By Evan Ackerman

“At 22 feet long and 11 feet tall, this Jurassic-sized replica is the largest sculpture we have ever offered! Realistically sculpted with rows of menacing teeth, a fearsome tail and scaly skin, our prehistoric artifact is cast in quality designer resin and hand-painted with powerfully convincing color and texture. This display-quality sculpture transforms any home, garden, restaurant or hotel into something truly magnificent!”

This description, and this sculpture, are so full of fail that I don’t even know where to begin. These people obviously didn’t do their homework on the Tyrannosaurus rex, and in fact didn’t even look at any illustration made in the last 40 years. First, it should be Cretaceous, not Jurassic. And not even early Cretaceous… We’re talking Maastrichtian stage (65 to 70 million years ago) as opposed to the Jurassic, which ended 145 million years ago. Second: “rows” of teeth? Sharks have rows of teeth, a t-rex has a row of teeth. Third, while “scales” may technically describe dinosaur skin, it’s really more of a pebbly texture, which you can clearly see in fossilized dinosaur skin imprints. It’s hard to really comment on “convincing color and texture,” but this poor guy looks awfully drab, especially considering recent discoveries of feathery, stripey little dinos.

The most egregious error, of course, is the posture. If a Tyrannosaurus rex stood upright like that, it would dislocate its hips and practically crush its own spine under the weight of its head. This has been known since the 70s. I mean, come on, who in their right mind would want such a terrible mockery of a dinosaur sitting out in their yard? The only, and I mean only, possible use for something like this is to place outside your neighbor’s bedroom window at 2am and then tap on the glass. Does that justify the $7500 you’d have to spend? Uh, not even close.

[ Toscano ] VIA [ Geekologie ]

By Evan Ackerman

This is a prototype e-reader from Qualcomm called Mirasol. Apparently, this vivid color display (which doesn’t use a backlight) consumes less power than a monochrome e-ink display:

More, after the jump.

How can this work? Well, if they’re talking about the blue morpho (which is the spectacular butterfly in the pic), there really is some fascinating biotechnology there. The butterfly isn’t actually colored blue, in that it doesn’t have blue pigment in its wings. Rather, the wings of the butterfly are covered with tiny scales that reflect incoming light, setting up constructive interference effects at a wavelength at about 400 nanometers, which happens to be blue light. You can get any color you want by varying the size of the scales, which changes the wavelength at which constructive interference happens.

As far as the display goes, the advantage of the butterfly technology is that color is produced from incoming light, which means that you don’t need LEDs (or whatever) to provide light from underneath the display. Of course, it’ll only work if there’s enough ambient light, but that’s just like a real piece of paper (and conventional e-ink displays). Except with pretty colors. I don’t know about you, but I’d be more than willing to pay a premium (even a significant premium) for a display like this… Let’s hope that Qualcomm comes through.

VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Evan Ackerman

What has your dog done for you lately? If you’re lucky, maybe you get something fetched once in a while. Big whup. Erik Schiegg hit on a way to make his dog useful for a change, by equipping it with a solar charging vest. The dog runs around outside all day, and Erik’s phone gets charged thanks to the solar panel on the dog’s back. While this may not be as efficient as a stationary solar panel, most of us don’t have the space or money for one of those, and this is a cheap and easy DIY solution to mobile solar charging… Think hiking and camping trips and stuff.

You can easily wire up something like this yourself; all you really need is a solar panel (which you can find at online hobby shops) and a battery pack. Or you can just buy one of these and a roll of duct tape. Your call.

VIA [ Make ]

By Evan Ackerman

It’s a 19″, 720p, $299 polar bear TV that you can buy in March from Hannspree. It’s designed to “raise awareness” about polar bears, and is just the first in a series of other (unspecified) threatened animal TVs, but it does not in fact help the polar bears in any way if you buy one. Except with karma, maybe, but karma isn’t an unmeltable iceberg or a tasty seal.

[ Hannspree ]

By Evan Ackerman

If I had a shirt like this, I’m sure I’d be happy as this strange looking boy is. Totally Absurd Inventions insists that this is an actual US patent, although I haven’t been able to find it on the USPTO website, so I can’t do much besides relate what they say about it:

The Gerbil Shirt wraps your torso in plastic tube passageways, making your bod a super highway of fun for Binky and Bart. The interior surfaces are textured for traction and have air vents for easy breathing.

