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The electrode-equipped Galvanic Skin Response Bouquet doesn’t give the couple much choice about wearing their hearts on their sleeves: a blue LED glows when they’re calm but a white one turns on when they becomes nervous. But that’s not all.

The bride and the groom—who met, appropriately, working on a corset that tightens with heart rate— implemented a variety of biofeedback gear to datalog their big day.

The bouquet is attached to two electrodes, one worn on the Bride’s wedding finger, natch, via velcro strap, and the other in a wristband strapped to the groom. The information on their nerves, as well as their heartbeats, is recorded throughout the wedding on a 1GB SD card in the base of the bouquet.

The bride and groom are also equipped with devices to track them via infrared, so they can later check how often they were by one another side throughout the day. I think a photo album will do just fine for me. [GeekPhysical Biometrics via Make]

Fact Sheet: Congressional Accomplishments Spurring Innovation in the Auto IndustryAmerican Chronicle… Bill made historic commitments to American biofuels including $320 million in loan guarantees for commercialized advanced biofuel production plants….

The dust cover that is now available has been an extremely helpful addition to a number of the pillows we carry. It easily slips onto the pillow and zips closed. It’s made of a soft material that is easily washable. It will preserve the life of your pillow, not only protecting it from additional dust or allergens but also protect it from the wear and tear of sleeping or extra washing.

It is an extra layer that protects your pillow from chemicals in hair gels and shampoos, and you can take it off, and wash it versus having to wash the pillow itself. Place the cover over your pillow, zip it up and put it in your normal pillow case that matches the bed spread.

It is also protects against additional allergens which is especially important to allergy sufferers. There are a lot of people prone to certain allergy triggers; some may not even know they have allergies or at least the extent of them. For those individuals we highly recommend the special dust cover.

Visit Arc4life.com for your online selection of cervical support neck pillows, orthopedic pain relief products and Home traction units. Products for pain relief.

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As MMA fans, we’re finally facing something boxing has dealt with for years. When stars get old and struggle to win, who tells them it’s time to hang up the gloves? After his loss at UFC 97, Dana White guaranteed that Chuck Liddell was done. Next week, Liddell’s back taping Season 11 of "The Ultimate Fighter" and prepping for a June fight against another veteran in Tito Ortiz. You can’t make a fighter quit. If it makes promotional sense, there’s always going to be someone who’ll pay an old-timer. Forty-somethings Dan Severn (91-16-7), Mark Kerr (15-11) and Ken Shamrock (27-13-2) are all still fighting. 

The WEC was facing this reality with Jen Pulver. The former UFC lightweight champ has fallen on hard times losing four straight and six-of-seven fights. They’re all quality losses (Urijah Faber 2x, B.J. Penn, Leonard Garcia, Joe Lauzon, Josh Grispi) but that doesn’t cut it in the fight world. Pulver won’t walk away. He’s coming back Mar. 6 at WEC 47. In this documentary trailer, he talks about the road back. He’s one of the most emotional guys in the game and if you don’t know his story, Pulver gives a glimpse of where he came from and why he fights.

Gregory Bayne has released another snippet. Cagewriter had a chance to grab one of the first interviews after Pulver, 35, left cage at WEC 41 where he lost via guillotine choke against Josh Grispi. He admitted that his financial situation would probably force him to fight on. Pulver got emotional in the cage, giving the throat slash sign to signify the end of his career, and tossed his gear into the Arco Arena crowd.

You can follow the progress of the film @drivenfilm. 

If you caught our coverage during CES 2010 (and you better have!), then you probably saw our quick sit-down with Senior Product Manager for Android, Erick Tseng. We had such a good time chatting with him and had so many other questions, we thought having him on the Engadget Show made lots of sense! So, today Erick will join us live on-stage to answer all of our burning questions (and yours too — shout them out in comments). We’ll also be doing a wrap-up of all the gear we saw at CES during our editors roundtable, we’ll be flying the Parrot A.R. Drone live and in-person, and we’re giving away a bunch of stuff to audience members (including CES swag, limited edition Engadget t-shirts… and a Nexus One courtesy of Google)! Oh, and we’ll have more chiptune goodness from our friend Glomag. Don’t miss this one, it’s going to be crazy.

