fortune-telling

iPhone app created for psychic German octopus

Earlier this month, an octopus named Paul living in a tank in Oberhausen, Germany, proved capable of successfully "predicting" the results of his home nation's World Cup soccer matches--and then went a step further and correctly selected Spain as the winner of the final.

Of course, there's now an app for that.

An iPhone app development company called uTouchLabs just released an app called "Ask the Octopus," which lets users input two options for any query and then has a cartoon "octopus oracle" choose one much in the way that Paul would … Read more

Unreliable reading

We've reviewed a lot of programs from Mystic Board, and almost all of them are poorly designed pieces of software that contain very little in the way of useful content. Although MB Tarot Suite is a disaster as far as its design is concerned, we do give it credit for delivering something that vaguely resembles an actual tarot reading.

MB Tarot Suite actually contains four applications: Tarot Reading, Astrology Tarot, Tarot Numerology, and Runic Tarot. Each of these asks for the user's name and date of birth, and then provides users with a basic reading. Of course, the … Read more

This week in laptops

As this week drew to a close I whipped out my trusty Magic 8 Ball and asked it: "Will there ever be an end to the little-laptop news?" And the Magic 8 Ball replied: "My sources say no."

Those are some reliable sources, because the tiny laptops just kept coming this week. For example, we learned the OLPC XO laptop may switch from Linux to Windows XP. The Asus Eee PC 900, the 9-inch version of everyone's favorite super cheap portable, got an official launch date (May 12) and an official price ($549). Little-known U.… Read more

Fujitsu's palm-reading mouse finally on way

Palm-reading is coming to the desktop. Fujitsu's "PalmSecure" mouse may not foretell how long you'll live, but it does promise to provide some security in keeping intruders out of your PC.

The technology, which we first saw more than a year ago before it evolved into a mouse, is finally making its way to the North American market in June. As Engadget notes, it differs from biometric systems of the fingerprint variety by scanning veins, a system that the company claims is faster and more effective.

As for the lack of fortune-telling features, don't worry. … Read more