Technology Blog

Yesterday we asked you to submit your geekiest Halloween costumes—clearly, Halloween is dominated by nerds far too old to trick-or-treat. It was also clear that mdg357’s homemade Iron Man suit was more than deserving of the free pizza. UPDATED:

Here is the complete list of costumes, in order of awesomeness. Thanks to everyone for participating and congrats to mdg357!

UPDATE: We’ve added a bonus late entry at the end of the list from our old friend Nick McGlynn—a truly kick ass Inspector Gadget. The contest may be over, but given that many of you might also be arriving late to the party, feel free to add your costume in the comments of this post. We would still love to see ‘em.

A tissue box that you can drive seems stupid at first, but it could be a hot product given our current state of hysteria over germs. I say quarantine the sick and deploy RC vehicles to handle it.

You can already deliver tissues, so all you need is an RC Cooler for drinks and a RC Ramen cart for soup. If this isn’t enough to calm your fears about possible contamination, there are always more extreme methods you can employ. [Rakuten via Crunchgear]

Abstinence was so the sexiest way to not have children until the 20th century, as Newsweek’s terrifying illustrated history of birth control shows. Look at this scary contraption that went inside of ladyparts around the time Lysol douches were popular:

They’re an early precursor of the IUD, called a stem pessary. And yes, they were as dangerous as they look. Condoms seem, like, cuddly by comparison. See more of the horrible evolution of anti-pregnancy technology at Newsweek, just be warned you might instinctively clutch your own private parts in fear: [Newsweek]

The latest news, in The Week Of The LaLa: the company’s long-promised iPhone app, which would bring the bizarre play-a-song-once-for-free-then-pay-10-cents model to mobile, has been submitted to Apple. And assuming they don’t abort it, this is what it’ll look like.

Say what you will about the merits of a pay-per-song streaming music service, but the ability to play just about any song instantly is pretty amazing. And in an actual improvement over the desktop service, songs are apparently cached:

Fortunately the Lala app uses caching to store hundreds of songs from your library, which it has waiting in case your connection dies. Lala wouldn’t say exactly how many songs are saved, but they say that the app uses some intelligence to determine what gets cached

That’d be a killer feature for the app, as well as exactly the kind of thing Apple might throw a shitfit over: it’s two music libraries, see! In any case, prepare for two outcomes here: either this app is coming out in a week or so, or you’re going to be reading a fresh wave of necessary, if totally predictable, App Store approval outrage posts. See you then! [Techcrunch]

Our recommended price for the Nuvifone G60 was death, payable by the handset, not the prospective buyer. Until that can be arranged, though, Amazon’s plunging $200 discount (on a $300 phone!) will have to do.

To recap the only review we’ve ever written that didn’t even have a “Good” section, the Nuvifone was a failure in about every way that the once-hot handset could’ve been: It’s crashy, it’s got a clunky resistive screen, the browser is really, really tough to use, and camera sometimes works, there’s a $5/month charge for basic services like weather, traffic and local events, the battery life is horrendous, and the OS acts like a navigation unit firmware with tumorous telecommunications outgrowth. And oh god, that price: $300 with an AT&T contract, which is about how much it’d cost you to buy one iPhone 3G with TomTom and Navigon apps.

So yeah, a price drop was all but inevitable, but it’s heartening to see it happen this soon, even if not by Garmin’s hand. Next stop: 0. [Amazon via Engadget]