Hasta La Gadget!

Spreading messages in public that only those who are meant to hear them would be pretty hard. Making up your own language to do so would also just make things complicated. So why not use with something like art science student Matthijs Munnik‘s Little Bird, which is a digital bird messaging system of sorts?

Basically, Matthijs’s digital bird sends out the message in a series of random tweets and chirps. It’s not in Morse code or anything, so you won’t be able to ‘hear’ the message in any way.

However, all you need to decode the message is an app on your smartphone that’ll translate and convert the seemingly random sounds to text. Pretty awesome, right?

The Little Bird installation currently chirps out information from WikiLeaks, probably to push the point forward that it’s meant to be used as a ‘new’ way to transfer information secretly – even though everyone has the potential to access it.

Sounds kind of like WikiLeaks, doesn’t it?

[via Pop Up City]

Despite what you may have heard, there’s no looming threat of a zombie apocalypse. Sure, there’s one on The Walking Dead, but you don’t have to worry about coming across the undead in real life. Unless you happen to be in London, of course.

A Walking Dead food truck is actually parked somewhere in the city, and it serves up delectably cringe-worthy delights like the big brain burger, feet and thyroid nuggets, crispy brain dippers, and skewered hearts.

Of course you don’t believe all that now, do you? This is actually chef Mark Jankel’s gory food cart where he’ll be serving up all the aforementioned goodies using “responsibly sourced British ingredients.”

The cart was parked at the Camden Lock Market last August 22nd, but will be moving all across the UK to celebrate the release of The Walking Dead’s Season 2 DVD. If you live in London, check out their official UK page to track the trailer’s progress: facebook.com/TheWalkingDeadUK

[Stylist via Incredible Things]

My millions of imaginary readers know how disappointed I am at the lack of a universal gaming controller for iOS devices. Archos added a pinch of envy to that disappointment when they unveiled the GamePad, a 7″ Android tablet that has physical buttons and two analog sticks. The best part? Archos claims to have developed a “mapping and game recognition” software that will allow virtual controls to be mapped to its buttons, even for games that don’t actually support physical controllers.

On the hardware side, all we know is that the GamePad has a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU and a Mali 400mp quad-core GPU. Archos also didn’t specify which version of Android will run on the tablet, although the company did say that they decided to build the GamePad when they saw that Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich supported game controllers. Finally, Archos claims that there are already “over a thousand” Android games that work with the GamePad’s physical controls. I hope we can see a demo of this tablet soon and I really hope it takes off so everyone else can step their tablet game up.

[via Archos (pdf) via SlashGear]

The Etch-a-Sketch reminds me of the days when I was a kid and didn’t have the day-to-day worries that I have right now (like how I’m going to find time to write two papers for this class I’m taking when I have to work for the most part of the day, among others.)

So when I saw this Playtime Belt Buckle on Etsy (aka the Etch-a-Sketch Belt Buckle), let me say I did more than just do a double take.

While I’m not in the market for a new buckle, you might be.

As its name obviously suggests, you can now wear a miniature and fully functional Etch-a-Sketch around your waist. It might be hard to draw stuff while you’re wearing it and it might be weird if someone else were using it to draw stuff while it’s around your waist, but hey, it’s still a pretty cool and funky belt buckle.

The Playtime Belt Buckle is available from iFind Industries’ Etsy shop for $80 (USD). Of course with a hot glue gun and one of these, you could DIY one for a whole lot less money.

[via Dude I Want That]

Netflix has offered what it calls its People Search feature on the PS3 for a while. Anyone that used Netflix on the PS3 and has conducted a search for a movie has used the function whether you knew it or not. The way the search function works is as you type in letters, content related to those letters pops up on your screen. People Search is now available for Xbox 360 Netflix users as well.

If you start typing any letters, you will be greeted with a bunch of movies that have those letters in the title as well as the names of actors and directors. In the instance of searching for “nic” you would get people results for Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman, Jack Nicholson, and others. If you’re looking for movies that have those specific actors in them, all you need to do is click their name to drill in and see their films.

Once you click their name, more results featuring those actors will be offered on the page. Frankly, I’m not a big fan of People Search on the PS3 because I think it returns too many results that have nothing to do with what I’m looking for. I’d rather see search results only return movie titles that start with the letters I enter rather than movie titles with those letters in the middle or people’s names – or at least give you the option to toggle between title and people modes.