Roses are red, Frankenroses are blue.

The Japan Times reports that liquor distiller Suntory has successfully engineered a truly blue rose by inserting a gene from pansies. The company created a blue carnation using the same technology in 1995. Why'd they do it? Because they can. Link, with photos. (Thanks, Sid) [via Boing Boing]

Public toilet lets you see out, but people can't see in

Here's a picture of a public toilet in Switzerland that's made entirely out of one-way glass. No one can see you in there, but when you are inside, it looks like you're sitting in a clear glass box. I don't think I'd be able to go. Link (Thanks, DocX!) [via Boing Boing]

The Time Table

 

We’re throwing out a kitchen table and replacing it with this: Normal’s “Time Table”, a table with a built-in digital clock made out of an electro-luminescent film built into the surface.[via Engadget]

We jammin' -- school in Italy jams cellphones to stop cheaters

 

They’d be hauling the teachers off to FCC jail here in the US, but a school in northern Italy has decided that they only way they can deal with students using their cellphones to cheat on exams is install cellphone signal jammers across campus. They turn the jammers off during lunch so that the students — and teachers — don’t totally freak out. [via Engadget]

Rolling pet prison

 

We can’t tell if these pets are being pampered or imprisoned in their rolling pet cage, either way someone’s time and money has been wasted. If you are willing to plunk down $129.95 well then be my guest, you and Fido can go all girly and stroll around central park. Come to think of it, it might be pretty fun if you had a little (very little) friend who could crawl in and you could give him a ride. See we’re always thinking. [via Engadget]

 

It could be that Swedish packaging company SCA launched some ”please don’t make us move anymore damn heavy pianos” guerilla marketing with their lightweight cardboard grand piano hype — but it’s not likely, since they’re (notoriously unironic) Swedes, so its probably more like their IKEA-style fascination with boxy, lightweight fold-up design. The cardboard piano has 88 keys, integrated circuits which press onto paper instead of the normal circuitry, and an external loudspeaker which plays the appropriate piano sounds. The company claims they aren’t going to market it, but if they sell it at IKEA you know every poor college kid with a room to furnish is gonna buy one.     [via Engadget]

 

The Japanese inventor behind that invisibility cloak everyone was chattering about last year says that his next project is to build “invisible walls” so that a room without windows could appear to have a view to the outside. Or you could just install windows. Your choice.

[Thanks, Edward] [via Engadget]

 

Now that they’ve got laptops with solar panels at Mt. Everest the bottom of the sea remained one of the few places where we couldn’t play FreeCell whenever we wanted. Hopefully correcting this injustice is the WetPC, a wearable underwater computer designed by the Australian Institute of Marine Science that is making its first foray under the waves. There are two versions, one with a CPU mounted on the diver’s oxygen tank and a heads-up display on the goggles, and the other with a tablet PC in a waterproof casing. The best part (besides the underwater stuff) is the interface, which is called the KordPad and is similar to other one-handed keyboards already on the market. The difference here is that what each button combination does is displayed on the screen (they call it WYSIWYP, or what you see is what you press; not the easiest of acronyms), eliminating the need to memorize complex key combinations and speeding learning time in new programs, something that is important when you only have a few minutes of oxygen left to get something done.

[Via The Red Ferret Journal]

 

To be perfectly honest, we’d just always assumed that North Korea didn’t even have cellphones (a fair assumption for a country where people are lucky to even have electricity — or food). But now a only year and a half after they were introduced, the Glorious Leader (or whoever decides these things over there)has  decided to ban them from the entire country as of a few days ago.

[Via Mobile Gadget News]

Following up on my previous post from Cory Doctorow where he snapped a pic of the copyright warning…

The folks at Monochrom have set up a group photo-gallery site for flash photos of the insulting copyright warnings at the start of movies. I saw Day After Tomorrow last night at the Camden Odeon and the new copyright warning there was so ghastly I was frozen in place and didn't get a pic. I'll have to capture it next time and send it in. Link (Thanks, Johannes!) [via Boing Boing]