a bite-sized crustacean, and that’s why it’s named the pistol shrimp.

With rising sea temperatures in UK waters, experts believe that the pistol shrimp’s numbers are on the rise. They claim it’s the temperature in the water, but I say it’s the fact that they’re monogamous and are all about inbreeding. That could explain the bizarre ability their other friends do not possess. Don’t screw your relatives, it could have bizarre results.

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It seems like you can make a Guinness World Record out of any feat these days. Last year, 381 Australian kids set the Guinness World Record for simultaneous Nintendo DS playing. I wonder if there’s a Guinness World Record for most people standing around in Times Square with a thumb in their ass.

Tomorrow, members of a UK DS fan group called DSLondon are going to take a crack at breaking last year’s simultaneous Nintendo DS playing record. DSLondon hopes to attract at least 500 DS gamers to the Rocket Complex on Holloway Road, London. In the area? Be a part of history. All you’ve got to do is show up with a DS and begin playing. What an easy record to break.

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Just when you thought the Infection or the Negative were hard-to-read watches, in comes Storm’s Ambition wristwatch. It’s just a bunch of slits in a slab of metal. That is, until you power it up and the time shines through like the LEDs from your 1988 alarm clock. The Ambition comes in silver, black, brown or red finishes and retails for about $160. Not too shabby and not too crazy. Just the way we like it.

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As part of Liverpool’s Capital of Culture celebrations, the French company La Machine created this 50 foot monstrosity and called it art, when in actuality it is a movie prop from Eight Legged Freaks that none of the cast wanted to take home.

The installation cost £1.8million to bring to Liverpool – and all but £250,000 of this was funded by the taxpayer.

Man, if I lived in Liverpool (I’m glad I don’t because I hear they’ve got a spider problem these days), I’d be glad to know my tax dollars are being put to good use creating robot spiders that roam the streets.  The worst part about this entire thing is that, in the name of art, La Machine is turning this into some kind of weird city-wide LARP. That’s live action role play.  After some phony story about this mechanical spider was written, the citizens of Liverpool still approve and want to go along for the ride.

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You’re in London and Mom wants a birthday present. As a gardener, she’s bound to love butterflies. And she cooks a lot too! So I can bet she’s always checking the clock to make sure her famous mocha-chip cookies aren’t burnt. Why not order this lovely butterfly clock from the Design Shop? It’s a bit expensive at $211, but would you put a price tag on your own mother? Didn’t think so. Are you paying cash or credit?

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For our readers living in the UK, please let us know if you guys are just as batshit crazy for IKEA as we are. The Swedish furniture company will be offering cellphone service to 1.4 million “loyalty scheme members” and around 9500 employees. T-Mobile will be providing the actual service while IKEA is just slapping a name on it and calling it a service. It’ll work similar to Virgin Mobile with the “pay as you go” plan starting with a minimum £10 purchase.

No word yet if your cellphone comes wrapped up in a flat cardboard box with the charger sold separately.

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