Star Wars creator George Lucas has been busy of late, pulling together the makings of his grandest special effect to date: resurrecting the dead. But it’s not exactly what you think. Or, maybe it is. You didn’t honestly believe Lucas was drawing a big pantagram on the floor and sacrificing lesser farm animals, did you? Either way, it’s considerably less metal than that. I’ll let Lucas’ friend, director Mel Smith, fill you in. George has been buying up the film rights to dead actors in the hope of using computer trickery to put them all together, so you’d have Orson Welles and Barbara Stanwyck alongside…

A new survey conducted by Japanese ad agency Dentsu has revealed the ‘hit recognized products’ in Japan for 2010. And hoo boy, what a list it is. Smartphones, of course, have more or less been grouped into one category as they would dominate the entire list of separate. Twitter has come in at second place, narrowly eking out munchable chili oil for the silver. Yes, that’s right. Munchable chili oil. The top three ‘hit recognized products’ in Japan for the year two thousand and ten are, in order: smartphones, Twitter, and MUNCHABLE CHILI OIL. No iPads. No gadgetry. Munchable chili oil. Oh, Japan….

I can’t remember the last time I swallowed a foreign object on purpose. I think I was, like, six, and it was a Micro Machine. Remember Micro Machines? They were great for swallowing, among other things. Anyway, Fredrik Hjelmqvist, CEO of Pause Entertainment, is about to swallow a custom-made sound system for… well, probably for no other reason than that he can, turning himself into a human jukebox. Users will be able to log onto the official website to beam their song selections to Hjelmqvist’s stomach, where they will be able to continually annoy the crap out of him whilst he goes about his day,…

Okay, ‘released’ isn’t exactly the right word. But the now-mythic white iPhone 4 has been spotted in China, and it can be yours for the bargain price of up to 8000 Yuan ($1204) for the 16GB model. I don’t even wanna know how much the 64GB goes for. But considering China’s reputation as the land of knock-offs, can this be the real thing? Well, you be the judge. The boxes are marked ‘for internal use only’, and from the pictures, they’re certainly more real than any Chinese counterfeit version I’ve ever seen, by a large margin. Frankly, I’m willing to believe this is the real deal. It’s just being sold by…

Now this is an odd bug, if I’ve ever heard of one. Apparently, thousands of female Facebook users have been attempting to log on, only to find their accounts deactivated. Spooky. And this has been going on for a few days, too. Said Facebook user Valerie L to Huffington Post of the bug: “It said my Gmail address was not associated with any Facebook account.” How… suspicious, considering the feud between Google and Facebook of late. “I just tried to get onto my Facebook account with my Gmail email address,” adds Marian B. “[It's] the only one I have used since I got on Facebook …and it said I could not.”…

I’m gonna spare you the obvious ‘eyes in the back of your head’ joke, except for this sentence, where I make reference to the joke I didn’t just make. But I swear, that’s it. The ‘guy’ to which the headline is referring is Mr. Wafaa Bilal, an assistant profressor of photography at NYU, and the ‘art’ in question is the installation “The 3rd I” at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar. Bilal will have a camera implanted in the back of his head for an entire year, in order to beam images to Qatar. For real. Frankly, I don’t see why he couldn’t have just rigged some sort of stylish accoutrement to wear – cheap,…

I’m a fan of 6pt type, but this is ridiculous. Computer science professor Ken Perlin has decided to claim the title of designer of the smallest readable screen font. His font, above (duh), is able to compact the first 500 words of the Declaration of Independence into a 320×240 rectangle – perfect for mobile devices. “My design,” says Perlin, “assumes that screen pixels are horizontal striped as RGBRGB, as are most LCD screens these days.” And frankly, that knowledge alone helps substantially in the legibility of this typeface – which, since Perlin has apparently given it no name, I have decided…

I’m one of those who denies the iPad’s usefulness as a creative tool. Sure, there are cute little apps for that let you make cute little tunes, but despite a few notable, robust apps, there’s not much real use a serious musician can get out of an iPad. Apparently, Gorillaz creator Damon Albarn doesn’t agree with me, and is planning to release a new Gorillaz album before Christmas – the second one this year, following the celebrated Plastic Beach. The schtick? “I’ve made it on an iPad,” says Albarn to NME. “I hope I’ll be making the first record on an iPad.” As far as we know, dude, you will be. “I…

I’ve been using PCs for the better part of two decades, and in all that time, I’ve used Windows’ calculator maybe four times. As such, that the following has never been noticed by me isn’t exactly surprising, and if the breadth of your experience with the program is anywhere as vast as mine, it’s not surprising that you haven’t noticed, either. But apparently, Windows’ calculator is lying to you. According to Windows calculator, two minus two doesn’t equal zero. That’s not exactly true, but kinda. Be a peach and open up Windows’ calc for a second, would you? Thanks, you’re the best. Alright, find…

Soon, you may have an entirely new scapegoat for not attending all manner of functions: a printer jam. 3D printing gurus Stratasys took engineering company Kor Ecologic out to a couple fancy dinners, one thing led to another, and now we have the Urbee, the world’s first 3D-printed car. I guess I missed the memo; I had no idea 3D printing was coming along as blindingly fast as it is. For serious, the Urbee is a fully-functioning automobile, the parts of which are entirely fabricated via 3D printer, windows and everything. It’s only a two-seater, but it’s not the size of the 3D-printed car – it’s that…