The Show is sponsored by Sprint, and will take place at the Times Center, part of The New York Times Building in the heart of New York City at 41st St. between 7th and 8th Avenues (see map after the break). Tickets are — as always — free to anyone who would like to attend, but seating is limited, and tickets will be first come, first served… so get there early! Here’s all the info you need:

• There is no admission fee — tickets are completely free
• The event is all ages
• Ticketing will begin at the Times Center at 2PM on Saturday, doors will open for seating at 4:30PM, and the show begins at 5PM
• You cannot collect tickets for friends or family — anyone who would like to come must be present to get a ticket
• Seating capacity in the Times Center is about 340, and once we’re full, we’re full
• The venue is located at 41st St. between 7th and 8th Avenues in New York City (map after the break)
• The show length is around an hour

If you’re a member of the media who wishes to attend, please contact us at: engadgetshowmedia [at] engadget [dot] com, and we’ll try to accommodate you. All other non-media questions can be sent to: engadgetshow [at] engadget [dot] com.

Subscribe to the Show:

[iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (M4V).
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[RSS M4V] Add the Engadget Show feed (M4V) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically.

Continue reading The Engadget Show tapes today with Erick Tseng of Google, our CES wrap-up… and we’re giving away a Nexus One!

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The Engadget Show tapes today with Erick Tseng of Google, our CES wrap-up… and we’re giving away a Nexus One! originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Jan 2010 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re still not clear on whether Psystar is still in business, or if it’s selling anything other than T-shirts, but the would-be Mac cloner isn’t totally out of the game yet: it’s filed an official notice of appeal in the California court, which means it’s going to try and fight that decisive victory and injunction won by Apple a month ago. Just based on the simple open-and-shut legal reasoning involved in the decision — surprise, you can’t copy, modify, and resell a copyrighted work without permission — we’d say this appeal is a long shot, but we didn’t go to Harvard Law School like Psystar attorney Eugene Action. Man, we missed that guy. Let’s quote from his website again, shall we?

The matrix is born and the energy sucking machine herds Americans into pods of predetermined limitations. Forced programming on your computer is just one of the provisional patents looming against freedom and democracy. Capitalism spurring innovation and creativity through open and competitive markets is at risk on this new frontier. This new battle is being fought on the abstract electronic plains of America while most of us cannot even open our email. The beachheads are red with the blood of ambitious Americans gunned down for their initiative.

Let’s be honest: we never, ever, want this story to end.

P.S. — Wondering why Rebel EFI is listed as “out of stock” on the Psystar website? It’s because there isn’t any stock, shockingly enough — in a statement filed with the court on December 31, Rudy Pedraza says all copies of the bootloader have been destroyed except for one that’s in the possession of his attorneys. Between this appeal and the pending case in Florida over Snow Leopard, we’d say that means it’ll be a long time before the software is back on the scene — enough time for the legit OSx86 scene to leapfrog it entirely.

Psystar files official notice of appeal, ruthlessly attacks windmill originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Jan 2010 12:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The week marches on and today being Saturday means it is time to recap the recent happenings in the world of Windows Mobile. No matter if you fall in the long-time WinMo camp or the merely curious, all eyes are focused on Windows Mobile 7. It is clear that Microsoft needs to get this out the door as quickly as possible or face continued loss of market share to the competition. Microsoft is not willing to let us know yet when we might expect the big upgrade, but handset maker LG may have let the cat out of the bag that it expects WM7 to hit in September of this year. LG tweeted that its handsets would get WM7 in September, but the tweets were rapidly deleted. WMPoweruser was quick enough to catch them, and it does seem that LG at least expects to be doling WM7 out to its customers in September.

Steve Ballmer was all excited that the HTC HD2 with WM6.5 is coming to the U. S., and I admit I am happy that T-Mobile has picked up the best Windows phone currently available. It’s not clear if the HD2 will be getting an upgrade to WM7 when it’s available, but HTC has sort of leaked that it will be getting the upgrade when it is available and it will be a free download. The HD2 has all of the latest smartphone hardware inside, notably the Snapdragon processor, and it should easily be able to run the new OS when it is released. Now if we can only get WM7 in our hands.

With the Mobile World Congress (MWC) looming near, it has long been expected that Microsoft would use the global phone event to roll WM7 out to the masses. This week it got a bit murkier as to whether MS would indeed be using MWC to finally show of WM7, or if they would instead be touting yet another interim release to the platform, WM6.6. While I am hoping this is just another negative rumor, Mary Jo Foley points out one very disturbing fact that lends a bit of credence to this possibility:

Some time in the past week, Microsoft removed any references to Windows Mobile from the Mix 2010 show site. A week ago, I saw a session placeholder saying there’d be some Windows Mobile content of interest to Mix attendees at the show, but it was too early to provide specifics. That placeholder is now gone, as are any references in the “Sessions” area to Windows Mobile.

It certainly seems Microsoft is playing WM7 too close to the vest, something that can be positive in the PR game if one is in a position of market strength. That is definitely not the case here, so MS better demonstrate WM7 at the MWC or there will be long-term ramifications.

