Okay so this story is more to do with films and supermarkets than consumer technology - but Tesco's ie the British supermarket chain which sell supermarket things like food - have just set up a film studio. To make films with.

According to the Observer, Tesco plans to make film adaptations of popular books with the launch of a multi-million-pound production arm. I have to say, that this does slightly strip the glamour out of the movie industry. In my head, film is associated with Hollywood and sunglasses and starlets and glitz, not value yoghurt, good though it may be...

The first film release will be a straight-to-DVD number called Paris Connections, based on a Jackie Collins tale being shot on location in Paris early next month. Set in the fashion world, it's a whodunnit starring Size Zero models and coutriers, adapted from Collins's 1999 bestselling murder mystery LA Connections. Tescos are also planning to do works by Phillip Pullman and Judy Blume.

It could well be a good thing for authors - Tescos plans to give them more control over the film than they would get from a traditional studio: giving them a say in casting decisions for example. It could certainly make them more money:
"Tesco sells an enormous amount of books, of course; so for an author to have his DVDs on the shelf alongside his books and to sell them simultaneously sounds like a very good thing," said producer Ileen Maisel.

Tesco's already sells films: DVDs and suchlike. Tesco also runs a mobile network and banking services. What next for this corporate powerhouse..?

There is an amazing trend for big companies (Google) to start doing everything, from a search engine, to emails, to hardware, to challenging the Chinese government over domestic policy.

What next? Tescos space exploration? Who knows.

Do you get caught out by fly-a-way hairs or weird curly bits midway through the day? At a time when your bedroom and the implements need to sort it out are far away? Catering to this disastrous scenario, manufacturers Cloud Nine have brought out minature hair straighteners that fit in your handbag.

At 6 inches long and only 200g heavy, these are pretty small, though quite fierce too, reaching 150 farenheit.

The micro-iron is a traveller's hair straightener, made for travelling and featuring universal voltage so it works at the same power all over the world. The iron also features a hibernation mode where it automatically switches off after 10 minutes..

Cloud Nine micro iron is available from salons in the UK, priced at £45.00. Also available to buy online at www.cloudninehair.com

Couldn't let this one go without comment - it's a sugar-powered phone, from a collaboration between Nokia and Chinese designer Daizi Zheng.

Just pour in some glucose solution - or any sugary drink, Coke for example, and the phone runs for several hours - up to three or four times longer than a lithium battery according to Zheng. The phone produces water and carbon dioxide as the battery runs down, but then can just be recharged with a new shot of sugary water.

The concept is to use a pollution-free bio battery to replace the traditional battery. this particular bio battery uses enzymes as a catalyst to generates electricity from carbohydrates.

In this era of green-focussed technology, having a phone which runs off sugar is the ultimate in eco-bling. We're not sure if the technology will become widely available, but certainly its application in places with poor electricity like that developing world could be really useful. Just don't drop it or you'll get Coke everywhere.

[from Daizi Zheng via Engadget]

That's the shock findings of a recent survey of 1,000 people conducted by web analytics specialists Webtrends. Yep 37% of us will trawl through sites like eBay, puchase second hand gifts and, here's the naughty bit, claim that we purchased them new.

We also like to keep tabs on what we are going to to get for Christmas with the survey concluding that one-in-four of us will take a sneaky peek at what our partners have bought for us online.

The big surpise of the survey though is that only 16% of people will sell unwanted presents on eBay. It has got to be a much larger figure hasn't it?

Amelia Wise a Chartered Psychologist and founder of Bloom Psychology comments, "Perhaps men want to know what's been bought for them by their partner so they can make an informed decision about what they buy in return. The findings suggest that men are less confident in their judgement of what is an appropriate gift for their partner, be this in terms of the type or the cost, so in order to buy an appropriate gift they need to do this elicit 'research' to help them out."

I know cakes aren't really gadgets. They're more like foodstuffs, but surely technical masterpieces like these cakes pictured below are worthy of admiration from geeks and normals alike.