The inventor suggests you can clean the Gerbil Shirt by attaching it to a faucet (remove pets first please), and you should avoid collisions and falls that could cause pet panic.

[ Patently Absurd ] VIA [ Neatorama ]

By David Ponce

It’s a little plastic bag attached to a harness that you tie to your dog’s behind and that catches its excrement. It’s great! We can see all sorts of enjoyment in this product. For one, you’ll be the center of attraction anywhere you go; nothing quite like a dog with a plastic bag stuck to its ass to get people talking. Secondly, it’ll help you bond with your dog as he’ll be eternally grateful that you’ve thought of such a dignified way of dealing with his natural excretions.

Don’t believe us? Hit the jump for a convincing FAQ, as well as a fascinating video and links. Out here, you get to find out it’s between $30 and $40 depending on your dog’s size.

This is straight from the website.

My dog will not like it for sure?

Actually, dogs don’t like many things such as “they don’t like shower”, “they don’t like to stay home alone”, “they don’t like to eat dog cookies”, however, when they are used to all these things, they will be excited about it.

Why my dog seem not able to get used to “PooTrap”?

In many ways dog is like human being! It’s like when first time people use camera to take photos, for sure it seems weird but nowadays many people around the world are using cameras for taking photos.

Dog feel not respected when wearing “PooTrap”?

Babies wear diapers and they are truly loved by their parents, hence same applied to the dogs owners who use our “PooTrap” actually truly love their dogs.

I would rather like to pick up poop by myself?

People invented many useful technologies to make people’s life easier. All these inventions (car is among one of them) are to make people’s life more convenient. With our “PooTrap”, no need to worry that dogs will cause environment pollution, and as dogs owners may know, actually it’s difficult to pick up poop.

We can sense some hesitation, folks. So below is a handy video.

[ Product Page (Unfortunate auto-audio) ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Evan Ackerman

No flies were harmed in the making of these airplanes.

[ AirSpace ] VIA [ Neatorama ]

By Evan Ackerman

Unlike the ambiguously betentacled USB sea creatures we’ve seen before, this is most definitely a USB squid, and not a cuttlefish. Nifer Fahrion makes each DataSquid by hand out of wool, and endows them with USB data storage which is accessible by removing the two long tentacles. 8 gigs worth of squid is $95.

[ NifNaks ]

By Evan Ackerman

Psst, let me let you in on a little secret… Your cat’s ears? They’re actually USB drives. Go on, pull them off and see. If you’ve never used them before, you might have to tug pretty hard, but trust me, they’re in there. It’s one of the many perks of cat ownership. It works on cat tails, too. Actually, just one of them is a USB drive… The other one is a USB drive cleaner.

Pretty soon, we’re going to be able to put together an entire USB cat. And when that happens… Um, I have no idea what will happen when that happens, but it’ll be it will involve nuclear Armageddon and/or a rain of frogs. 2 gigs worth of ear is $44, and 8 gigs is $65.

[ Rakuten ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

Everybody knows that girls are attracted to guys with dogs. This is why, if you’re desperate, you can rent dogs by the hour. But what kind of dog is most effective at picking up chicks? This is the burning question that the Puppy Pulling Power experiment was designed to answer. Five different breeds of dogs (a Border Collie, a Pug, a Samoyed, a Staffy, and a Yorkie) were outfitted with a Sony Ericsson C510 camera phone (with smile detection software) on their collars, and whenever the dog lifted up its head to receive the attentions of an adoring female, the phone would snap a picture when (or if) she smiled. As you might expect, the dogs had a rather, uh, advantageous angle, so I’m going to go ahead and call the following trailer slightly NSFW due to cleavageness.

Yeah, it seems pretty fake to me too (they were sponsored by Sony Ericsson), but I don’t think that necessarily invalidates the results. Have a look at those after the jump (including some of the pics that you really want to see), but here’s a spoiler: the Samoyed wins by a cute widdle nose.

There’s a gallery of the “best of puppycam” girls here.

[ Puppy Pulling Power ] VIA [ Hacked Gadgets ]