Send Generate a DNA sample and they'll make art out of it. Using "proprietary 'edgelighting' technology" to smoothly light up this slice of your protoplasm, it looks somewhat like a rather expensive screensaver on a monitor gone walkabout. Comes in green, blue, gray, red, black, bronze and white. $900 USD for the 18"x24" size; $1300 USD for 24"x36". [GT]

Your DNA as Art [via Trendhunter]

Related stories: Plasma screen fireplace | LG 71inch bling plasma - now on sale in Harrods | IFA 2006: Panasonic's 103inch plasma

If you make a lot of calls and are basically a cheapskate... you probably don't want to buy a whole new keyboard anyhow. Which begs the question of exactly who the Buffalo USB keyboard and Skype handset is aimed at - but anyhow. It has 13 extra hotkeys, a volume control for the headphone out if you don't want to just use the handset (but not apparently a speakerphone, so that part is a bit puzzling) and the whole shebang goes for about £30. [GT]

Buffalo's USB keyboard and Skype handset [via Engadget]

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Today's Website of the Day is Moby Games, a user-generated database of computer games from time immemorial (well, the late 70s) to the present day.

It's a great resource and if you're into games you could find yourself getting lost in nostalgia for quite some time. Well worth a visit, and if you notice something missing or incorrect, you can add it yourself.

Ahem. As several eagle-eyed Zune fans have spotted (and pointed out), one of the Top Ten Reasons To Hate Zune was wrong. You don't transfer 30-second samples via Wi-Fi to other people's Zunes. It's full-length tracks, but they can only be played three times. Apologies to Microsoft, and all who sail in her.

In the meantime, don't forget that tomorrow – as promised on Tuesday – it's Top Ten Reasons To Love Zune. Hurrah! I'll try to squeeze in at least one factual error about iPods to make up for the confusion.

This week's Yay or Nay Wednesday is the just announced Nokia N95 (watch Katie's NY preview).

It's a monster-featured multimedia phone/camera/music player with all manner of communication possibilities, with Bluetooth, HSDPA, GPS amongst others.

What do you reckon. Is it hot or not?

Zinc Matrix Power has unveiled its new rechargeable battery technology at the Intel Developers Forum, based on silver-zinc instead of lithium-ion currently used in many modern rechargeable batteries.

They see three main advantages that their amalgamation of silver, zinc and water have over the current technology:

1. Safer: in the light of the recent overheating and catching fire of laptop batteries, this is a major plus
2. Performance: more battery life
3. More environmentally friendly: battery cells can be easily recycled and reused.

The batteries are expected to be available to manufacturers for evaluation and testing in early 2007.

Arthur N. Budge, Jr., chairman of Zinc Matrix Power, said "We believe our battery has the potential to change the game much like lithium-ion did with its introduction in the early 90's."

Can you believe Google is 8 years old today? (or at least, this is its official birthday.) If you've not been on the Net for long, you might not remember a world without Google, but back in the nineties, Alta Vista was one of the ruling search engines, and Google was but a twinkle in the eyes of two young entrepreneurs.

Remember the days when Google was just a search engine?

Now look at where we are. We've got maps, and word processors, and cash-for-questions researchers, and books, and videos, and shopping, and news, and Blogger, and Picasa, and talk, and translation, and...

It's been a pretty amazing 8 years - unless you were one of their competitors. They've certainly done a lot for the web. Happy birthday Google!

I, along with some bigger names on the Net, have been rapped for reports that Apple is trying to trademark the term 'podcast'.

Rob from Podcast411.com picked me up in the comments of that article:

Actually your article is not correct at all. Apple is not going after the name Podcast. This is something that has been misreported all over the net. Listen to my podcast above where I shed the truth on this whole subject.

Well, if you do listen to Rob's podcast, you'll find out that the original cease and desist letter that was sent from Apple to Podcast Ready for infringement of Apple's 'iPod' trademark by their 'myPodder' service - because 'mypodder phonetically sounds like ipodder' (that's Rob word for word so I don't get into more trouble for misquoting or misrepresenting the facts)

Could the next killer app for mobile phones be satellite navigation? ALK certainly hopes so. The company has been selling its CoPilot Live application for PDAs and smartphones for some time now, but in the latter case it's always been dependent on a separate GPS receiver, which connects to your phone using Bluetooth.

