Visited the superb Lord of the Rings touring exhibition this weekend here in London (it’s off to Singapore now I believe) – the props, costumes and ‘behind the SFX’ tour. Lots of fascinating facts, like 20 million steel rings individually sewn into chain mail for the movies by one guy (the real lord of the rings), 250,000 leaves individually stuck onto the oak tree created for Hobbiton and the development of the Massive software tech which created the huge and…

Proving once again that convergence in the living room is really truly with us, Epson has released the LS47P1 television [Babel] with not just an internal printer and a new snazzy liquid crystal rear projection technology, but which also incorporates memory stick, SD card and compact flash slots.

Fontifier is a cool online app that ‘turns a scanned sample of your handwriting into a computer font that you can use in your word processor or graphics program, just like regular fonts such as Helvetica.’ Very clever, very funky and free at the moment. Update: Hmm, doesn’t seem to work for me at the moment and no response from the site. Perhaps best to just download a selection of generic handwritten fonts or even download your own Signature Font…

Abebooks is billed as ‘the world’s largest online marketplace for used, rare, and out-of-print books. Abebooks connects those who buy books with those who sell them, providing abundant selection at affordable prices.’ 45 million books and 10,000 booksellers, so who am I to argue?

The tcpIQ Dictionary add-on is one of those little utilities that could become indispensable. ‘ The tcpIQ Dictionary sits in your system tray monitoring clipboard. When you copy a piece of text into the clipboard, the dictionary ‘opens up’.’

The groovy InfoSync site is reporting that Ericsson and Scanbuy (remember?) have signed an agreement to incorporate ScanZoom technology into future handsets. You know what that means don’t you? ‘The technology allows users of camera phones to take pictures of (initially) barcodes, which are then decoded by the ScanZoom application and used to find the product’s cheapest retailer or sample reviews.’

The Cellar – artwork by Maarten Huizinga. Some weird, some beautiful, some just plain cool.

No Boundaries or Rules (NBOR). ‘The first software that lets you operate a computer the way you think.’ Coming to a screen near you January 15th. ‘Instead of using separate programs, everything you can do with NBOR – including features and functionality not found anywhere else – is performed in the same environment, called Blackspace, at the same time using one intuitive set of graphic tools, called Universal Tools�, which are based on familiar objects and ways of doing things…

Microsoft Word calendar templates. Useful.

It’s possible that within a few years we’ll all be buying tiny, self-contained tracking devices for locating lost or stolen property at the call of a mobile phone. Products like the EZ-Trak from Aus are surely just the beginning in terms of using GPS and cellular technology. Maybe a sort of cellular RFID labelling type system, which can be indelibly attached to things to track them? Perhaps even using something like a SmartWater Superlabel? Speaking of which, spraying intruders with…

Aha, so it seems as though I was correct. Mars bound.

Electronics giant Philips has rolled out the first set of its ‘Connected Planet’ products at CES 2004 in the US (wot, you thought the Ferret was going to avoid the CES news blag? Tsk!). The Philips Streamium range will feature products which connect up with the Internet and with each other using a variety of wireless technologies, including WiFi, broadband and Near Field Communications tech. * The new 23″ Streamium FlatTV incorporates both WiFi and wired Ethernet connections which can…

ATI Technologies has just announced the Imageon 2300 3D graphics processor technology for mobile phones. ‘IMAGEON 2300 integrates an advanced 2D and 3D graphics engine, MPEG-4 video decoder, JPEG encoding/decoding, and a 2 Mega pixel camera sub-system processing engine. With support for up to 2MB of ultra low-power SDRAM, it enables mobile phones to deliver powerful 3D gaming, smooth high-resolution video playback, and excellent digital still camera functionality for a truly involving customer experience.’

Socket has launched a new Bluetooth Cordless 56K Modem for laptops and PDAs. Range 330 feet and 3 hours of operation from one charge of the battery. Priced $129.00.

So why bother going through all the grind of studying, exams, sleepless nights, acne, heartache and the rest? Just sign up for a fake diploma and beat the system. [Shirley this is illegal? Ed] Update: Ferrety genius RealRadix has posted a comment with a PDF of a PowerPoint slideshow about this nastiness. It’s long, but well worth a read – ‘These diplomas allow an untrained psychologist to offer clinical services to children of murder victims; an under-qualified NIH employee to…