All of us here at CrunchGear are fairly angry at the way NBC has treated you, Conan. So here’s our offer: if you and the peacock decide to part company (and you really ought to, provided the network takes care of your staff and everyone else who moved from New York to Los Angeles, and provided you walk away with some fat cash), we’d like to offer you an internship. That’s right: Conan O’Brien, CrunchGear intern. That has a nice ring to it, no?

Just ask Jimin what it’s like to be a CG intern. Since I don’t know where Jimin is right now, I’ll give you a preview: have you ever wanted more USB thumb drives than you know what to do with? CG interns get them in spades, since that’s how companies give you product images and whatnot from live events. (I personally took home something like 10 USB thumb drives from last week’s CES.) What you do with these USB thumb drives after you copy over the data is your business—maybe you’d like to paint President Obama’s face on them and sell ‘em in Union Square in New York? That’s your call.

All of this assumes, of course, that NBC doesn’t consider interning for CrunchGear to be a competing job. You’re going to have a few months of non-compete time, right, before you (hopefully!) get a show at another network? Spend ‘em here with us, you’ll have a blast. We’ll make jokes in the official CrunchGear Chat Room.

So Conan, if you’re thinking of a way to sit out your non-compete time, the door is wide open for you here at CrunchGear.

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I live in a suburban area south of Denver, Colorado, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t see animal tracks regularly. Quite the contrary — our area is occasionally visited by mountain lion and black bear, there are herds of elk and white-tailed deer that frequent the area, and it’s not unusual to see red fox and coyote loping through the neighborhood. Hiking in the foothills near my home is a sure way to see a variety of animal tracks

MyNature, Inc. recently released MyNature Animal Tracks [US$6.99, iTunes Link] to help nature lovers easily identify 43 different species of North American animals. The video above shows the depth of the application, which includes:

• A searchable database on track size and shape featuring 7 search categories.
• Clear track drawings showing both fore and hind prints.
• Images of each animal’s common gait and other gait patterns they may use.
• Photos of an actual track of each animal in the wild.
• Range maps for each species
• Sound files of each animal’s vocalizations.
• An image of what the animal looks like in it’s natural environment.
• A ruler to measure and aid in track identification.
• MyNature journal, for recording personal notes
• Tips on finding tracks, plaster casting and much more.

MyNature Animal Tracks looks like a useful and educational app for anyone who likes to spend time outdoors, and at a price less than the printed track guides that are sold at museums and nature centers.

TUAWFound Footage: MyNature Animal Tracks originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 16 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s all too easy to spend hard-earned money on unitasking kitchen gadgets that aren’t all that helpful in the long run. Use the gear you already own, and some cheap household staples, to make your kitchen a better place.

Photo by cybrgrl.

10. Hang onions and garlic with pantyhose

Culinary stores sell fancy baskets and all kinds of other ideas for keeping onions, garlic, and similar staples dry and separated. Kind of ridiculous, considering you’re probably not looking to put them on display. Knot up an old pair of pantyhose and use them to hang onions and garlic vertically, while allowing the restricted air flow to preserve your aromatic items longer than an air-tight model. It’s one of pantyhose’s many alternate uses. (Original post)

9. Make perfect pancakes with a ketchup bottle

Pancakes are fun. Cleaning up after them is not. Lo and behold, the progression of ketchup and other plastic squeeze bottles into EZ-pour, high-volume dispensers makes them perfect for conversion into pancake batter dispensers (discovered via the Crafter-Holic blog). The price is right (free, if you buy ketchup), and the cleanup is as simple as shaking a bottle full of soapy water, or recycling the bottle if you don’t plan on future precise pancake pour projects. (Original post)

8. Steam scrambled eggs with an espresso machine

Next time you want to impress your guests with unbelievably fluffy eggs, skip the part where you watch the pan like a hawk on Ritalin. Beat together eggs, butter, and salt in a firm jar, then hold that jar underneath the steamer wand on an espresso machine. Turn the steamer on, then swirl until your eggs are soft but runny. Instant success, and your secret makes for a good morning tale. (Original post)

7. Trap fruit flies with a soda bottle

How-to site eHow explains how to cut a 2 L soda bottle into a fruit fly trap, one that lures the buggers in with sticky-sweet juice and keeps them trapped with, well, gravity and plastic design and such. It’s the fruit fly motel—they check in, but they can’t possibly find their way out. (Original post).

