The video does it no justice… you totally need to be there to experience the awesomeness.

If you want to see how it was done and what all it consists of, go to the Emergency Party Button page at www.plasma2002.com/epb

Anyways, while we were riding up, I was thinking to myself of ideas on how a system could be made to accommodate shopping carts going up or down a story. Somewhat along the lines of an escalator system. Well, I left it at that and didn’t think about it much more afterwards.

After we left Bed Bath and Beyond, we went to the other side of the mall and found Target, my girlfriend’s OCD-friendly fantasy store. As much as she loves Target, I wasn’t surprised at how thrilled she was to learn that just like Bed Bath and Beyond, this store too was two stories. Up where we live, we have ever yet to see a 2 store Target. I honestly didn’t think they could have that much crap to sell.

What’s great about this Target is the fact that they had solved the shopping cart escalator problem! We were both as mesmerized with this thing much in the same way that Asian tourists are with a pretty blonde girl in Las Vegas. I felt like an idiot taking the footage of this thing in action, but I knew what I had to do. I was on a mission to bring back a sight of the new world to the people of the IE! So behold: the Target Cartalator! (Well, if I got to name it anyway…)

This was great for KFC. For one thing, it singled out a certain group of individuals for the promotion, and whenever this happens, there is ALWAYS going to be people trying to get into this group that otherwise wouldn’t be in there. Even if they really dont want the free sandwich, they want to be able to get into something they otherwise are not able to do. Thats just human nature. So eventually, word got out of the password all across the internet and everyone found it. Now they have a password, and only one thing to do with it. Go get a sandwich, and KFC hopes a drink and some tater’s too.

Another thing that made this a great marketing strategy; it is relatively uncommon. Almost unheard of for real promotions. And what more would geeks want than to tell everyone else about something weird and new about technology? Its that reason that KFC gained a lot of free press across the internet. Just the simple fact that people like to tell other people about interesting stuff. Look at what im writing about right now. Im giving KFC some free press.

Anyways… that was a while back. Im posting about yet another way KFC is using their ultra high paid advertising monkeys to churn out even more evil advertising. They are using the technological fact that younger people are able to hear different tones than older individuals.

This technology has been used in a few situations that I can think of off the top of my head such as cell phone ring tones that teachers couldn’t hear, but the kids could. Also I just saw a review on a device that was supposed to ward off teenagers from certain places that were more adult oriented (The review was horrible btw. It didnt work).

KFC’s new strategy is simple: insert a semi-ultrasonic tone into one of their advertisements. The advertisement looks and sounds completely normal to the elderly ear, but the commercial also says that there is a secret tone located somewhere in the commercial, and the first 1,000 kids to call a certain phone number with the correct location of the advertisement will get a free KFC menu item.

If you catch this commercial on the air and dont have one of your kids around to tell you where the sound is, I have a better idea. Go get your dog, set him by the television, and wait til the advertisement comes on again. When all of a sudden, your canine companion starts going into an epileptic seizure, you can bet that you just found that hidden sound.

Heres the commercial. I could hear that annoying sound perfectly, but just to be fair, this may be due to the video being transcoded into a digital medium. It may actually be a lot harder to hear on the TV.

KFC Mosquito Tone Commercial @ Engadget

The reactable is a multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical artefacts on the table surface and constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

Reactable [Via DialyCupOfTech]

Finally! Put your hamster to some REAL use! Make him work for his own well being. Load a sheet of paper into the shredder, and your little buddy just does his thing, running his little butt off, and presto; a few gear reductions later, an instant hamster bed made from purely recycled credit card applications and unfiled TPS reports.

This is artist Tom Ballhatchet’s design, which he plans to put on display in Milan, Italy.

Check out his hanster shredder and his site below.

Tom Ballhatchet [Via Gizmodo]

He made himself a dock out of Legos! Its actually 3 docks in one. Chris can hook up his Pocket PC, get some more tunes on his iPod, and charge his Nintendo DS all at once.The site is just a Picasa web album, so I can’t verify it, but it seems that he most likely has a USB hub tucked under there to tie it all to one usb cable and one power cable. And if you look on the side there, it looks like theres a spare USB port for just about anything else you could think of putting in there.

The dock looks good. Almost perfect. It seems as though the iPod dock was meant to be there. Theres no doubt that this took quite a few re-building to get it just right. Good job Chris! I definatly wouldn’t mind having this up on my desk next to my monitor.

Lego Dock Web Album [Via Engadget]

For those of you that don’t know what ferro fluid is, ferro fluid is simply a fluid that is has a ferrous material embedded in it, thus making it magnetic.

Whats going on here is simple. The spiral ‘poles’ you see are connected to an electromagnet underneath and is being controlled with varying amounts of power to get the movement of the fluid.

Head on over to the link to see the project in the video.

Ferrofluid Spiral [Via Boing Boing]

The BrakeLok fits over your already existing hand brake and covers the button on the end. It will let you press the button still when in normal use. But, at any time, at the end of the BrakeLok is a key, which can be taken out. If the key is not in the BrakeLok, there is no way of pressing the brake release button, or even taking the BrakeLok off, essentially rendering the car immovable.

As with all theft protection devices, a good thief can get around it. And that rule applies to the BrakeLok as well, but still, adding more protection to your $1,500,000 Enzo is never going to hurt.

BrakeLok [Via Gizmodo]

Its marketed off as a financial calculator, but whats great is that you can use it for anything that you need to plot.

Lets take the example I used to check it out. When people ask me something like ‘What’s your favorite soda?’, I just usually say I dont have a favorite. Lets say i actually want to see what soda i really do prefer over all the others. Thats where this calculator comes into play.

All I have to do it give it a list of all the items I want prioritized. In this case, Root beer, Doctor Peeper, Splite, Sierra Myst, Cherry Cook, and Pipse.

After i enter all my choices, up to 15, it then proceeds to ask me which I prefer over another. In other words, a complete boolean approach to the entire situation.

Depending on how many items are put in, The Prioritizer will keep asking questions until every item has been compared to every other item. In my case above, it had 2 of the above screens i had to fill out (on 2 pages).

Once you have completed the comparisons, you get a result page with a ranking of all your comparisons on it, showing you what is most important to you.

For my example above, It shows me that Root beer is the number one position on my favorites, while Doctor Peeper is the least favorite.

Like I said above, this was intentionally intended as a financial calculator, so you could of course use it to prioritize financial situations like home mortgage payments, car payments, and the what not….. but wheres the fun in not being able to decide what color to dye your cat?

The Prioritizer [ Via Lifehacker]

Well, thats what our parents have told us anyways. Looks like the internet gets to prove Ma’ wrong again.

My gf and I were talking about this a while back and i told her I found a site that mashed up some Google maps stuff and showed you the exact spot that you would come out on the other side of the world on. So according to this, the only way your gonna be able to dig to China, is if you already live in Argentina.

Dighole [Via Make Magazine]