Offbeat posts

Have you ever spilled ketchup on a table and wished there was a way to pick it up in its current form and replace it intact somewhere else? Of course not, but that fact didn’t stop Japanese restaurant gadget builder Furukawakiko from inventing something that does just that. Despite racking my brain, I cannot think of a single use for the device. That doesn’t make it any less amazing. I suppose if you drop mustard on the table and it falls into a perfect form of the Virgin Mary, you now have an apparatus to preserve the holy condiment in all its glory. …

If you haven’t received an email from a Nigerian Prince, you either don’t check your email enough or you don’t have an email address at all. The ways that scammers operate to get information or cash from unsuspecting victims is humorous to some, but anyone who has been on the losing end would argue that it just isn’t funny. If it never worked, they wouldn’t keep trying. This graphic by our friends at Finally Fast breaks down some of the “cheese” that scammers use to pull people through their maze and out the other end with some or all of the money in their bank accounts gone. Those clever scammers are the…

Can you even remember life without the Internet? It has become such an embedded aspect of our lives that many young people couldn’t imagine not having it. In western society, nearly everything is in some way tied in through the Internet. This graphic by our friends at Grasshopper Group gives us a timeline of events that have led up to today. It hasn’t been around forever but for many, it certainly seems like it. …

Anyone who enjoys the Halo series on XBox will probably recognize the design of these helmets. The similarities are striking, but it’s not by chance. The military and technology companies have been working with them to put together some amazing hardware, that takes it beyond the level of Spartan headgear. You actually get to see and understand what the soldier is seeing, making decisions on the battlefield much easier. This graphic, by our friends at DocShop, takes a look at the future of military vision technology. …

Alright, let’s play a game of ‘Guess the Ancient Tech’. What is this box on a forklift? Believe it or not, it’s not a washing machine, electric stove, refrigerator, or other kitchen appliance. Frankly, I think all those were much smaller than this by 1956, which is the date of this photograph. Give up? One more hint: you probably have one in your pocket right now. Believe it or not, this is the HDD of IBM’s 305 RAMAC supercomputer – a device packing a HUGE FIVE MEGABYTES. Yep. This box is dedicated to housing 5MB of data. And it weighs over a ton. You might, for instance, wish to store a single 5-minute MP3…

It goes beyond culture. There is science behind the gender-relationships when it comes to colors. A study by John Hallock compares the color preferences among various demographics and takes into account information collected from 22 countries. Our friends at KissMetrics put together this informative infographic that tears down the gender barriers to reveal what really goes on in visualizations. Click any portion to enlarge. Colors by Gender The Color Purple – The most notable gender difference can be seen in the color purple. The study reported that 23% of female participants chose purple…

Music, movies, and tech. That’s what the nearly-finished SXSW convention offers to its participants every year for what seems like a month. Austin watches thousands of people descend into the heart of the city every year and the results are always unpredictable. One thing that stays constant is the fact that it makes a lot of money for a lot of people and businesses. The yearly mecca of everything entertainment sees millions of dollars exchanged. With so much going on, how can the economy of the event be visualized? Thankfully, our friends at RetailMeNot have put together a large and comprehensive…

He’s risen to power from obscurity as Vito Corleon, helped a child prostitute find peace, ran a casino and met the Fockers. In his acting career, Robert De Niro has done just about everything with everyone and he shows no signs of slowing down much with more movies scheduled to be released soon. There is one Hollywood trend that has escaped the attention of the 67-year-old acting legend. He’s never used Twitter and has no intentions of starting any time soon. “I don’t Twitter or any of that stuff,” he said. “I don’t have a fan club or anything I talk to.” Despite his popularity, De Niro has…

Few things are more epic than this. You know the unmasked people, but can you guess which ones are Darth Vader, Chewbacca, and R2D2? If not, you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog. A certain level of “geek cred” is necessary to appreciate how awesome this image from Star Wars truly is….

We’re willing to bet you’ve never seen a tech toy meet its end with such beauty. Remember in Jet Li’s Hero, where everyone kind of pirouetted all pretty-like when they died? This is like that, but with, like, iPads and bullets and stuff….