Spy Gear, for the Ladies

Gents can appreciate a lot of this stuff too.


Store your secret stash:

• Platform shoes with a hidden compartment pictured below
  
• A water bottle safe that actually has water in it

Scale walls:

• Ninja grappling hook or foot and hand claws

Multi-tool:

• Girly Miss Army Knife Kit
• Or the more useful Victorinox SwissChamp

Surveillance and data capture / storage gadgets:

• World's Smallest Global Positioning (16 Satellite Real-Time) Tracking System
• "Ripple" Bluetooth Headset Earrings
• A reverse peep hole viewer
• Stainless steel / crystal Heartwear necklace that's actually a really fancy USB drive
• An over-the-top patriotic Lighter Spy Cam that records sound and video
• Camcorders hidden in packs of gum and pens
• Pens that are really scanners
• A watch that's really a Digital Recorder/MP3Player

Sneaky weapons:

• Kubatons keychain
• A cell phone stun gun
• Folding knuckle knife
• Lipstick that is really a knife or pepper spray
• A pepper spray ring
• An easily concealable tiny Swiss Mini Gun
• 2.5" long Ruger LCP-380 Pocket Pistol
• A cell phone gun

If you want to MacGyver your own weapons, you could (but probably shouldn't) make one of these 5 Deadly Sci-Fi Gadgets You Can Build At Home.

Bind / detain someone without lugging around hand-cuffs via these thumb cuffs that could probably easily be stashed down a bra.

For counter surveillance, this Auto Detective pen detects wireless and RF signals within a certain range and alerts you via a light that starts blinking - the faster the blinking the closer you are to the device you're detecting. It also supposedly has some sort of feature that helps detect counterfeit bills.

Finally, if captured by the enemy, be sure you know how to:

• Unlock police-issue and plastic handcuffs
• Beat a lie detector

Webware 100: who's the best of 2009?

You are invited to vote for your favorites among CNET's 2009 Webware 100 finalists. Voting closes April 30th. These "cool Web 2.0 apps for everyone" are selected by CNET Webware readers and by the users of the products they cover.

There are 10 categories of finalists:
Audio and Music
Browsing
Commerce
Communication
Infrastructure and Storage
Location-based services
Photo & Video
Productivity
Search & Reference
Social Networking & Publishing

Finalists range from the hangers-on, the old standbys, the currently trendy yet to prove their staying power, and a few up-and-comings. (These were last year's winners.)

So check it out and vote for who you think should reign supreme, and while you're there, dig around a little bit to see if you can find something new to try out.

I went to Google and all I got was this mug ...

I happily stumbled upon the group Geek Girl Dinners NYC just in time for the first meeting they had last December sponsored by Thoughtworks (if you watch the video on their website for it, I'm the one in the last picture in the montage looking suspiciously to the side while protecting my chicken wing). It was fun, there were some very cool ladies to be met, and there were interesting speakers including Ana Radovanovic - Research Scientist for Google, and Valerie D’Orazio (aka “Occasional Superheroine“) - Writer, Blogger & Social Media Specialist.

Earlier this month, I attended the second Geek Girl Dinner (NYC Edition). This one was sponsored by Google and held at the NYC Google complex. I had high hopes for a full tour of the facility, but instead had to settle for the cafeteria:



... which (don't get me wrong), was damn nice for a cafeteria - with a great view of the Manhattan skyline, a large outdoor deck, and pictures of world renowned chefs along the hall leading in who'd all cooked there (it's right across the street from Chelsea Market and the Food Network headquarters). Rumor had it that one of the staff perks is a free lunch.

The only other thing I got to see (which I had to be escorted to by a very large security guard), was your average bathroom. The hallway leading to it, however, was about a block long (Big Wheel races, anyone?) and white from floor-to-ceiling with (unmarked, closed) doors. It was very (almost disconcertingly) nondescript, leading me to wonder what lurked behind those doors.

Back in the cafeteria (and the real world), the dinner's speakers were fantastic - intelligent, successful, work/life balanced, funny, and level-headed: Corinna Cortes, Head of Google Research NY, and Katrin Verclas, Co-Founder and Editor of MobileActive.org.

They were followed by a raffle, by which I was slightly downtrodden since a disappointing number of the prizes went to men (Really. Really?!?!) ... I can't complain though, because after all was said and done, I did get to go home with this lovely thermos:



. . . ooh, and managed to snap a picture of this:


(For the visually, challenged, his belt says "DON'T BE EVIL")

... which, I-shit-you-not, I was told I was "not actually supposed to take a picture of". What - does it have some top-secret, controversial significance? ... like serving as a constant reminder to keep the Google-folks in-check, lest they be tempted to use their all-present, all-knowing, and all-powerful pervasiveness for evil? HAHAHA! Ha, ha ... oh, man ... ... heh ... ... eh? ... Ah, whatever.