Remember Rubbot, the plucky little design project to completely revolutionize male sex toys as we know it? The designers over at rubbot.com have just announced that they have reached their beta phase. First off, I've gotta say congrats to them on making it this far. Their community outreach efforts in looking for design ideas have been great, and more importantly, they've quoted me multiple times, thus re-enforcing the idea that I know what I'm talking about.

Anyways, they're currently working on a selection questionaire for beta tester recruitment, so hop on over and keep on eye on their blog if you want the chance to be part of the first wave to fall to our new penis crawling donut overlords.

A Series of Controversial Dildos

It seems that the contestants for the Golden Kleene prize at Arse Elektronika 2008 are off to a start on their development, and I happened upon one of the blogs!

A Series of Controversial Dildos, by the circuit benders at Cho-Yaba.com (seriously, take some time to look around the blog, lots of neat stuff here), isn't really a series of controversial dildos (at least, not as much as the divine interventions line of toys) as much as it is a series of controversial control schemes for dildos. The two current projects (both based off Arduino boards) include a vibrator that reacts off of USGS seismic feeds (definitely controversial there), and another that seems to be some sort of chastity belt based on political leanings that I'm not quite sure I get the gist of yet. There's also the "Perpetual Erection Machine", which only exists as a title at the moment, but who knows what it could be!

Definitely interested to see where these are going, and what the other contestants are up to! And remember, Arse Elektronika 2008 happens at Cellspace in San Francisco, September 25-28.

The EyeDildo

NO IT'S NOT A DILDO FOR YOUR EYE but that's totally what I thought too so your mistake is understandable.

The EyeDildo is a clear acrylic dildo with an embedded camera and LED setup so you can play "ob/gyn, the home game". It's at least nice to see someone ripping off Sony (EyeToy) versus Apple (iEverythingEver) for once. And while there is absolutely no way to make the combination of thrusting pointy things and eyes sexy, the name does have a certain impact.

$200 lets you realize that the inside of your partner isn't nearly as pretty as the outside. It uses regular ol' batteries and comes with TV hookups so you can just plug in and plug in and see internal organs on your 60" flat screen!

Now, dildocams have been around a long, long time, but I'm rather excited about this for the machine vision and augmented reality aspects. With today's technology (read: OpenCV, ARToolKit and too much time and education your hands), you're just a few sleepless nights of coding away from games like "Cervix Invaders" and "Poop Ship Destroyers" and "It's in my nose, is that my brain?" and "Malignant or Not". Ok, so that last one, not so much a game, I suppose.

I still think this would be the ultimate survival horror game flashlight peripheral. But I'm just gonna stop there.

Note: Usually, when I get random product emails, I google them first to make sure someone else hasn't gotten to it first, because if it ain't fresh, it ain't good. Google "eyedildo". 4 sites, one of which is my LJ (where I made a silly post about it like, 3 minutes ago, and google already has it. Technology is creeeeeeeeeepy), the other three are some sex video sites they uploaded the demo to. Now THAT'S what I call a 0-day link. Though the fact that the term "eyedildo" has not shown up anywhere else on the internet ever is somewhat... disconcerting.

qDot Speaking at Unc's Colloquia Series

It's time for me to talk again. I'm rather excited about this, I'm the first presenter in Uncle Abdul's "Advanced Colloquia in BDSM" series! It even sounds academic!

This'll be at Edges, a dungeon located in sunny (somewhere in south bay), California. I'll be doing an in-depth presentation on sex technology and its applications to BDSM, which will be as educational for me as it will be for everyone else. Prepare for the wild, ridiculous overuse of the word "panopticon". Foucault's spinning will be my carbon credit equivilient.

Tickets are $16ish after fees, and it's limited to 30 people. To get in, you'll need to preregister online at:

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/117130340

So if you want to get the up close, personal, not-at-a-web-conference qDot treatment (no, I don't know exactly how this treatment is different either), I'll see you next Thursday.

The ShockSpot

Remember the Hugher? Well, upgrade the "filing box from Office Depot" enclosure to "80/20 Structure" and add computer control, and you've got the ShockSpot (which I totally though was going to be an electrostim toy before I checked out the website).

This is the ShockSpot. It's a combination thruster/vibration machine, a feat that I'm not quite sure how they pulled off unless they even manufactured their own actuator system, which would explain the $2200 price tag a little better.

Honestly, from what I can tell on their webpage, they've done a lot right. The structure is made of 80/20, an aluminum "erector set" type building structure that's incredibly cheap, about as easy to put together as your normal piece of Ikea furniture, and very extensible. It can make storage footprint super small, too, since you can fairly easily disassemble the whole thing in a quick manner for storage or movement. I'd always wondered why this wasn't used more often in machine building, though there is the question of whether the low 13 pound overall weight will be enough to actually keep the machine stable during use.

The software... Well, it's looks like someone decided Visual Basic 5 type GUIs are still in vogue, and hey, if it gets the job done, whatever, but I don't really see their controls system being very extensible at the moment. However, they're not charging you extra for the software, it does allow customization, and they even allow you to share your settings files with others, albeit through having to email them to the website for someone to put up by hand. Really, anything negative I'm saying here is just me being a dick because I'm a cowboy coder with the firm belief that I'm awesomer than everyone else. The software, as I said, does what it's most likely supposed to. And they're already promising bluetooth and internet controls.

I'm definitely interested to learn more about this platform, despite the astronomic price. It could be lots of fun to develop for. And besides, when faced with the choice of fucking machine or decently tricked out Macbook Pro, which would you buy, eh?

Thanks to the fine people at CyberMistress for pointing me at this