If birds aren’t enough, now your dog can tweet too!

I’ve never been that curious as to what my dog’s really saying. I’m pretty sure Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoon figured it out. However, I guess most people don’t think like I do. Or at least enough people to be profitable. Mattel has a new invention expected to hit stores in Fall that allows your dog to tweet on his very own Twitter page. Puppy Tweets is a small plastic device you can attach to your pet’s collar that syncs to a USB device you attach to your computer. Then you just create a Twitter page for your dog and voilà! Your dog will now update you to his activities. If he’s running in circles, it might have a tweet saying “I finally caught that tail I’ve been chasing and…OOUUUCHH!”

Maybe it’s just my dog Minnie, but this device seems phenomenally useless. Random tweets are boring enough when written by people, but do you really want to know the exact minute your dog pooped in your azaleas? If I’m ever excessively curious about what Minnie is doing, I sit down and reconsider my life because something is clearly wrong to make me less interesting than a dog. Though I suppose those “gangstas” can finally keep up on where the bitches at.

5 awesomely useless gizmos

The year is 2010. Only five more years until we get to laugh at Back to the Future II. I’m still waiting for my flying car and self-drying jacket, but at least we can rest easy knowing our scientists are hard at work making some crazy stuff to distract us. Thanks to www.gizmag.com, I was able to search their 2010 posts and find some pretty silly stuff. So in no specific order, here are 5 bits o’ tech that serve almost no function.

5. The $160,000 diamond-encrusted cell phone.
Really? Do we need to pimp everything we own? I mean it was bad enough when people started wearing gold braces, but this is a bit excessive. According to Gizmag, “The sparkling unit is encrusted with 12.5 carats of pink diamonds, resulting in approximately 1225 individually set gems arranged around a whopping 3-carat navigational button centerpiece. As if that weren’t enough credentials to enter the Blinged Out Phone Hall of Fame, the Nokia Supreme also packs solid platinum veneers and screws, amounting in a total of 83g of platinum. The phone has been crafted in a limited edition run of only three, and of course sells with the obligatory granite clad case with leather interior.” As much as I hate to admit it, I’d get it if I had 160k to blow. As useless as it is, it’s pretty awesome.

4. The Xrocker Vibe platform.
Do you like playing Guitar Hero or Rock band? I sure do. Ever wanted to play it in an earthquake? Well now you can! The Xrocker Vibe platform is akin to playing while standing on a subwoofer. It supposedly tries to emulate a real stage experience by playing the bass through your feet to simulate the stage vibrating to your rock. This is all pretty swell, until you miss a note and hear an obnoxious plunk and notice your score multiplier drop. I’m sorry, no matter how hard you try, you’re holding a plastic toy with a virtual crowd. For the “real rock experience,” learn guitar. That said, I’d totally use this all the time. How else could I truly rock out to “Livin’ on a Prayer”?

3. The pocket knife/garage door opener.
You ever get so tired of having to get out of your car and lift up your heavy garage door? No? Oh yeah, that’s because everyone on earth has a garage door opener clipped to those little sun-blind thingies right next to that C.D. rack. Well now you can inconveniently store that device in your pocket so you can fish around trying to reach between your cell phone and iPod to get it out. Hey, but it can also turn on that outdoor light you set up so that it turns on automatically when someone drives up. While I’m all for cramming things in other things, this just seems a bit more useless than awesome. Though if they tacked on a cell phone, mp3 player, camera, and microwave I bet Verizon would pick it up.

2. Custom laser-etched tires.
Two things still disappoint me about lasers. They aren’t in gun form yet and they aren’t spelled with a “z”, as spell-check often reminds me. Despite these vital flaws, however, we’ve found some pretty cool uses ranging from pointing at things to carving the bad out of your eyes. However, we didn’t have enough car pimping lasers yet. Until now. Now people can custom-make their tire treads, supposedly so you can better experiment with traction, but mostly so I can drive with flaming skulls on my wheels. You can even illuminate it with that awesome neon glow you’ve got going on there. Spinners eat your heart out, I want to carve “awesome4life” 100 times on my treads.

1. The iSwing app.
Ok, I suck at golf. I’ve gotten the two best hits possible and now I never need to play again. One hit a branch and landed back on the tee, and the other went backwards. But now apparently my cell phone can help me out. The iSwing allows you to record your swing, then play it back and you can even draw lines to show where you need improvement. The main flaw I see is you need to be able to recognize where you need improvement. Now call me crazy, but I have this little feeling that just watching your own swing won’t exactly get you on the PGA. However, it’s apparently pretty popular in Japan and Korea, and it might just let me see how I managed to hit a ball the wrong way. Whoever you are though, you’re not gonna be the next Tiger. You need the iSwinger app for that.

Avatawesome

Wow. I mean, really wow. This movie is beautiful. Rather, this experience is beautiful because it’s more that than it is just a movie. If you see this movie, you must see it in 3D. Preferably 3D Imax, though I just saw it in a normal 3D screening. The environments are absolutely fantastic and gorgeously rendered to the point where you can feel the humidity in the forest and feel the wind from the helicopters flying by. With by far the best CGI I’ve ever seen, this movie would be worth seeing even if it were an instructional video.

That said, this movie did have some issues. The dialog was a bit better than I expected and the characters felt very real, but the whole story might as well have been written by early Native Americans. Humans, with the exception of five good guys, are all evil, greedy, murdering warmongers who want nothing but to kill everyone in their way. It’s very reminiscent to Disney’s Pocahontas. A soldier is sent to communicate to the natives and get them to move. He meets up with this native woman who teaches him how pretty flowers are. They fall in love, yadda yadda, the entire plot basically seems to boil down to nature is pretty and the bad humans hate flowers. Though it may seem like I didn’t enjoy the story much, I thought it did work well and was entertaining as long as you didn’t get too caught up on the hippie message.

There were also a few “oh come on” moments. Like when someone shot a bow and arrow through re-enforced future bulletproof glass. Really? Arrows can pierce futuristic space ships? I have a bit of trouble accepting that. They’re also a bit inconsistent as to how long people can breathe in the alien atmosphere. Sometimes they seem to be able to walk outside for a minute with no trouble at all, and others it seems to incapacitate people much faster than they supposedly should.

Ultimately though these are minor gripes with a overall awesome film. An Interesting story, a fantastic world, stunningly beautiful effects, and really a truly unique experience make this move a must-see in 3D. Go watch it.