Filed under: Displays, Household

What else can we say? The concept here is pure genius, and it totally makes those pricey security systems seem way pointless (okay, slightly less critical). The FakeTV is a strobe that sets up in an occupied room at night and flashes up beams of light. From the inside, we can imagine it looks fairly curious, but from the outside, it gives prospective burglars the idea that someone is actually awake and watching a television program. It promises to produce the effects of “scene changes, fades, swells, flicks, on-screen motion and color changes,” just like they were generated by a bona fide set. We can’t speak for how well (or not) this thing actually works, but at just $49, we’d say it’s a solid buy if you’re the paranoid type.

[Via BoingBoing]

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Filed under: Cellphones

We’re a bit frightened by the fact that high-ranking political officials are told to leave their BlackBerrys outside in an unguarded basket during high-level meetings (really, it’s “common practice”), but nevertheless, one chap who tried to take advantage of the situation didn’t quite make it out undiscovered. During a recent political meetup in New Orleans, a Mexican press attaché managed to slip a half dozen or so BlackBerrys into his pocket before darting to the airport with visions of black market markups in his head. Before he could exit the country, however, Secret Service had tracked him down after catching him via surveillance footage. As it stands, the responsible individual has been fired from his post, but there’s been no word on whether the US will take any further actions. Reevaluating the whole “leaving them out in the open” practice may be a good start — just sayin’.

[Via The Boy Genius Report]

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Filed under: Cellphones

Make no mistake, we’ve seen some fairly boneheaded moves made by technologically-illiterate bank robbers, but the latest case involves a fellow who was quite the opposite of that. Yes, the 20 to 25 year male who decided to hold up an Alabama bank the day before his taxes were due actually did the deed without hanging up his cellphone. And there’s surveillance footage to prove it. Quite honestly, we can’t imagine what the conversation here would’ve been like, but at least he made the most of whatever minutes he had remaining as a free man, right?

[Via textually]

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Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds

There’s depressing gaming stories, and then there are outright travesties. Unfortunately, this case falls squarely into the latter category, as a 7-year old cancer patient had his beloved PlayStation Portable swiped — right along with his medical records, a backpack full of medication, his games and even his homework — while en route to a chemotherapy treatment for a tumor in his brain. Apparently the boy’s family had stopped at a restaurant while traveling from Oklahoma to Texas, and while inside, thieves had their way with what was left inside the vehicle. Thankfully, authorities from the Dallas police department came to the rescue by purchasing a brand new PSP and raising over $1,000 to repurchase the goods that were lost, and as for the crooks, we’ll just trust karma to handle the rest.

[Via PSPFanboy, image courtesy of Flickr]

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV

We’ve seen some pretty shady dealings from disgruntled ex-employees in the past, but this one may have skyrocketed into the upper echelon of tales of corporate deceit. As the story goes, a 49-year old man known only as Jeong felt the need to copy over some 1,182 top secret plasma display technology-related files onto his personal drive before waltzing out of LG’s doors for the final time in July of 2005. A few months later, Chinese manufacturer Changhong-Orion PDP-Chaihong welcomed him with open arms and paid him a fat salary of roughly $300,000 a year (not to mention a few perks: free apartment, vehicle etc.), while casually accepting both the aforementioned files and continued insider leaks at LG — information supposedly valued at over a billion dollars. But despite Jeong’s arrest upon his last return home to Korea, Changhong is still apparently on schedule to produce plasma panels based on LG’s technology come this December. Can you say: hot water over international trade-secret law?

[Via The Raw Feed, image courtesy of RPG Classics]

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Filed under: Gaming

While we’ve certainly seen a few items get returned without, shall we say, everything in tact, this example just might take the cake. Details are fairly light, but the long and short of it is that some sly customer managed to return an Xbox 360 and get a full refund, but the most critical components weren’t repackaged. Reportedly, the store decided to allow the refund just this once without thoroughly checking the innards, and sure enough, the decision came back to bite ‘em. Packed within was a gutted console (stuffed with a used textbook, no less), a bunch of totally random cabling and an official Xbox 360 headset. Needless to say, the store got burned torched, but if the culprit received his / her refund as a credit card charge-back and / or was caught on camera, we’ve all ideas the retailer will get what it’s owed one way or another.

[Via Digg]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Peripherals

You know, if you don’t know how to use a gadget, you probably shouldn’t go to the trouble of stealing it, because your ass is as good as busted when you call tech support. In the latest case of a criminal not grasping this simple concept, a genius known as Timothy Scott Short stole a Digimarc printer used by the state of Missouri to print driver’s licenses and casually called the company to procure the needed software drivers — which caught the attention of the Secret Service agents already investigating him for identity theft. Digimarc isn’t saying how the Secret Service knew Short had called, but since the printer can only be used to print Missouri IDs, it’s safe to say they might have had a hunch.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Cellphones

If a burglar with exquisite taste somehow managed to snag a million dollar Goldvish, asking for just $185,000 for its safe return wouldn’t be too far-fetched. Apparently, the mobile in question wasn’t of the princely variety, as this particular thief managed to lower his asking price to a rock-bottom $200. The suspect, known initially through police paperwork as “Baby Boy,” was lured into a trap after police tagged along for the exchange and arrested him at gunpoint. When Mr. Boy (later found to be Randy-Jay Adolphos Jones, which is only slightly better) was questioned, he just couldn’t put a finger on why he blurted out the $185k figure versus something more reasonable, but hey, not everyone can be right on top of current market conditions, right?

[Via The Raw Feed]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Cellphones

If a burglar with exquisite taste somehow managed to snag a million dollar Goldvish, asking for just $185,000 for its safe return wouldn’t be too far-fetched. Apparently, the mobile in question wasn’t of the princely variety, as this particular thief managed to lower his asking price to a rock-bottom $200. The suspect, known initially through police paperwork as “Baby Boy,” was lured into a trap after police tagged along for the exchange and arrested him at gunpoint. When Mr. Boy (later found to be Randy-Jay Adolphos Jones, which is only slightly better) was questioned, he just couldn’t put a finger on why he blurted out the $185k figure versus something more reasonable, but hey, not everyone can be right on top of current market conditions, right?

[Via The Raw Feed]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!