Offbeat posts

Some people just don’t like Twitter – and can they be blamed? An ever-shifting sand of mostly-idle information, a Twitter account following even less than 50 people can be a terrible, cacaphonous racket of nothing in particular. So how would you like to have every tweet read aloud to you? Japanese toy manufacturer WiZ isn’t about to wait for your answer, and has released the Charatter bear, a toy that – of course – reads incoming tweets in a shrill, grating octave. This particular author follows 52 people and receives a tweet about once every 90-120 seconds. Imagine how quickly this bear would drive…

Among the list of things I believe I can speak on behalf of everyone at Techi about, it’s that we were probably never going to talk about popular rapper and pop culture curiosity T-Pain. Colour us all the most vibrant hues of wrong. Pouring his poetic mastery of the English language into Twitter’s loving arms, T-Pain has made the world privvy to his newest tattoo: the Facebook Like button. There’s not much to say about this, beyond a well-deserved, wide-eyed ‘wow’ of disbelief. “I think this ones pretty sweet,” claims T-Pain’s tweet, “unless facebook shuts down soon 0_o”. It’s a good bet you’re safe…

The Wall Street Journal called him “the restless genius.” Forbes said he was “the ultimate thinking machine.” by Forbes magazine. Inc. Magazine proclaimed him the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison.” Author. Inventor. Futurist. Freak? If you don’t know Ray Kurzweil, you should definitely read up on his Wikipedia page. Then, check out this graphic by our friends at GrasshopperGroup. When you’re done with that, scroll down and watch the Ted video under the graphic.. At that point, you should be giving yourself a pep talk about how you can be as geeky cool as this guy. …

After failing miserably and discontinuing their attempt at “going social” last year, Netflix is giving it another run. This time, they’re getting help from a company that has experience in social media. Their integration will be with Facebook. You may have heard of them. Wednesday, Netflix announced what they described as “an extensive Facebook integration” in a shareholders’ letter that accompanied their quarterly earnings report. While integration with Facebook is becoming more and more common, this particular move is striking because they are planning to change much of the way…

No, but we’re not far off. The acceleration of the creation and discovery of information is reaching a point that is mind-blowing. We’ve all heard the different “facts,” that we double knowledge every two years or that we gain more information every year that we did in any of the previous centuries – all of it is fodder for speculation and trivia. Still, we’re advancing terribly fast. Are there pitfalls? What if the data is lost? What if we gain it so fast that we can no longer store it properly. Electromagnetic pulses, sunspots, hackers – all are reasonable concerns regarding the most valuable type…

It would seem that there is no lack of creativity and imagination on the Web these days, especially when it comes to video. Mateusz Zdziebko shows why with a video he created taking everyday objects that you might find in your room and creating a whole musical assembly with them. He even created a video to go along with it. And while the idea isn’t particularly original, the result is still awesome. Check out “Sampled Room” and let us know what you think. …

It’s fun to sometimes imagine MySpace still has a chance to be a relevant social network, but let’s face it: it’s not. It’s dead. Like, not dead dead, but saying otherwise would be like saying Yahoo matters in 2011. Or that Elvis is alive. That said, though, would you like to buy it? No, really. It’s up for grabs, and you can be a part of it, with the Let’s Buy MySpace initiative. No surprises, here – Let’s Buy MySpace is an attempt to put the ailing social network back into the hands of its most passionate users. And they’d have to be passionate to donate their hard earned dollars (or in this case, pounds -…

An unnamed former AOL executive has whispered a few choice sweet nothings into the ear of the New Yorker, not the least revealing of which may be that allegedly 75% of subscribers to the service “don’t need it”. “The company still gets eighty percent of its profits from subscribers,” explains the New Yorker’s Ken Auletta, “many of whom are older people who have cable or DSL service but don’t realize that they need not pay an additional twenty-five dollars a month to get online and check their e-mail.” That $25 dollars just happens to be the old dial-up fee, from way back when the internet was a joke…

If you’ve ever wanted to convert your favorite logo/photo/image to Lego, now’s your chance. The team at Carsonified has rolled out a new tool, the perhaps lazily-if-poignantly labeled Brickify. The Carsonified team apparently came up with this idea during a trip to their local Lego store, where they realized how cool it would be to construct a Lego version of their own logo. With no tools available to do this online, they decided to create their own. The rest is history. No surprises here: simply upload an image, and bam, it’s Lego’d. You can save the schematic, print out the required inventory,…

You may recall experiencing the unabashed radness that was Hot Wheels way back in the day – whether or not that day was 25 years or 25 hours ago. But either way, you’ll more than likely wish you’d have had one of these. Enter the Hot Wheels Video Racer, hailing straight from the ‘Couldn’t Come Soon Enough’ department. The toy does exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a typical Hot Wheels car. With a camera embedded in the front. That’s right – Hot Wheels enthusiasts will now be able to live their stunt tracks from a first-person perspective. The camera can shoot 30 or 60 fps, and like any tricked-out ride…