Gymnastics

This petite router turns a cellular wireless data connection into Wi-Fi.

What it is: Atlas Power Ascender What it's used for: Rapidly pulling people and their gear up the side of a building or canyon The prototype of the Power Ascender was not easy to use. The battery-powered, waist-mounted climbing assistant yanked people up a dangling rope at a blistering 10 feet per second — almost 7 mph — fast enough to snap their limbs back. So Atlas, a company run by four mechanical engineers outside Boston, set the maximum speed to a more reasonable 5 feet per second and added a variable- speed trigger like on a power drill. Now customers — such as US military personnel — simply clip the 25-pound device onto a climbing harness, push any nonbraided rope through the top, and let it fly. Inside the gizmo, a network of grippers scurries up the line and ensures that it threads cleanly out the side. The Ascender's 10-kilowatt output can lift up to 350 pounds, which is no easy task. "Having that much power that close to your crotch is a huge engineering challenge," says Atlas' Bryan Schmid, "and frankly a bit risky." Sounds pretty ballsy.

Wired.com

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Twits Du Jour

• Red Robin is a madhouse. Someone should have told us it was homecoming. #
• The world can go on now. Our latest webkinz pet has been adopted. webkinz.com #
• $16.99 for a plush webkinz toy. Kids are obviously not feeling the economy. #
• A couple hours to myself while they are at the theater enjoying Beverly Hills Chihuahua. #
• On our way to Brunch with the munchkin. HIHOP is it. #
• Just finished watching Braveheart for the first time. Almost fell asleep. Too many hair extensions. #
• Womanizer — Brit is back? tinyurl.com/3z6gtt #
• Erik's Weblog: Twits Du Jour tinyurl.com/3kfjko #

T-Mobile USA has officially confirmed what unofficially has been the talk of the town--the debut of the first Google Android based mobile phone. The T-Mobile G1 is made by HTC (the device was code...

[Thanks to dozens of spam sites using the full text of our RSS content, the feed is now only a summary. Click through to see the full story.)

Nick Bradbury just had a tumor removed from his head. Glad to hear he's doing well:

The fact that I'm able to type this blog entry less than a week after the operation has me hopeful that recovery will be quicker than I was led to believe, but it will still be a few weeks before I'm able to really tackle any serious work.