creepy

As the father of two, I see a lot of toys. And as I'm accused of being slightly immature (I like to think of it as boyish charm), I take great interest in really cool toys.

So when I get the chance to see a new toy concept, I'm all over it. While perusing various Web sites--purely for work, I assure you--I came across Karten Design's bizarre concept for a toy it calls Epidermits (presumably because OMGWTFBBQ?!?! was already taken).

And you thought the Furby was creepy-looking.

I showed it to a handful of co-workers, and the … Read more

I had a funny moment earlier this week when I showed Google's Chrome to one of my friends. She was floored that one of the top nine most visited sites featured on the browser's start page was Woot.com. Given how much browsing I do as part of this job I suppose it was surprising even to me, but it's also a hint of how intriguing your browsing history can be to others.

A service called Timelope is banking on that idea, letting users share their browsing history (or at least selected parts of it) with the … Read more

The Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein recently reported that the FBI went trawling through grocery store records in order to track down Iranian terror cells. In his article, he writes, "like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists." The program, however, was short lived and was quickly "torpedoed by the head of the FBI's criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, … Read more

If you're really into robots, maybe it's time a robot got into you. Literally.

This miniature robotic prototype developed by researchers at the Ritsumeikan University and the Shiga University of Medical Science in Japan can be inserted into a patient's body through a small incision.

The doctors use prior MRI imaging of a patient as a sort of internal Google Map. Once it's in there, the robot can be controlled by doctors outside the body to capture images, take tissue samples, deliver medicine, and even perform minor surgical procedures.

As advanced as the robot is, it … Read more

Many of us at Crave aren't animal people, yet we try to keep open minds. But while we tolerate penguins, pigs and even the occasional duck, we draw the line at cats. Yes, cats.

Other Cravers might ascribe our emotional response to sanriophobia, but our feline fixation goes well beyond the evil and mouthless Kitty. So we recoiled at the sight of Willcom's "Nico" phone. (As Akihabara News points out, it probably should have been named "Neko," the Japanese word fo cat.) No matter what it's called, this handset gives us the creeps.… Read more

Be warned, a robot war is brewing. The battlefront: Your kitchen floor.

iRobot--maker of the unlikely consumer hit the Roomba--has gone virtually unchallenged as it cleaned up (sorry) the market in automated carpet vacuums. Competitors are starting to come forth, however, such as one from Evolution Robotics. Now, the Roomba may meet yet another formidable opponent on hard surfaces, this one from Europe.

Last year, iRobot came out with the Scooba, a wet-cleaning device, for $400. That has since been cut to $300, but it's still way more than the price of rival RoboMop--a Norwegian-made bot for … Read more