alien

We always suspected it was true, and now we have confirmation: Alien eyeballs are invading the planet. There have been all manner of thinly veiled ocular disguises, ranging from loudspeakers to super magnifiers, but the true masterminds have taken the form of Webcams.

The indisputable proof? An appendaged speciman of an eyeball Webcam has been photographed and posted on Tokyomango, masquerading as a replica of a Japanese ghost named "Medama no Oyaji" who, oddly enough, walks around naked and "speaks in a really high voice." (We hope those two characteristics aren't related.) Come to think … Read more

ROSWELL, N.M.--If you're coming to this town for anything other than UFO madness, you're probably heading to the wrong place.

I came as part of Road Trip 2007, my driving tour of the Southwest in search of the most interesting technology- and science-related stories.

Roswell is the self-proclaimed UFO capital of the world, and it is still reaping the tourist-dollar benefits of an event that happened 60 years ago, when a local may have found the remains of a crashed UFO in a field that's actually quite some distance from here.

The event made world … Read more

Now that's more like it. We got a bit worried when we saw that Sony was contemplating joining the speaker lamp market, a trend we've yet to understand. So we were comforted to see that it hasn't abandoned the electronics industry's tradition of creating alien speakers, especially those that feature giant eyeballs.

The SRS-AX10 makes a valient attempt to join that category, though Chip Chick says its long, skinny neck makes it look like "the Olsen Twin of speakers," particularly because of their correspondingly weak 1-watt output. But we don't mind--we'll take … Read more

If eBay's 50 percent growth this last fiscal quarter is any indication, online auctions are still a favorite way to shuffle goods and pocket extra change. Power sellers--those eBay auctioneers who sell and gross high volumes--have gained the edge by applying their business savvy and possibly using one of the many auction software options from CNET Download.com. One popular program is AlienFiles, a listings creator and editor that supports multimedia files and helps manage your sale items.

There's plenty here for power buyers, too. Check out eBay Auction Sniper and AutoSearch, for instance, which automatically bids on … Read more

Admit it--you know you loved the conspiracy-theory kitsch of Men In Black. (Can you believe it's been 10 years since that movie came out?) And you know you love this Abduction Lamp, too. Designed by Lasse Klein and licensed under the Creative Commons standard, this is probably one of the most clever light fixtures we've ever written up on Crave; and for the record, we see a lot of them.

Here's how it works. There's a light bulb inside the supremely awesome metal UFO on top, which illuminates the windows and the mysterious aliens inside. Because … Read more

Call us killjoys, but we think it's never a good sign when a product description includes a boldfaced FBI warning immediately preceding an age recommendation of "4 and up." ("This device must not be used to make threatening phone calls!")

That's what the product literature says about this "Alien Voice Changer" from Atamaii Anime Toys. The gadget is so named because it makes you sound like extraterrestrial beings, according to Red Ferret--specifically, three aliens from Cartoon Networks' Ben 10: Greymatter, Heatblast and Fourarms. (What, no Stinkfly?)

The changer also comes with stickers … Read more

For awhile we thought the majority of Webcams on the market were being designed by aliens. That was the only explanation we had for the inordinate number of models we've seen that have menacing or downright scary looks. (Except the ones that look like blenders, of course.)

The "Bubble Head" concept could change all that, as their friendly one-eyed faces show, if some manufacturer would just show a little guts and make them on a mass retail scale. The cams are made of polyurethane to survive falls from wherever they're perched, including the ladder that comes … Read more

Japan's SolidAlliance is a company often known for its USB storage devices of dubious value. So it's of little surprise that it was the manufacturer behind something called the "Yu-tan Radar Strap"--which, according to CNET Asia, is being marketed as a "UFO detector and alien sniffer." If the radar senses the presence of a UFO, it will beep loudly and its red LED will begin to spin; if it detects an alien, it will blink and beep at full volume. You should memorize this so you can respond appropriately when the time comes.… Read more

This designer LED lamp isn't quite egg-shaped enough to qualify for the evil ovum empire, but it's close enough. Just look at this thing--it's like a spherical spaceship opening up to reveal its alien passengers or a battery of death rays (most likely both).

The "Barry" fixture from Sweden's Flux has a mirrored upper interior that reflects about 70 white LEDs from the bottom half, according to OhGizmo. But the real offense here isn't alien domination of Earth; it's the price--$1,100.

If that's not enough to start a War of the Worlds, … Read more