Hey, you guys use Twitter, right?  Well, if you do use Twitter, and you like the offerings of the Shakadoo family of websites, then why don’t you do yourself (and us) a favor and follow Shakadoo on Twitter?  We’ll have the daily assortment of posts from the Shak family of websites, plus “behind the scenes” tidbits and all kinds of other fun things!

I’m one of the Shakadoo tweeters, so if you have any tips on stories or if there is anything you want to see the Shaks cover, from technology news to cute animal videos, just drop us an @shakadoo message and we’ll do the rest!  See you there, Twitterati!

This weekend I was looking for the manilla folder we keep coupons in.  Dad and I were doing the guy’s day in thing and we were hungry for some pizza.  When rooting around in the cabinets, I found my mother’s recipe books.  She’s got several cookbooks and a gallon plastic baggie full of recipes she’s clipped out of magazines or hand written from various sources.  Most of these are as old or older than I am, and are starting to show their age.  But how can you store these digitally without the risk of losing a laptop (and all the recipes) to a spill?

Maybe the Demy is the answer.  Working in concert with Key Ingredient, the Demy is basically an electronic recipe book capable of holding 2500 recipes.  It’s kitchen-proof, with 3 timers (which is great because I can’t program the timer on the stupid oven), has a touch screen for easy browsing, has a measurement conversion tool, and even has an ingredient substitution dictionary in case you’re out of something a recipe requires and you want to work around it (don’t put sour cream in mashed potatoes unless you really like sour cream).

While the inability to program your recipes directly into it is kind of a bummer, you are able to upload recipes to Key Ingredient and then add them to your Demy from there.  Considering that I want to make a digital record of all my favorite family recipes anyway, that would allow me to kill two birds with one stone.  The Demy won’t be out until May, but you can preorder it for $300 from Amazon right now.

If you get one, share your thoughts in the comment box below.  If you’re a Demy representative, I’d love to get one of your units to test (hint hint!)

Image:  Engadget

Federal Way police chief Brian Wilson had a bit of a problem.  You see, he was checking his email on his BlackBerry and he got into a car accident.  Chief Wilson claims that, while at a stoplight, he was using his BlackBerry, his foot slipped off the brake, and he rear-ended the car in front of him.  That’s right, a cop was driving unsafely while using a mobile device.  Color me shocked.

If this was any one else, we’d be paying off the fine of a serious ticket right now.  Accidents happen, especially when you’re distracted, but what Officer Wilson did was against the law.  Washington has laws against talking on cell phones and sending text messages while driving per the Governor’s Highway Safety Association.  So where’s his fine and the marks off his license?  Oh right, that won’t happen.

This just goes to show everyone out there.  If you’re going to play on your CrackBerry at the stoplight, be smart and put your car into park!

This is a pretty amusing ‘didja know?’ style interview with Aaron Campbell, one of the live producers of Lord of the Rings Online. For those not in the know, LotRO is one of the bigger MMORPGs on the block, but because it’s not nearly as big as World of Warcraft, it doesn’t get the publicity. It’s a gorgeous-looking game, as you can tell.

I’ve played it, though it was over a year ago, so I couldn’t begin to tell you how the game has progressed since then. Last time I was in there, it was good, but not great. I didn’t like it as much as WoW despite LotRO’s superior crafting system, but it was significantly better than Age of Conan and equal to Warhammer Online.

Thanks to a lot of hand-me-downs and hand-me-sides, I’ve managed to assemble all the pieces necessary to put together a surround sound system.  I’ve always wanted one, and thanks to the generosity of relatives with old technology and/or broken sound systems with still-working speakers, I’ve gotten one.  I guess I just never realized how much space speakers and a receiver and a sub woofer take up.

I’m torn on the design of RHT-G series of TV stands with built-in surround sound systems/receivers.  It definitely takes up a whole lot less space, but it looks heavy and is definitely more than a little bit clunky.  I’ll admit that the space-saving aspect is a huge boon, especially in a small apartment or a bedroom where space is a premium.

However (and this is a huge problem for me with any combination system like this), if one of the speakers goes bad, you have to throw the whole thing out.  I recently had to toss my parents’ DVD/VCR recorder because the circuitry inside went bad.  If it had been a separate VCR and DVD player, then I’d only be out one box, not two.  If this particular unit had a problem, I’d be out six speakers, a control system, AND a table.  If they made these things modular, I’d definitely get one.

I don’t know how many of these things I’ve seen advertised.  Basically, it’s like a rumble pack or vibrating controller for a video game system, but large enough to wear on yourself.  I’ve got one that supposedly works with my Super Nintendo (that should tell you how old it is) to allow me to feel all the action of my video games.  It doesn’t looks as discreet as this haptics jacket, but it does the same basic thing.

