Fat Solution

The Japan Sumo Association is distributing about 60 iPads among all the 51 training stables and top association officials from this week to help improve communication.

"It seems rather easy to use," association chief Hanaregoma. "Sending emails was very easy." 

The 62-year-old former wrestler admitted that while he can read incoming text messages on his mobile phone, he does not know how to write replies and does not usually use a computer.
But "time flies if you play with this", he said of the Apple gadget.
The iPad was chosen because the sumo association believed the device was big enough to cater to wrestler's fat fingers, unlike the smaller keys on mobile phones, according to reports.
Sumo officials decided to go digital and buy iPads as the ancient sport attempts to mend its ways after scandals over wrestlers' ties with gangsters and illegal gambling, match-fixing and brutal hazing of apprentices.
The sport's authorities faced loud public criticism for their clumsy efforts to investigate the scandals, in part due to insufficient sharing of information among sumo leaders.
With a reliance on faxes and phone calls, the sumo association has occasionally failed to distribute urgent messages to its officers and stable masters.
"If we place this (iPad) in all the stables, we should be able to contact them anytime," the association's spokesman Nishonoseki has said.

The Eyeborg

Rob Spence, a Toronto-based film-maker, lost his right eye in a shooting accident on his grandfather's farm when he was a teenager. Now 36, he decided some years ago to build a miniature camera that could be fitted inside his false eye. A prototype was completed last year, and was named by Time magazine as one of the best inventions of 2009. He calls himself "the Eyeborg guy".

The eye contains a wireless video camera that runs on a tiny three-volt battery. It is not connected to his brain, and has not restored his vision. Instead it records everything that he sees. More than that, it contains a wireless transmitter, which allows him to transmit what he is seeing in real time to a computer.
The current model is low resolution, and the transmitter is weak, meaning that Mr Spence has to hold a receiving antenna to his cheek to get a full signal. But a new higher-resolution model, complete with stronger transmitter and a booster on the receiver, is being built. He says: "Unlike you humans, I can continue to upgrade." Mr Spence also has a version with a red LED light in the eye, like the robot from the Terminator films.
The eye was built with the help of Steve Mann, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an expert in "cyborg" technology - the blending of natural and artificial systems with technology.

Man loses money in UK without being there

IF you ignore e-mails from strangers telling you that you have won a lottery and need to send some money to claim it, you are alert. However, don't let your guard down because a mail from a friend in distress, stuck in a foreign land, requiring money to return home, could well be fake too.
When business associates and friends in the contact list of V K Mohanarangan ,a man living in South India, received mails about his plight, most of them started calling his number, while a kind hearted friend even sent money worth $1000 . The mail said Mohanarangan was in trouble, having lost all valuables and passport, and immediately required $1200, which could be wire transferred to the hotel in UK from where he needed to check out.
On getting calls from people inquiring if everything was okay with him and if he needed help, Mohanarangan, who deals in engineering machine accessories and has an official e-mail id, realized something was amiss.
He looked into the matter and realized that the messages had indeed gone from his id, which apparently had been hacked. Using his techie friends, he found out that the e-mail had been sent from Nigeria. He approached the suburban commissioner of police, S R Jangid, and filed a complaint.
Though similar mail traps have been heard of, this is perhaps the first time in the city that someone has complained to the police about his mail being hacked.