Don't even buy this for your worst enemy. While a gun might be more obviously life-threatening, this laptop steering wheel rest really is almost as dangerous.

As suggested by the wise writer on RedFerret.net, attaching your laptop to your steering wheel like this will result in death and mass destruction. It's a common truth that trying to edit a word document and driving at the same time is going to end badly. At the very least your laptop is going take a nasty knock when you turn the corner.

It is actually available on Amazon for $25 and though I feel morally irresponsible providing a link to it, here it is.

DON'T DO IT.

Related: Shiny Video: launch of Peugeot's BB1, the cutest electric car ever and Nintendo DS wants to help you pass your driving test

I don't know why I even pretend to be surprised any more at the kind of USB gadgets that get invented. Every week some queer product is presented to the USB port. Who imagines these things.. let's make a vibrating dinosaur drinks holder! An USB egg heater? A nodding toy of Shakespeare that repeats Hamlet while keeping your lunch warm?

If I didn't take secret joy in how ridiculous they are, it would probably provoke an existential crisis in me that I spend so much of my life writing about USB gadgets. Anyway dear reader, let me tell you about a USB gadget.

It's a hand warmer and massager shaped like a burger and yes it plugs into your computer's USB port. It's from Brando who describe it as novelty, small and portable. Weighing 110g it warms your hands when you lay them on top of its bun and can also vibrate to produce a massaging effect. The lady below seems to like it.

There you go.


$12 from Brando

It's official Remote Office Day today, but no that doesn't mean celebrating the single office block in the Outer Hebrides, but rather people who work from home, the pyjama-wearing, chocolate-nomming laptop-bound masses.

But apparently British bosses don't realise the potential of letting their staff work from home. Remote access and support experts LogMeIn commissioned independent research that showed 21% of small to medium businesses are worried about the productivity of their staff when working remotely.

The old stereotypes of the home worker getting up at 11, and eating cereal over their laptop is clearly preying on the minds of the CEOs of Britain's medium to small businesses.

But, they should trust their home-working staff is the other conclusion of LogMeIn's survey because it turns out that people who work from home often put in longer hours than their office-bound colleagues and feel more job satisfaction

LogMeIn sketched out the five benefits of letting employees telecommute:

Some students in Switzerland have created an interactive typeface. That's a font that changes its weight, serifs and size according to how you interact with it. Their font is called Laika (perhaps after the dog the Russians sent to the moon) and it looks really beautiful, a treat for any typeface lovers.

In one installation they link a laptop to a weighing machine, and as you lean more weight on the board, the typeface become heavier too. In another, the letters move as you move your arms. As its creators point out - static text was made for static surfaces like paper so maybe interactive typefaces are what we need for computer screens.

The Berlin Wall wasn't very warmly received when it first went up and this year marks the 20th anniversary of its downfall but rebuilding it (virtually) is proving to be a much-needed publicity draw for virtual world Twinity.

The past year has seen an outbreak and panic about the dreaded Swine Flu.

If you're like us and you haven't yet had the pesky pig illness then you might be a little bit concerned about how it will spread over the winter.

Google's also cottoned onto this and its now expansion of Google Flu Trends to 16 additional countries, including much of Europe. It's also made the site available in 37 languages.

The site works by tracking the popularity of certain Google search queries, and using these to estimate the level of flu, in near real-time.

While some traditional flu surveillance systems may take days or weeks to collect and release data, Google search queries can be counted immediately. Google claims that its Flu Trends provides an "additional surveillance tool that may help public health officials and the public make more informed decisions about preparing for the flu season."

It also says it's seen a good correspondence between its estimates and official flu activity data.

However, it's not just swine flu, this little tool covers every flu like illness going so it's definitely worth a quick peek.

Uber LOLs and an IgNobel prize for this piece of genius technical engineering. A Russian scientist has invented a bra that doubles up as a gas mask. Two gas-masks as a matter of fact -one for you, one for your friend.

Sometimes the human race fills me with delight.

Well it's quite a serious matter actually. After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Russia a lot of cancerous damage was caused by people in the vicinity breathing in deadly Iodine-131. Elena Bodnar, formerly of Ukraine, the new bra's inventor, says her bra could have stopped people breathing in that dangerous radioisotope.

Chances are you'll have a few old floppies hanging around from the early 2000s, but I doubt you'll be using them for storing data bytes. Average floppies hold a not-so-incredible 1.44 MB - that's about 2 large pictures or half of a short song.

However, they do have more value as iconic pieces of geek culture. Besides their obvious potential as equipment in games of office Frisbee, we have come up with a few cunning ideas for re-purposing them. My favourite is the highly desirable floppy disk hand bag.

Click on the image below to start the gallery

The mounting buzz around short-form blogging sites Posterous and Tumblr puts a new spin on the blogs v twitter debate; a third way. It's got me thinking that rather than killing each other, or even co-existing, social networking sites and blogs are actually coming together and making mid-length social blog babies.

