You all know the story right? Ian Usher has put his life up for sale on the internet, with the aid of Ebay. By his life I mean his home, his job, his friends, his car - everything except himself. Interesting, quirky, but why did he trust the users of Ebay to “play fair?”

Just 24 hours after the bid began it was swamped with pranksters. People using other people’s accounts, people playing tricks on each other - you name it. At what point did Ian Usher actually think this wouldn’t happen?? It’s far too tempting for people to put in stupidly high bids - then “blame it on their friends.”

The current (authentic) bid for his life, as of this post, is about £189,000 ($372,000) which he says isn’t enough to cover the cost of the house! Check out the auction here, it ends in 3 days if you fancy moving to Perth.. And no fake bids please. I mean it.

An odd one, this one. Microsoft filed a patent on December 20th, 2006, for a device called the “Guardian Angel”. The idea is to have a device to detect the number of people in a room, single them out and recognise them. And then gather information on them, presumably from the net, about previous convictions and stuff.. Hmmm, not saying that people need to be safe, but two things come to mind straight away:

1) If there are dangerous people in the room, shouldn’t they be in another room, like, oh I dunno, a jail or something?

2) If the device flags someone as “dangerous” I guess it doesn’t matter if that person has already served his time, and probably gone through rehabilitation? The person could be completely different to his criminal record now.

So I think I’m saying this is a massive invasion of privacy, and straight away sets a machine up to pass judgement on someone else in the room. Surely this is wrong? The original article by slashdot can be found here. Another interesting feature of the Guardian Angel was a “heart monitor” like people need a machine to tell them they’re having a heart attack, or that they’re dead? Well I guess it hasn’t stopped Microsoft in the past for providing “features” to things that they think the buying public need - just look at Vista..!

Much like Google Israel, Google UK has also gone dark for Earth Hour. In an effort to help promote the use of energy conservation in the home, Earth Hour aims to get people to turn off their lights for just 1 hour between the hours of 8-9pm. Do your bit and see if you can survive for a whole hour in the dark. [SHOW ME]

No I don’t think I’m jumping to conclusions at all on this story. Why else would you get a monkey in the US to control a robot in Japan? It’s just one tiny step away from Planet of the Apes - where is Charlton Heston when you need him?

OK, so coming back to Planet Earth, this really could mean a breakthrough for medicine & science alike. If you can prove a monkey can control a robot, with the motor function part of the brain, you can potentially create the next bionic man. And I’m sure if the right people OK’d it, you could have a person on an operating table in a matter of years with cybernetic enhancements being fitted, or maybe having a missing limb replaced with one of terminator’s. It won’t be long (20 years maybe?) before anyone will be able to walk into a hospital for hardware upgrades. Just imagine being able to zoom on objects far away? Or having the ability to automatically translate foreign languages into english - a real life babelfish without the stench! [SHOW ME]

If you live in the UK you can now find out if your neighbours are up to the same “technological speed” as you are.

Yes that’s right, after new research (ESRC funded e-Societyproject), you can look up your technology rating according to your post-code in the UK. The rating ranges from E-unengaged to E-expert with over 20 different types in between. You can also use the information to find techno affinity with other people in the UK, as you are given a list of places with the same or similar ratings. It’s all a bit of fun, but could have uses in the future to perhaps concentrate on e-unengaged areas to raise their technical awareness and knowledge.

[link]

This is probably one of the most insteresting reports I’ve read and heard about in a long time. Not only is it appearing all over the net on blogs, but also you can listen to a podcast about it too on The Gadget Show

Take mobile phones (in particular 3G) and add a socialogical & psychological slant to it.. What are people doing at the moment in the world with their mobiles and how are they going to use them in the future to interact with each other? Find out the answers and have a damn good read too..

[link]