This is a Jesus cake. Great for friends who love Jesus. Is eating Jesus cake similar to the sacrament of Holy Communion? Your call... but if you substituted it for a Christmas pudding it would certainly be a novel way to remind you of the true meaning of Christmas.

This of course is a cat. A Siamese cat.

While we're on weird cakes... there is some serious geek creativity out there in the cake field. This beautiful dolly-mixture and chocolate dalaek for example.

And some detailed piper work from an html-literate cake-decorator.

So many everyday items are becoming Wii accessories that I'll barely bat an eyelid when someone informs me that you can buy Wii-compatible cats.

The latest addition to the roster of Wii accessories is the Rubik's cube. Now available in Europe, this brain-teasing WiiWare is available with a series of games from Rubik's Puzzle Galaxy.

One for spatial puzzle fanatics - I'm sure this is amazing for your brain. It lets players explore 3D cube and structure problems on the screen and it also gives you virtual tutorials on how to solve real-life Rubik's cubes, letting you compare your time with masters of the cube.

Rubik's Puzzle Galaxy: RUSH will be released on December 11th on WiiWare in Europe and on December 14th in North America.

See Puzzle Galaxy site for more information

I like it when scientists use top-flight technology to do cute little things.

So was pretty pleased to see this cute ickle snowman created by the National Physical Laboratory - which at a slender 0.01mm wide is probably the smallest snowman in existence. It's approximately a fifth the width of a human hair.

Disappointingly, it's actually made of tin beads rather than snow. Still, it's real pretty.

This tree sculpture came from a slab of silicon of the type used to make computer chips and was carved into shape using an ion beam.

[via New Scientist]

One day, I'm going to go the International Robot Exhibition (IREX) in Tokyo. In the meantime, I can obsessively pore over the photos from the event on their website. It finished last week.
Hundreds of robots gathered and sat around doing their thing.

It finished on 28th November, and as the organisers said in sweet Jap-accented English: "International Robot Exhibition 2009 has finished with a great success. Thank you very much for coming to the fair and we are happy with lots of visitors."

Highlights included this beauty: a machine whose sole purpose is to encourage humans to do stretching exercises:

And this impressive manly looking robo. With those biceps, you'd think it'd do a bit more than play table tennis but actually, that is all that does... I bet it's good though.

[via Pink Tentacle]

Um fancy some beer that's been to space? Well, now you can get some. They're not left-over bottles from a space mission that didn't quite get drunk nor did Nasa specially fly out a few cans one year. No, not space beer like that, but the barley used to make the beer is descended from barley that has *genuinely* been in space.

It went up there one year with the Russians who used it in an experiment to see if crops would grow in the solar system. It's fourth generation offspring of that experimental barley and Sapporo, a company in Japan (where else?) has decided to brew it and make beer with it.

For now, there are only 250 six-packs of the beer, which Sapporo calls "Space Barley," are available for purchase. Customers will be selected at random from those who apply through the Space Barley website before December 24.

According to Sapporo Space Barley beer has a mellow flavor and slightly dark color reminiscent of deep space. Wow.

[Space Barley website]

A story on the BBC suggests that book store Borders is teetering on the edge of the closure due to financial woes.

This is bad. This is practically a Severe Geek Alert - if Borders closes its 45 UK stores where will geeks go when they're wandering around the cold streets of British cities? Hardly into, like, a fashion shop. No shelter for fragile geeks there, nowhere to sit down and stare moodily into the art section while sipping an Americano. Just lots of terrifying people and no armchairs.

WH Smith is alright if you want to buy a magazine... but way too noisy to hang around in, and no, there are no coffee shops in WH, just little kids who keep running into you.

The BBC says: "Reports have suggested Borders does not have enough cash to last until Christmas. It is thought it could go into administration if no buyer is found.

"The chain, which also owns Books Etc, has suffered from increased competition from online retailers, such as Amazon, as well as supermarkets."

GULP. Can the government fund Borders in the interest of the nation's geeks?

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