6. Clean a dishwasher with lemonade drink mix

It kind of makes one concerned about the thought of actually drinking something like Kool-Aid lemonade, but the citric acid in one drink packet is enough to clean the lime stains and calcium deposits that build up over time in the dishwasher. Give it a try—you’ll be surprised how well it breaks through the walls of grime (sorry, couldn’t help ourselves). (Original post)

5. Manage pot lids with vertical files & curtain rods

It’s odd that vertical lid and sheet storage is only a recent concept in kitchen design—haven’t lids been around for quite some time? Regardless of your kitchen’s age, you can upgrade its storage efficiency by creating vertical-oriented storage with very cheap tools. A vertical file holder can get the job done if it fits. If it doesn’t, squeeze some spring tension curtain rods into a tall cabinet and stash your cookie sheets, outsized lids, and other hard-to-stash items in there. (Original posts: vertical file, tension rods).

4. Cook pizza in a cast iron skillet

A well-seasoned skillet is a beautiful tool to behold, and it’s good for more than just scrambles and stir-fries. The Not Martha blog details how it can be used to cook a small pizza—the perfect size for when it’s just you and another eater, and a large pizza from the corner spot sounds like a bit of overkill. Plus, this one’s bound to be fresher, since you’re the one who pulls it off the heat when you’re good and ready to eat. (Original post)

3. Make a universal knife block with bamboo skewers

Bamboo skewers—from the dollar store or elsewhere—come pretty cheap. If you’ve got a long container, or can make one yourself, you’ve got a knife block that can fit nearly any knife you’ve got, no matter which brand or style. (Original post)

2. Roast coffee with a popcorn popper

Most of us have never truly experienced “fresh-roasted coffee.” And that’s a shame, since there are hundreds of thousands of unused popcorn poppers waiting to be converted into DIY popcorn poppers. The Coffee Geek site has an excellent step-by-step picture walkthrough. It’s not as gourmet or controlled as, say, using a heat gun, but it is a lot more simple, and easy to work into a weekend routine of having the freshest coffee you can get available within 10 minutes. (Original posts: Popcorn popper, heat gun).

1. Do everything with your waffle iron

It’s a wonder they’re so prevalent in attics, basements, and garage sales, given that a waffle iron can be one of the most versatile tools in your kitchen. Given that it’s basically a heated, pressure-added mini grill, it can be put to all kinds of uses: making 90-second cookies, rolling your own waffle-style pizza pockets, and, our personal Sunday morning favorite, making bacon with far less mess than usual. “But,” you say, “I need even more waffle iron ingenuity!” We advise you run through the Waffleizer, a site dedicated to feeding your square-pocketed hunger. (Original posts: cookies, pizza pockets, bacon).

What common tools find new use in your kitchen? What expensive stuff have you put off buying by making do with what you already cook with? Tell us your money-saving, gadget-avoiding tips in the comments.

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Editor’s note: This guest post is by Andrew Keen, the author of Cult of the Amateur and an advisor to Arts and Labs, a collaboration between entertainment companies, software providers, telecommunications providers, artists and creators.

Some people don’t like TV Everywhere, Comcast’s and Time Warner’s plan to bring cable TV to the Web.  They are just paranoid.

Allow me to explain. In his 1964 Harper’s Magazine essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter argued that American politics has often been a stage for excessively conspiratorial and suspicious minds from both the left and the right. What disturbed Hofstadter most of all was the sanity of the paranoid. “It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that make the phenomenon significant,” he explained. By infecting normal people, Hoftstadter worried, the paranoid style had made conspiratorial fantasy a troublingly recurrent feature of American political culture.

Hofstadter is correct. From Andrew Jackson to Joseph McCarthy to contemporary Americans on both the left and the right, the paranoid style—with its obsessive targeting of the Roman Papacy or Russian communists or Wall Street bankers or Muslim terrorists—has replaced rational discussion with what Hoftstadter called “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy.”

As the Internet has become more and more of a central political issue in American life, so the paranoid style has, unfortunately, begun to infect our public discussion about technology and media. Much of this paranoia focuses on the supposed selfishly monopolistic intentions of mainstream media which, for many otherwise sane people, represents a deadly threat against the so-called “people’s Internet”. Thus, from Rupert Murdoch’s obstinate determination to protect the economic value of his content on the Internet to Bono’s latest defense of intellectual property to the perpetual hysteria around the Network Neutrality debate, any criticism of piracy or defense of paid content is viewed in the darkest and most apocalyptical terms by paranoid advocates of an “open” and “free” Internet.

