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Augmented Reality Cookies, Anyone? We're Stuffed, Thanks.

the meta cookie system
We understand that SIGGRAPH frequently exhibits the most outre and ridiculous tech experiments -- the ones that could be useful on a larger scale and within a different context. But Takuji Narumi of Tokyo University may be the winner of the Most Insane Research award for his Meta Cookie System, which seems to serve no purpose but to advance the idea that our future lies in a simulated reality matrix. Nerds, you do yourselves no favors by inventing contraptions like this.

First, you strap a giant augmented reality headset around your skull as you are fed a plain sugar cookie, marked with an L-shaped symbol, which the system's camera will detect as it comes near your confused face. On the helmet screen, you'll see a virtual cookie headed toward you, while tubes funnel synthetic cookie fumes into your nasal cavity. Allegedly, this will make the plain cookie taste like snickerdoodle, or whatever your helmet has programmed.

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Dell Tech Swipes Nude Photos of Gullible Customer

Tara FitzgeraldDell is apparently eager to compete with Best Buy and Walmart for the title of most despised retailer in the country. A few months back, a tech support rep got in trouble for turning on a woman's webcam without her permission. Then, last month, the company got nabbed knowingly shipping faulty PCs. And, just this week, the Texas-based manufacturer was caught shipping motherboards infected with malware. Now, a woman from California is alleging that a support technician for Dell stole nude photos of her from her PC and posted them online, and then charged $800 worth of computer gear to her credit card for another woman in Tennessee.

This is not a cut-and-dry case of a misbehaving tech rep, though. This drama has actually been going on for almost a year, and only now is Tara Fitzgerald coming forward with her accusations. Try and follow the sequence of events, and make sense of Fitzgerald's often questionable judgment.

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'The Social Network' Gets a 60-Second TV Spot, NES Cartridge Wedding Invites

The Social Network Trailer

There's a load of great tech news happening out there every day, and, unfortunately, we just can't cover it all. Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web.
  • David Fincher's 'The Social Network' gets a full moody, 60-second TV spot, complete with a Kanye West score, champagne spraying and laptops a-smashing. [From: YouTube]
  • Two Brooklynites recently announced their upcoming marriage via customized NES cartridge. Can you hear our lips quivering? Because this is too cute for us to bear. [From: Reddit]
  • We're not even going to ask how or why this was spotted, but North Korea's official website seems to have gone a bit overboard with the 'strong' tag. HTML humor! [From: Korea DPR, via: TheDailyWTF]
  • Considering a new iMac or Mac Pro for the upcoming school year? Marco.org weighs the long-term costs of Apple's desktop computers. [From: Marco.org]
Got a tip? Want to talk to us? In need of more choice links like these? Drop us a line on Twitter and check out our Tumblr blog.

RIM's 'Blackpad' 9.7-inch Tablet Rumored to Debut in November

BlackPad For quite some time, rumor had it that RIM has been wanting to get into the tablet game, and who can blame it? Microsoft has had a long history in the market, Apple's iPad has proven popular, and it seems that just about every other manufacturer is trying to cram Android into the form-factor. A couple of days ago, we heard that RIM had acquired Blackpad.com, and the world collectively cringed at what we hoped was a purely defensive move to keep domain squatters at bay. Now, according to Bloomberg, there is confirmation that RIM plans to call its 9.7-inch tablet the Blackpad.

According to "people familiar with" the situation, the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-capable device will be unveiled in November with front- and back-facing cameras. While there is no indication of when the Blackpad will find its way into customers' hands, the RIM tablet is expected to cost about as much as the iPad. Like our friends at Engadget, we're seriously hoping for a Microsoft-like change of heart when it comes to the name. [From: Bloomberg, via: Engadget]

NYC Subway to Get Wi-Fi and Cell Service, We Look In To Buying Bikes

a view of nyc's subwayThe hopes and fears of all New Yorkers will at once come true, thanks to yesterday's announcement that the city's plan to outfit subway stations with Wi-Fi and cell service are, once again, moving forward. We all knew it would happen eventually; three years ago, the MTA and Transit Wireless struck a deal that would outfit stations, but not tunnels, with wireless access. Still, some of us had hoped that the inevitable might be, like Brooklyn trains, permanently delayed.

Under the new plan, coverage will even extend through some segments of tunnels, as long as the stops on either side are close enough together. (In Manhattan, that basically means all of them.) Four companies have been slated to install the wireless system, one of them being Q-Wireless. In an interview with the NY Daily News, Q-Wireless CEO Alex Mashinsky said that cell service will probably be strongest in wider tunnels, such as the ones that accommodate both express and local tracks, since those wily signals need room to breathe.

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Obama Says Presidential BlackBerry Is 'No Fun,' But His iPod's Stocked With Jay-Z

It's a well known fact that President Obama has a bit of a BlackBerry addiction -- so much so, the man fought long and hard to keep his beloved device once he entered the White House, making him the first sitting president to use one of the e-mail centric smartphones. But Obama revealed on 'The View' Thursday that, perhaps, it wasn't worth all the trouble. Though White House security and IT ...

Kindle App for Your iPhone and iPad Gets Dictionary, Search

Earlier this week, we reported that Amazon was upping its game with even cheaper versions of the Kindle, but it has also updated the Kindle app on the iPad/iPhone/iPod touch, adding a couple of unremarkable yet needed features. The Kindle app now has a search function, which was inexplicably absent before. It's also able to look up words and phrases through Wikipedia and Google, but not within ...

The Week in Design: Paper-Shredding Coffee Tables and Bacteria-Spreading Soap

The Web is teeming with the unrealized ideas of both students and established designers who set out to produce astonishing renderings and prototypes for unusual products. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, money, or technology, many of those products never progress from the planning stages to the mass market. But that doesn't mean we can't salivate over them, nevertheless. The simplest ...

Steve Ballmer Bemoans iPad Success, Kanye Interrupts Our Twitter

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... Perhaps still despondent over the Courier execution, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has reportedly acknowledged that Apple has "sold certainly more [iPads] than I'd like them to have sold." [From: Engadget] Kanye West embarked on an extensive Twitter ramble this week (containing awesomely convoluted references to Kool Aid smiles, ...

Spotify's U.S. Negotiations Stall, Fall Back to 'Square One'

Spotify must overcome yet another hurdle before it can bring free music streaming to U.S. devices. According to a report from Billboard, negotiations between the service and major music labels have gone "back to square one." Insiders, in general, have two divergent theories as to what held back the talks. Some claim that Spotify is insistent upon implementing a carbon copy of its European model, ...
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