[A weekly link post of skipped over (and slightly stale) sights and stories]


• World's smallest Pacman game

• Nintendo Duck Hunt sweater

• Transformer handheld gaming

• Star Wars geeks on parade

• USB calculator pillow

Conversational clock.

The latest geek lust line art on Xkcd explores the silly but true tales of the interweb. The webcomic covers "romance, sarcasm, math, and language", the perfect four topics for guilty geek pleasure. As the illustration depicts, IRC back channels are no place for vulnerable nerd babes. Best to always have a raygun ready at bedside just in case some fanboy tracks down more than your IP. Previously, Doctorow posted other gems from the comic collection.

Devastatingly disappointing, the Psycho-ray doesn't help clean up the trolls and crazies. While having a raygun aimed at negative anonymous/pseudo-name commenters or Haight Street paranoid potheads might be nice, this device delivers something entirely different. The sensory-focused gadget is able to tell when the climate in your car is not ideal and actively make changes towards comfort. In addition, the Psyhco-ray purifies the air with a carbon filtration system and electrostatic dust collector. The device remains in concept form, so hopefully they'll give it a more appropriate moniker so as not to get our hopes up so easily.

La la la Halo 3 la la la hot chick la la la. Apparently Shake Well Before Use's presence at the pre-launch party in San Francisco wasn't enough estrogen to satiate the surging hormones around Halo 3. We'll save you the Halo 3 babble to cut to the chase: Suicide Girls + Master Chief = Geekgasm.

Always delightful, Dita von Teese poses for PETA. It seems as though PETA aims to be the new Playboy these days, as attractive naked women are their solution to any situation. Dolled up in thigh highs and heels, Teese teaches the importance of animal birth control in the 50's-esque photo. The burlesque beauty is far from the first to grace the gaze of the "naked for a cause" PETA porn. Pam Anderson, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, and most recently Alicia Silverstone have all stripped for PETA's SLR. Surely, there's no shortage of women who will use a good cause as an excuse to bare all of their beauty with class.

Virgin Mobile attempts to take innocence away from a fellow (we're guessing) virgin. An American family is suing the ironically named company for unauthorized use of their teen daughter's photo in an ad campaign.

"The family of Alison Chang claim that Virgin Mobile (or its advertising agency) took a copy of a photo which had been uploaded to the photo sharing website, Flickr - edited it and reused it in their poster campaigns.

The photo had apparently been released by the photographer - who is Alison's youth counselor - under the Creative Commons copyright policy which permits reuse, subject to attribution to the photographer - which was included in the Virgin Mobile adverts. However, Australian codes also require a model release form to be signed where a persons image is being used in an advert, and the family say that they never gave such a permission."

Adrants reminds us that this is SO 3 months ago.

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Boothbabes take a more honest approach to marketing.

Disgusting what people will do to innocent robots these days. The recent Robo-One bipedal robot competition in Japan played host to a round of robot-fighting. The geeks over at Crave gush, "In it, a Hawaiian-shirt-clad chicken robot lays the smackdown on a more traditional robot. Enjoy. It's hard not to. Nothing of this ilk would happen during lunchtime of our ongoing battle of the nonviolent robots." Perhaps Vick should've taken the robot-fighting route. At least then, the robot could've fought back with laser beams or something.

Facebook caters to students looking for secret sources of fattening food apparently. After a recent ban on junk food at a school, kids are using Facebook as a black market operation for selling the "stuff". The students then make transfers between lockers. Perhaps the smell of sugar in class is a more welcome scent than pot, but there's sure to be just as many heads on desks once they start coming down. Before you know it, they'll be trading in popping their Class C Junior Mints for snorting Class A Pixy Stix!

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As if straight out of Stargate, the latest trend in fashion is transforming. This Spring/Summer 2007 collection actively alters on its own. Hussein Chalayan, the British/Turkish designer responsible for the fad, is no stranger to this kind of style. Earlier, Chalayan created the descriptively named Convertible Skirt/Table. Unfortunately, the clothing doesn't make any cool Transformers sounds as it changes. But, as an anonymous SWBU reader points out, "any dress that dynamically shortens is a good thing".

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Hugh Macleod of Gapingvoid was lovely as always this past week in London and dedicated a cartoon to Shake Well Before Use! Tomorrow's agenda for Shake Well Before Use: TechCrunch40. More to come!

Mobile and multiplying, rabbits and robots have merged together. Created a couple years ago, Robbits is an interactive exploration between humans and robobunnies:

"The project aims to explore emotional qualities of interactive objects by inviting a human audience to interact play with »electronic creatures«. Robbits works as an installation consisting of a community self- and location-aware mobile robots.

Robbits is a comment to the phenomenon of »humanization« of electronic products. It refers to people’s tendency to project their idea of »life« or »personality« onto complex and thus mysterious electronic or digital devices, when they seem to carry out, what is perceived as »intelligent behavior«."

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Clothesline Display, a project that recently popped up in Austria, uses both a delightful and yet delicate technique to create large lines of text. With 250 boxer shorts used to "type" out the text, it's not surprising that it felt a bit breezy between some legs. The wind reportedly over-pixelated the underpants more at times, but was an overall success. The brains behind the boxers showcased the sight between two buildings at Ars Electronica. Shake Well Before Use was not in attendance to Ars Electronica, however, did just buy tickets for the follow-up conference, called Arse Elektronika (if the spelling didn't tip you off, it's about sex and technology) in San Francisco.

Taking and giving information from surrounding ecosystems, an installation creates awareness among users of their immediate environment. Called HouseSwarming, the "environment-sensing device" was created for an Art Center presentation. Designed by Jenna Didier, Oliver Hess and Marcos Lutyens, their site for the display explains how it works:

"During the day, the “swarm” of green ambiguous forms, both biomorphic and geometric, accentuates the South Campus’s main entry. At twilight, the swarm comes to life, telling visitors and passersby about the current air quality around the building. Electronic sensors perceive air contaminants – such as tobacco, benzene, carbon monoxide, even perfume – and separately inform the outside and inside swarms, which sets off signals. These signals are interpreted as changes to the natural rhythm that the network has established based on the number and distribution of nodes connected to the cable net. Flashing cells on the exterior faÁade indicate air quality inside the building. Conversely, pulsating effects in the interior entry inform visitors about the outside air quality."

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Dedicated to designing droids, Astromech is a club for creating personal life-sized R2-D2 replicas. From bolts to LEDs, the nerds are there to help you in your time of need. With 5,000 members, the group encourages socializing through BBQs and Star Wars conventions. In desperate nerd-need of your own life-sized R2-D2? The founder of Astromech states that it can run you anywhere between $500 to $40k depending on your droid desires. As an alternative, we're sure that a Rubik's Cube-solving robot made out of Legos may cost you a little less, and still preserve your l33t-ness.

Combining two tasty favorites in a medium bowl to let others beat off to with approximately 50 strokes, Cleavage Cupcakes are cleverly cute. Unfortunately not meant for baking, the bust-enhancers come in a couple more varieties. Low Beams for a little nip of coverage and Takeouts for a tad more. Notcot states that they "do NOT front posts based on how much cleavage or cupcakeness they have", but we do! Disappointed that these push-ups didn't pop out of a pan? A quick Flickr search may satiate those in need of peach-colored pastries.