Metaphorically I mean, there's no business deal or sex involved anywhere.

Shortening blogs, lengthening tweets
Suggestions that blogs are shortening comes along with the idea that tweets could lengthen: new service Twitblogs is an near-exact replica of Twitter with the difference that you can extend posts beyond 140 characters.

It seems to be that having stoked the desire for in-depth lengthy posts (blogs) and up-to-the-minute link-tastic chatty random short posts (twitter) - businesses are moving into a middle ground that caters to both.

Follow on after the jump

One of them used to design space shuttles, one of them founded tech ideas mag Wired, and together these two leaders of the tech world have joined forces to make: chocolate.

Yes, not to invent super-computers or start web 3.0, just make chocolate.

Timothy Childs worked on space and video technology but when Louis Rossetto met him at a convention a few years ago, they talked about chocolate. The conversation turned into a business plan and now Tcho (a cunning little combination of 'tech' and 'choc') is an up and running company.

As you might expect from their credentials - it is (apparently) damn good chocolate, and has a strong tech input from start to finish.

More chocolate after the jump

Pixel art used to be how designers made computer and video game graphics, building pictures up block by block like some kind of graphic lego. Tools have changed, but the old pixel-by-pixel style lives on in small format screens like some mobile phones and in the hearts and minds of anyone with an affection for nineties computer games.

Digital nostalgia is partly why pixel art has taken off as an art-form, but it's not just retro - it's also an interesting way of stylising images.

Why it's pretty cool
Check out picture three in the gallery for Rubik Cubism - I find the mental powers needed to create a pixellated version of the Mona Lisa out of Rubik Cubes kind of mind-boggling. The fact that your eye can decode all these odd blocks of colour is pretty impressive as well.

How-to
How do you do it? Draw an outline with a line tool, choose a colour, zoom in and start placing pixels. Purists say you can only use the paint or pencil tools. We say, whatever works. 'Dithering' is the name for the chequerboard effect where colours blend into each other.

Click on the first picture to start the gallery. We show four forms of pixel art and two little pixel-inspired products for sale.

An application based on TV character Alan Partridge has been storming the UK iPhone app charts. As I type, Pocket Alan is The Number 1 paid-for iPhone app in Britain. (Not surprisingly, the current most downloaded paid-for app in the States is not based on Alan Partridge, but is an time-management game called Sally's Spa.)

We forked out £0.59 and downloaded Pocket Alan to try and work out how its makers had struck iTunes gold with an app based on an obnoxious tv character.

Holidays are great aren't they? Too much low quality sangria, a good degree of SPF30 and frolicking in those gorgeous green waves like you don't have a mountain of emails to return to.

Well one thing you don't have to worry about anymore is whether your belonging will be where you left them- y'know your precious mobile and wallet scrunched under your towel. The Yelpie is a portable safe, but unlike regular safes you can't juts pick it up and carry it away, as whoever tries that will be deafened by a 90dB alarm.

Your mother always said don't play with your food. She didn't however, say you couldn't inhale it though, did she? I imagine inhaling food is a popular method of food consumption for the freakishly skinny and inhaling chocolate seems more than bizarre (inhaling = no calories, right?). But according to its cerazy creators, the Le Whif is a "revolutionary new way of eating chocolate" (yea, for the uber weight conscious). They've tried to rationalise their pointless product and had this to say: ""Over the centuries we've been eating smaller and smaller quantities at shorter and shorter intervals. It seemed to us that eating was tending toward breathing, so, with a mix of culinary art and aerosol science, we've helped move eating habits to their logical conclusion. We call it whiffing". Did anyone else just think WTF? A chocolate-y aerosol experience does not sound like a pleasurable blend.

Falling asleep at your computer and subsequently banging your head on the keyboard is not a pleasant experience (and I'm talking from experience) as is waking up with keyboard keys etched into your forehead. If you're having one of those workaholic nights when it's imperative you're fixed to your computer at all times, this Pillow Suit for Workaholics might just save you from a few bumps and midnight knocks. Or if you're a victim of narcoleptic fits, this suit is your saviour.

Complete with padded tie, collar and sleeves, the padded suit will protect you when your head unintentionally and abruptly drops... providing your head falls in the right direction of course and not head first into the keyboard. You may get a little hot though - I can't imagine a padded suit will be well vented. There's no indication as to where you'd be able to bag yourself a cushiony suit, which leads me to believe it could be a concept. If we find out more information we'll be sure to let you know.

[via Trend Updates]

More random stuff here

If you thought Moo cards were cool - check these out. If there was a prize for geekiest business card, Lego employees would take the crown, hands down. Now, if there was a price tag attached to these bad boys for regular folk, I'd be first in line to bag myself a batch. With the employee name printed on the front and all other relevant information on the back, these Lego business information carriers (well they're not cards are they?) are the coolest form of business card to have ever graced the business card world. Reportedly, Lego goes the extra mile to attempt to match the employees personal features with their own minifigs.