Blood Energy Drink Will Set your Blood Pumping

Not only does Blood Energy Potions look and feel like real blood, but the drink even offers similar nutritional values as the life-giving fluid. It comes packaged within a re-sealable transfusion bag style pouch, so you can properly freak out everyone around you while sipping the fruit-punch flavored beverage.

New from the makers of Mana and Health Energy Potion comes Blood Energy Potion: the world’s first synthetic blood beverage. The fruit punch flavor packs 4 hours of energy along with iron, protein, and electrolytes. Get real blood nutrients without that real blood taste!

[Blood Energy Potion – $191.52 for 48, available Jan 2010 | Via Nerd Approved]


This might be the most awesome thing ever created

Yes folks, what you’re about to see is possibly one of the most brilliant projects to ever come out from a human mind, with the notable exception of the Sashimi Tabernacle Choir, of course.

MBED is a low cost, low barrier to entry ARM based microcontroller development platform. No software to install, no dongles, no licenses, no ICE. All you need is a USB cable and an internet browser. The C++ development environment is hosted online. To test your firmware you drag and drop the .bin file onto the MBED device and it’s installed and ready to go.

In this video I’ve used MBED to give my Big Mouth Billy Bass (BMBB) a brain transplant. He used to sing and dance along to Bobby McFerrin (“Don’t worry be happy”) and a cover of the Talking Heads (“Take me to the river”). Pretty entertaining, but what if you could download new audio clips and new movements? What if BMBB could get his new songs and choreography from a microSD card?

MBED provides C++ libraries to interface to all of the microcontroller features (A/D, D/A, timers, digital I/O, PWM, etc.) and made it a snap to write a .wav file player to play the sound and use the PWM outputs to control the motion.

For those of you who haven’t been with us for long, I strongly suggest that you check out our exclusive video report (HD) on the Sashimi Tabernacle choir, a project a little similar to this one, but on a much, much grander scale.

[Via Neatorama]

PS3 motion controller makes its public debut

Sony has unveiled some details about its forthcoming motion-based controller, including the first raft of compatible games. However, the firm is yet to announce a price or name for the device.

The controller, which was demonstrated at the Tokyo Game Show, requires the PlayStation Eye camera to work; the distance and angle between the camera and controller allows the system to track movement. The controller resembles a handheld microphone, though the globe at the top can light up in different colors, a tool developers can build into gameplay. It also vibrates in the style of most modern controllers.

The two games used in the demonstration were a new version of Resident Evil 5 (redesigned to incorporate the motion controller, but with some new story elements) and LittleBigPlanet. Sony also announced eight other new games which will use the controller:

  • Ape Escape (a new version of the original PlayStation game)
  • Champions of Time (little known about this, though there’s a theory it could be some sort of motion-controls-time gimmick)
  • Eccentric Slider
  • Echochrome 2 (sequel to the puzzle game)
  • Motion Party (possibly a collection of mini-games in the style of Mario Party)
  • Sing and Draw
  • The Shoot
  • Tower (maybe a variant on Jenga)

The firm will also be releasing downloadable updates for several existing titles to make them compatible with the controller, including Eye Pets, Flower, High Velocity Bowling, Hustle Kings and Pain.

It’s notable that this line-up sounds more aimed at the casual gameplayer more commonly linked with the Wii rather than hardcore gamers. That may be a deliberate marketing strategy, though it could simply be down to developers of major titles needing time to build the controller into new releases.

While it can be used for simple Wii-style control, it appears some games may build it into a more complex system. The Resident Evil demo involved a player using a standard PS3 controller in one hand and the motion controller in the other.

Sony also announced that the new $299 PS3 Slim has sold a million units worldwide since its release three weeks ago. While its possible gamers were simply waiting for a way to squeeze the console into a tight space in their TV cabinet, it’s more likely a sign that many potential customers had been put off by the previous price and were waiting for a reduction.

Meanwhile a secret document found on Sega’s website reportedly claims that Sony is planning a 20th anniversary edition of Sonic featuring the entire back catalog for $99. It’s also said to be considering releasing a PS2 emulator through the Playstation Network and making the entire PS2 catalog available to buy through the system. That won’t please gamers who were disappointed by the lack of backwards compatibility on newer models and now face having to pay again for games they already own.

[Picture via http://game.watch.impress.co.jp]

iPod Nano with radio integration: too little too late?

