Bemused Blogger's blog

There's no point knowing the answer if you can't hit the buzzer faster than your opponents. That's the premise behind such long-running TV quiz shows as Jeopardy! and It's Academic, the latter being a competition for high school students airing in a few cities. What better way to train than hooking up the Rolls GS76 Game Show? The system consists of a control unit and eight buzz-in remotes attached by 15-foot phone cables.

 The yawn heard round the world that greeted the introduction of 3D TV at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show was mainly due to a perceived dearth of compelling content. “It’s the software, stupid,” was the major refrain. But as it now turns out, the content problem could be well on its way to being solved. And we don't just mean ESPN and Discovery announcing 3D channels.

Come April showers, street sweepers will clean better, umbrella salesman will clean up, and outdoor photographers will fret. That's when attaching a specialized umbrella to the tripod socket of your camera can be as vital as doing what your mother always said: if it's going to rain, take an umbrella! The Omega Probella Portable Protective Umbrella is made from water-repellant nylon. With slide bar, it weighs only 4.5 ounces.

Help fight obesity in America by putting down that camera, please!

When the three scientists largely responsible for inventing digital photography and fiber optic transmission received the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physics, they might have considered the mess they’ve created on photo-sharing sites and in recipients' email boxes. I speak of the scourge of food photos. It seems like every other photo I’m emailed are close-ups of what people consumed during their vacations.

Back when Heineken was the hot brand for cold beer, you could count on the bottles’ pulverized remains lining streets off the St. Patrick’s Day Parade route with green fairy dust. Magical as it seemed, broken glass isn’t exactly welcome on a set. That’s why the Breakaway Beer Bottle from Rosco Laboratories goes a long way to solving the problem of staging a fight without injuring actors or models.

When I’m out, I’m often reduced to chasing Wi-Fi where I can find it. Intercity buses that pick up passengers near Penn Station, for example, are oases of connectivity in a city of slaphappy password protection. With Wi-Fi spilling out to the sidewalk, you’ll sometimes see me sprinting along 34^th Street with my iPod Touch trying to stay in range of a bus as it heads to the Lincoln Tunnel.