Here’s a quote from the IEEE Spectrum article:

“We want people to feel Bruce Lee’s anxiety about whether he will get out alive,” says the Philips researcher. The jacket, responding to signals encoded in the DVD or to a program designed to control the jacket on the fly, can do a host of things, such as “causing a shiver to go up the viewer’s spine and creating the feeling of tension in the limbs.”

I have to wonder if any jacket, regardless of how jiggly it might make your jello, can replicate the sense of anxiety in a movie.  Certainly William Castle famously tried the use of vibrating seats in his cult horror classic The Tingler, and those virtual reality simulator modules where you sit in a seat that moves, shifts, and rumbles with the action on a giant video screen were incredibly popular in the 90’s.  I can only wonder why Philips got Keith Morris to model the jacket.

Would you take your home theater experience one step beyond and strap yourself into a motorized windbreaker, or is that just a little too extreme?

As someone who has Netflix, but doesn’t have an Xbox 360, whenever I want to watch a movie on demand I have to saunter over to my computer and settle in my desk chair.  Alternately, I hook my laptop up to my television.  Either way, it’s not an ideal solution.  However, Netflix is quietly floating ideas on how to bring their streaming video service to the world’s most popular video game console as we speak.

Please, Netflix, make this happen.  Whatever solution is required to bring Netflix to the Wii, be it CD-ROM, browser-based, or witchcraft, you’d be crazy not to hitch your wagon to the clear winner of this generation of the console war.  Even if it meant paying a premium price for the proposed Netflix Instant Streaming Disc, you’d have at least one customer pre-ordering this heaven-sent solution to my streaming video problem!

Remember yesterday when I was talking about operating system upgrades yielding new features?  Well, funny enough (and in a complete coincidence), the big boy on the internet browser block, Microsoft, has announced that today is the day in which their latest offering, Internet Explorer 8, will go live.  Starting at noon, you too can join the zergling rush to try the latest web browser to enter the fray.  I’ve heard some pretty good things.

One of the major selling points for IE 8, aside from better security features, private browsing, and the usual touted improved speed, are something called “Accelerators.”  Basically, it takes any specific word or phrase (for example, Shaktronics) and enables you to highlight it, right click it, and go instantly to some relevant search on Google or MSN or whatever your default search engine is.  Here’s an example screen capture of Accelerators in action.

There’s also a new feature called “Web Slices,” which make “favorite information from sites such as Digg, Yahoo! Mail, OneRiot, and eBay instantly available wherever someone goes on the Web.”  I don’t actually get what they mean by Web Slices, or what they’re supposed to do, but I’m very interested in upgrading and giving them a try just to actually find out what they do.

So, what about you?  Are you going to be giving IE8 a shot?  Is the thought of a smarter right-click option menu tantalyzing enough to get you to upgrade or are you going to wait to upgrade until after all the bugs are worked out?  Head on over at noon to the IE8 website and get your download on, if you are so inclined.  I’m going to be doing it, and I’ll let you know my thoughts.  If you give it a try, come back and talk to me about it.

One of the best and worst thing about upgrading the operating system on your phone, MP3 player, computer, or any other gadget that has an operating system is the wash of new features that come with the upgrade.  New features are always incredibly exciting, but there’s always a little bit of a learning curve.  Fortunately, if you’re too excited to wait for iPhone’s 3.0 OS upgrade, you can jump the gun and recreate 13 of the new features on your iPhone right now!

One of the problems is some of the applications they say you can use require you to jailbreak your phone.  At the moment, jailbreaking is kind of a semi-gray area, like copying a DVD you already own for the purposes of uploading the movie to your portable video player.  It’s probably not illegal, nor do I think it should be illegal, but it does void your warranty.  Apple only wants you to buy Apple-approved products, because they can charge you more that way.  I’m sure there are many other reasons they’d give you for that, but like every other big company, they want you to use only their products and unlike Microsoft, they haven’t lost enough lawsuits to make them play nice with third-party applications.

Proceed with caution if you decide to install any non-iPhone approved applications.

There used to be an episode of The Outer Limits in which a man was humanity’s last hope of survival.  In his hand, which was made of glass and electronics, was the whole of the human race shrunk down or stored or something.  I forget how it got there, or what it contained, but the important thing was he had a glass hand and he was on the run from killer humanoid aliens.  Think of it as Terminator, but without the explosions or budget or Austrians.

A computer programmer from Finland, no doubt inspired by the many television shows, video games, and science fiction novels in which humans have merged with technology, has taken his love of storage to a pretty impressive degree.  When he lost a finger in a motorcycle accident, he had doctors replace his missing finger with a USB flash drive.  He might have lost half of his left ring finger, but he’s gained 2GB of storage!

How about you, gentle reader?  Would you replace a missing digit with a computer accessory?  I have a USB flash drive on my keychain, and it’s incredibly handy.  Just not as handy as Jerry Jalava’s USB flash drive fingertip.

Author’s Note:  I looked up the episode; it’s Demon With A Glass Hand starring Robert Culp.  It’s also excellent.