Simple to explain: Soundsnap provides what are essentially high quality “clip-art” for sounds. A lot are made by sound professions, but you can upload your own too. Their nicely categorized, searchable, and easy to use.
Check it out for your next project: Soundsnap
Well, I know things are getting small and all….and nanotubes are getting funding like theres no tomorrow…but really, this is just ridiculous. Berkeley has developed a single nanotube that acts as the antenna, tuner, amplifier, AND demodulator of a radio. It captures signal by mehanical vibration instead of the usual method since its so damn small. Whats very cool is that its got perfectly acceptable quality sound. To demo this, they attached the nanotube onto an electrode. Somehow, through the magic that is carbon nanotube, it transmits the sound as an electric current. There are some awesome pictures and videos of the nanotube in action, along with some audio samplings. Check it out: Nanotube Radio
I know we’re never going to see something as fun and pointless as a message that destroys itself after reading it, but this is close enough.
You post your note, and you receive a link. Once someone clicks on the link, the page is gone. Not as dramatic as a piece of paper shriveling up, but it serves the same purpose, albeit a tad bit less secure 
Its a bit of fun, check it out: Privnote.com
Mind you, this isn’t a product yet, but I think its both absolutely awesome and insane.
There is a concept alarm clock that, upon reaching the time when you must be roused out of a warm bed, threatens to accesse your cell phone and dials a random number in your phone list. Give it enough time and it WILL, with a pre-recorded message. Now, this is when it could possibly become very very bad for someone who doesn’t get out of bed.
Imagine its 7 am, and your alarm clock calls your boss or dad with a message of,
Hey sexy, it’s me. Listen, I had to call because I had another dream about you last night. I can’t get you out of my mind.
I dont know, that would get me out of bed pretty fast. There are far too many hilarious/very very baaaaaad situations depending on who gets called….and what the incriminating message is 
Check out their site (although I really wish they could make such a machine haha)
Its the nice GUI to SMART disk reporting, temperature, and stats on your harddrive. It’ll even say if your harddrive is in good condition (Blue) or bad….very baaad.
Its free and for windows. Its a nice little reference when you’ve had a computer for a few years, and have lots of files you need. It’ll tell you just how many errors your hdd has had, how long its run, etc.
Check it out: Crystal Disk Info
Here is a very nice piece of software. When you get tired of being oh so good to your computer and feel like playing with some dangerous download, or am letting someone use the computer for a while and you know their going to screw the computer up, Windows Steady State is here. What I find very odd…is that its released free by Microsoft, without any fanfare.
But heh, it works and its free. It makes a cache file which includes all the system changes, when you revert, it simply clears the cache.
Check it out: Microsoft Windows SteadState
Here is a very interesting company, Flatwire. They make and sell cables that are extremely flat/thin and can easily be hidden by paint.
They make data cables, video/audio and even electrical cables. What I find very nice about this is that its so thin it makes installation very easy, without the need of ripping through walls or ceilings.
The only problem i find with this, is the price. Its rather expensive for a simple ethernet, but heh, very cool.
Check it out: Flatwire
“Google Germany spokesperson Stefan Keuchel told The Local via email on
Monday that the change from www.gmail.com is a result of a trademark
lawsuit with German businessman Daniel Giersch, who owns the German
trademark for an email service called “G-mail…und die Post geht richtig ab” for his paid email service.
According to Keuchel, Google’s action stems from a German court
decision in July 2007, which ruled that Google could no longer use
“Gmail” for its email services based on Giersch’s trademark.”
(from http://www.thelocal.de/12667/20080623/)
Okay, I’m no German speaker, but Google Translation yeilded “and the Post is right from” when I entered “und die Post geht richtig ab, ” so I’m guessing that the german mail service is basically “G-Mail – the mails always right,” or some other positive phrase about the good quality of the companies mail service. I don’t have the exact translation, but I get the point. Its still a catchy advertising slogan, no matter what language its in. I’d actually be really interested to know how long Mr. Giersch has held the German trademark for “G-Mail.” For once, I’m actally tempted to argue that he’s got it, and that Google should simply continue calling their service “Google Mail.” Much as I like a good deal of what Google does, just because their bigger doesn’t mean they automatically get international trademarks because they want them.
FF3 has a large number of improvements to FF2, but a few of them have been auto disabled because of performance hits. Firstly is the improved color management system which, if turned on will make a performance hit of ~10%. Then again…if your on a modern computer with relatively good cpu and ram, I doubt you can see a difference. However…if you are like me and regularly open high res images that are enormous…proceed with caution.
Type about:config into the address bar.
Convince FF3 that you will be careful
type gfx.color_management.enabled into the filter field and change it to True.
Restart FF3, and you’ll get much better looking images.
on Thursday, IBM unveilied their design for an internally-cooled computer chips. The new chips have thousands of tiny water passages that run between the chips layers. Each tube is only 50 microns in diameter, and is hermetically sealed using silicon walls and solicon oxide around each connection between tubes. At only 10 microns, the seals require fabrication accuracy almost 10x more precise then is required for current computer chips. The entire chip sits in a silicon cooling container, with water pumped through the chip, in one side and out the other. IBM says that the technology could become commonplace in consumer products within five years.
(Graphic from link)
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/06/06/ibm.shows.water.cooled.cpu/