Richard Hoftstadter’s “angry minds” who, in the 19th century, obsessed over the threat of masons, Jesuits and munitions makers, have, in the digital 21st century, discovered record labels, movie studios and, above all, telecoms and cable companies as the root of all our problems. Take, for example, the paranoia that has greeted Comcast and Time Warner’s announcement of their TV Everywhere pilot. On the face of it, the non-exclusive TV Everywhere service is a perfectly rational and reasonable effort by the cable companies to combine the values of their offline and online businesses. The test scheme – which is about to be rolled out to 5,000 Comcast customers – enables subscribers to access content from Time Warner’s TBS and TNT channels which they’ve paid for on their cable boxes for free on the Internet.

So what’s not to like about TV Everywhere? If you choose to pay for cable service, then you’ll be able to access this content for free on the Internet. If not, then you won’t. And if current cable subscribers object for any reason to the TV Everywhere scheme, then they can simply end their commercial relationship with Comcast and go elsewhere to acquire their media.

But TV Everywhere has been greeted with exaggerated suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy by some Internet groups. This paranoia is particularly palpable at lobbying groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge—organizations which often appear to be intrinsically opposed to the online business initiatives of large, established media companies.

For example, Josh Silver, Executive Director of Free Press, has argued that TV Everywhere is really a “desperate bid by old media giants to crush the emerging market for online TV.” And here’s the paranoid language with which Marvin Ammori, senior adviser at Free Press, characterized TV Everywhere:

The launch of the TV Everywhere model indicates that Comcast wants competition nowhere. These are transparent efforts to preserve the cable cartel that gouges consumers. Comcast wants to be the gatekeeper to the video programming world. This service is a threat to innovative online video and an attempt by the industry to impose the cable-TV model onto the Internet.

Well of course Comcast —a part of this supposedly evil “cable cartel that gouges consumers” —wants to be the gatekeeper to the video programming world. That’s their business model, their very raison d’etre. But the idea that TV Everywhere could be a threat to “innovative” video start-ups like Vuze, Roku and Hulu is an example of the kind of paranoia about large media companies that has infected groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge. Content businesses such as TNT, TBS and CBS are free to run their content on both TV Everywhere and ad-supported free websites like Hulu. It’s their choice. And that choice—as all commercial decisions—will presumably be determined by solid business criteria. If Hulu or TV Everywhere makes sense in commercial terms, then content producers will allow their content to run on these networks. If not, then they won’t.

“If Comcast is not attempting to stifle competition, then why is it only available to Comcast cable subscribers and not nationwide for all Internet users?” Ammori goes on to ask about TV Everywhere.

But why would Comcast make its content available for non-subscribers who haven’t paid to access this content? Does Ammori imagine that this multi-million dollar business initiative is really a charity intent on the public good? TV Everywhere shouldn’t be confused with TV For Everyone. If you don’t pay, you don’t play. Like it or not, that basic economic truth applies to both new and old media.

Not all truths, however, should be applied in exactly the same way in both old and new media. In contrast with traditional media, on the Internet the more empowered consumer has become comfortable with picking and choosing the content for which they pay. Thus the success of iTunes over the Rhapsody model. So the really interesting business question which TV Everywhere raises is whether the old media model of bundling all-you-can-eat content in a single monthly price can work in the digital age of this empowered consumer. Perhaps, in parallel with TV Everywhere, cable companies would be wise to also offer the option of paying for online video content on an a lá carte basis.  But that is a different discussion.

Beyond all the paranoia, TV Everywhere is actually good for consumers who choose to legally access high quality video content on the Internet. The paranoid camp would, of course, disagree. “Under the TV Everywhere plan, no other program distributors would be able to emerge, and no consumers will be able to ‘cut the cord’ because they find what they want online,” Gigi Sohm, Public Knowledge president argued last year.

But Sohm’s pessimism about technological innovation is misguided. TV Everywhere is good news for program distributors because it opens up a potentially huge online channel for new content that wasn’t previously legally available on the Web. The more consumers who watch commercially viable video on the Internet, the more opportunities will exist for innovative online entrepreneurs. TV Everywhere represents one of the most promising business initiatives for bridging old and new media. By putting some of their most valuable content on the Internet, Comcast and Time Warner are doing all non-paranoid consumers and entrepreneurs a huge favor.

Photo credit: Flickr/Photomish Dan

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Carlos Sainz clinched his first ever Dakar Rally a few minutes ago, despite crossing the finish line of the last San Rafael to Buenos Aires stage on Saturday behind his title rival and Volkswagen teammate Nasser Al-Attiyah.

The Spaniard entered the last stage of the rally with over 2 and a half minutes of advantage over the Qatari driver and settled for a quiet run today. Although Al-Attiyah had recovered more than 7 minutes on top of the classification during the last few stages of the event… (read more)