I will confess, I haven’t thought about the radio much in the last few years. The only station I listen to in my car is an all-Classical station that doesn’t play commercials. When I’m not listening to WCPE, I’ve got my iPod Shuffle out and, most importantly, I have complete control over what I listen to.

On the rare instances I have been subjected to mainstream radio, I’m rather astonished at the commercials, the horrid voice-over advertising (GIGANTIC MERCHANDISE BLOWOUT!), and rather unimpressive selection of music. It’s become so consolidated over the years that the idea of little independent radio stations in local areas has nearly vanished. It’s virtually impossible to find non-syndicated stations that have any modicum of originality. Smart local folks, like Clockwork Cabaret here in North Carolina–a steampunk music menagerie–both stream and broadcast. Clever!

Now, for a brief time, I had XM Radio. Admittedly, I loved it. But then came the Sirius merger, and I lost half the stations I really enjoyed and couldn’t actually rationalize the extra cost, so I got rid of it. If I could have listened to the stations anywhere else than inside my car, that would have been a major plus. (For what it’s worth, there are plans in the works to Integrate iPod and Sirius radio.)

So I was rather surprised to see that the new iPod Nano includes a radio at all. It seems like this would have been the smart move, you know, a few years ago. As it is, it’s almost like including a bunch of envelopes and paper with a new email account. Over the last ten years, the radio has been fazed out of our musical lexicon. We’re so used to being in total control of our music these days that the radio feature just feels painfully dated. Not to mention that programs like Last.fm and Pandora are far better at suggesting new music than a radio can ever be.

Sure, the new Nano comes with tagging capabilities (for stations that are iTunes compatible), and a host of other well-touted improvements (video, camera, Nike Plus integration) but the radio just seems plain weird to me. While the Nano isn’t compatible with Pandora, for instance, the iPod Touch is. So, for an extra $50, I’d just go with the latter and skip out on the Nano altogether.

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The Next Worst Thing to Getting Buried by an Avalanche

In the following video, a skier equipped a POV helmet cam films what he sees as he’s getting buried under an avalanche. Fortunately, he then gets dug out by his friends fairly quickly. In case you’re in a hurry, the good part of the video starts at around 60 seconds.

He was only buried for 4 and a half minutes which is incredibly short. I cannot stress these next sentences enough; that in and of itself to be unburied in ONLY 4:28 is miraculous if you have any understanding of being caught in an avalanche and what it takes to be found. It could literally be some kind of “world record” just on how good the guide and supporting cast of other skiers was in getting to him. It also shows why you should ALWAYS be going with people trained in avalanche rescue / first aid….as well as why you’d want to be going with a guided heli operation. Sure this was terrifying for him, but he would’ve probably been dead if not for going with a guide.

I don’t know about you guys, but even though I wasn’t really there, I was hyperventilating for the poor soul trapped under all that snow.

[Via Gizmodo]

Moon’s damp patch finally located

When India launched its first unmanned lunar probe last year, it hoped to make a splash. It appears to have achieved that in a very literal sense: the impact of the probe’s collision threw up soil samples that have offered the most compelling proof yet that there is indeed water on the moon.

Don’t pack those swimming trunks yet though: the “water” is in the form of molecules of both water and hydroxyl (which is HO rather than H20) which interact with dust and rock molecules at the very surface of the moon. In other words, what’s been discovered is closer to damp soil than a puddle.

The presence of the molecules has been confirmed from data gathered by a NASA instrument on the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. Carle Pieters (pictured), a professor of geological sciences at Brown University has led a team analyzing the data and has written a paper on the findings.

The researchers are still trying to figure out how the water got there and where it is going. One theory is that hydrogen-rich solar winds collided with oxygen rich soil.

The scientists believe the proportion of water in the soil could be somewhere between 770 and 1000 water molecules per million. If correct, that would mean there’s the equivalent of a 32 oz bottle of water in every ton of soil. That’s a lot of soil, but then again there’s a lot of moon.

While some enthusiasts hope that water on the moon means there’s a chance that little green men could be thriving there, NASA has more practical matters in mind. It says water would be a vital part of any permanent base on the moon and estimates that given the vast cost of lunar missions, it effectively costs $50,000 for each bottle of water taken up in a shuttle.

The findings raise new questions about lunar material brought back by the early Apollo missions. While minute amounts of water were found in some rocks, leaks in the boxes they were stored in meant it was impossible to discount the possibility that they had been contaminated on Earth.