However, developments like GPS-enabled phones and HSDPA networks point to a bright future for mobile satnav, and other location-based services. ALK has certainly come a long way since the 1970s, when it was working with the US government computing routes from Earth to Mars.

"From the start, we've been providing consulting, services or applications that help people get from A to B," says managing director Michael Kornhauser. "Now it's happening on mobiles."

Apple is to update the features on its subscription-based .mac webmail service to make it look and feel more like Mac OS X Mail client on the desktop. With the tag line "Totally new. Totally familiar" Apple are playing up its Web 2.0 features (though they don't call it that) such as smart refreshes (only the bit of the webpage that's changed gets reloaded), drag and drop of mail, quick reply from the inbox, flagging of messages, and keyboard shortcuts.

Given that the majority of .mac subscribers are going to be Mac users, it's probably a decent move to make it look like the desktop version of Mail. I'm not sure if it ties in to the desktop version of Mac via IMAP - that would be useful.

At the end of the day, though, do you want to pay for web-based email? The .mac experience is pretty good, and this should make it even better, but if you're a Mac user then you'd probably only want this when you're travelling away from your Mac? Maybe it's just me, but I've never favoured web mail over a desktop app, particularly when it costs an annual fee (I'm stingy :) ) What do you think?

.mac Mail

Microsoft is attempting to sue the group who devised the FairUse4WM crack that allows the DRM to be stripped from Windows Media 10 and 11 files, potentially opening up all the services that use it, including Napster, to a free-for-all.

Unsurprisingly, despite Microsoft patching up their protection, it was cracked again the next day. They're suing for copyright infringement, because FairUse4M uses code from Windows Media development kit version 9.5. They claim over £40,000 in losses.

Microsoft said that the defendants have gone to substantial lengths to hide their identities (well duh!) but experts say that in the long term it won't really hurt Microsoft or any of the legitimate download services that rely on the DRM. Content providers know that no DRM is unbreakable.

Holy mother of Jeebus... what happens when you let two old people loose on telly to teach the world how to Disco dance? Well, you get a dry delivery, and a pair of coffin dodgers prancing around to some expertly made synth pap pop (which seems to be about Moscow...) and a whole world laughing at you. Get down at the two minute mark! It's amazing!

Mof Gimmers

Sony will launch its Portable Reader System PRS-50 e-book reader in the US during October, alongside an online digital book store with some 10,000 DRM-protected titles for purchase and use on the machine.

Whilst specs are sketchy at present, it will use technology from E-Ink that allows an individual page to be displayed without consuming any battery power. Power is only required to display new pages, and a single charge of the internal battery should provide up to 7500 page turns.

It will display Sony's own DRM-infested books, but not books with any other protection system. It will, however, show documents and books that aren't protected, including PDFs, RTF and image files.

Sony has special software, that's will initially only be available on a Windows XP PC, that must be used to upload books to the gadget. Oh goodie. And yes, that means that Mac owners get left out in the cold.

Mind you, we could all be left out in the cold in Europe, as Sony don't have plans to release it here until at least the second quarter of 2007. It will retail in the US for around $350.

Are you interested in a dedicated e-book reader or would you invest in something like a tablet PC which can do a whole host of other things?

Jajah, already known for their home phone VoIP service, has today launched a new VoIP service for all mobile handsets - the Jajah Mobile Suite - which promises savings of up to 86% on international calls and again, without the need to be connected to a PC.

As an example of the savings, the company says a 10 minute call from London to New York with the Jajah Mobile Suite will cost £1.10, compared to £12.90 with Vodafone, £1.50 with Orange, £7.00 with T-Mobile and £9.90 with O2. You can get the deal by downloading a plug-in from the Jajah website or by sending an SMS. The plug-in will allow the service to operate on any mobile phone, regardless of geography, service or manufacturer.

Overall savings are obviously dictated by how much you're currently paying for calls, but are greater if both you and the person you're calling have the plug-in installed. And the cost of each call is clearly displayed before the call is made, so you can make sure you are making a saving. 

Find out more at the Jajah website

Just launched is a new classified service under the name of textandsell, which, as you might have guessed, uses the mobile phone to place adverts on the internet. 

Here's how - take a photo of the item you wish to sell with your phone. They then add text that describes the item and desired sales price. Text the photo with details to the textandsell number - 07740 827827. The cost is the cost of a premium-rate text, which is initially £1.50 for ad advert lasting two weeks. According to Tobi Hardy, co-founder of textandsell: "Our service combines ease of use and access with modern technology and low cost of entry.  For all ages it has never been quicker, easier or cheaper to sell your stuff."

Will it dent eBay? I'm not convinced to be honest, but you can have a look for yourself and make your own mind up at the textandsell website.

Find out more

Another new portable media device on the market, this time it's iZak, a PC and Mac-friendly device that stores your music, movie and data files to view on any TV.

Available as a 40GB  or 80GB drive, iZak connects to your PC or Mac via USB 2.0. to transfer over your favourite media content (music, movies, pictures, data files), then connects to any TV for playback. iZak is claimed to be the only portable device capable of playing ripped DVDs and DivX VODs, storing your own DVDs as a virtual library, which can be played back as if you were running the original disc. The manufacturers also promise the option of playback in HDTV quality Video and Dolby Digital or DTS quality Audio.

Other formats supported include MPEG-1. MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 for video and WAV MP3 MPEG-4 WMA and AC3 for audio. Available in the UK the coming weeks, pricing still to be confirmed.

Find out more

Big in Japan and threatening to be big over here this Christmas is Gya - a meteorite-shaped gadget that test your memory and your reflexes.

The story of Gya (Japanese for "scream") is typically far-fetched - "a meteorite has landed on earth pre-programmed with addictive games that push a player’s co-ordination, reflexes and memory skills to the limit". What you get is a ball featuring 10 games, each with five levels of difficulty, including memorise the flashing sequence, hunt down the matching pairs, avoid the glowing light source and uncover the hidden buttons. Complete all ten games and go head-to-head with Gya in the final showdown to become a member of the Gya elite. All sounds like an advanced version of Simon to me.

From Tomy, it's in ships now, priced around £19.99.

Find out more

Buffalo Technology has launched its DriveStation Duo USB 2.0/FireWire external hard drive, with capacities of 500GB, 800GB, 1.0TB and 1.5TB.   

It's the first Buffalo storage device to feature both FireWire and USB 2.0 interfaces. It incorporates configurable RAID 1 (Mirroring) for improved reliability (if one drive fails) and full capacity spanning modes for maximum capacity. And it comes with a Windows RAID utility to easily change RAID modes. It also features Secure Lock Ware for encrypting folders, along with software for scheduling regular backups. The Drivestation Duo also has automated setup and auto power-on when your PC is booted.

Prices for the drives are £135.99 (500GB), £254.99 (800GB), £279.99 (1.0TB) and £509.99 (1.5TB). All prices exclude VAT.

Buffalo Technology website

Good news if you use Yahoo! Messenger or Windows Live Messenger and have friends on the other service - you can now contact them directly after the companies announced an agreement of interoperability, creating the world’s largest IM network - around 350 million user accounts.

Users of Yahoo!’s Messenger and Windows Live Messenger will now be able to exchange instant messages across both networks, see their friends’ online presence, share a selection of emoticons and add new contacts from either service. Unsurprisingly, a recent Yahoo survey found that over a third of Yahoo! users wanted to communicate with friends on other networks. And just to add a topical/celebrity element, the survey also found that the person most-wanted for an IM chat (over 34% of users) was ‘X Factor’ judge Sharon Osbourne, followed by Simon Cowell (19%). Which perhaps indicates that the survey was undertaken at said programme's auditions.

You can download Yahoo Messenger here.    

Been invited to a Batman fancy-dress party, and can't find a thing to wear? It's a common problem, as you can imagine. You get down to the local costume shop to find they've only got one Joker outfit left, and it's an XXL. D'oh! But help is at hand on eBay, assuming you don't mind turning up as Batgirl. Someone's selling a costume, which they'll make to your exact measurements. Now you're ready to fight crime (or lurk by the punch bowl) with pride!

Also today on Bayraider: a scrapbook autographed by Tom Cruise and the stars of Days Of Thunder, and your chance to become an executive producer on a documentary film about the world of balloon-twisters.