BMW fire squelching motorcycles coming to a fire station near you?

The next time you see a car on fire off to the side of the road, picture a motorcycle or two hurtling towards the chaos to save the day instead of your typical gargantuan firetruck. That’s the goal of a test pilot program using some tweaked BMW motorcycles anyway. Weighing at £30,000 (that’s $46,000 USD to those living in the land of red, white, and blue), the bikes are far from cheap. Though in their defense, brand new firetrucks are well north of the six figure mark. So on the surface, it seems like a deal.

But how useful would a bike be in a fire? The fires these road warriors will conquer are only that of small car fires and other “brush fires” that aren’t an immediate danger to surrounding individuals or buildings, as obviously, a building would need a ton of firepower — more-so than a simple bike can provide. But their use seems to be taking off, with countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Sweden, Denmark, Italy and Turkey all employing at least a couple fire bikes of their own.

Speaking of fire power, the BMW-built bikes feature (2) 25-liter cannisters filled with water and foam, good for a solid three minutes of use. According to BMW however, the bikes are capable of putting out your standard car fire in as little as 20 seconds, so the seemingly small firefighting capacity isn’t actually that bad. Furthermore, specially trained drivers donned in fire resistant suits and helmets are the only ones allowed to pilot the two-wheeled machines.

It’s easy to understand that smaller fires are much more prevalent than say a five alarm gigantor fire that would require a dozen or more fire engines from multiple stations. With that said, these bikes could be an awesome tool for fire stations around the country. Hopefully the testing at Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service goes well and they decide to pick a few up. You never know, the next time you turn and look, you could be seeing one hurtling towards a fire yourself.

Aerate your yard with these wheels of death.

Gadgets and lawn equipment — not something you’d normally hear in the same sentence. While I’m sure there’s some techie riding mowers out there, the two things don’t normally well up feelings of excitement in me. But I hate eve mowing my 5-minute yard, so I’m clearly biased. Maybe my opinion of lawn work would be different if I could drive around in a tractor with wheels covered in spikes such as these. The purpose is legit — aerating your yard with 1.5″ spikes while cutting those ever growing blades of grass down to size. But I’d be far too busy racing up along side people and brandishing my moving death impalement machine.

Update: Samsung UK sending disgruntled iPhone 4 users brand spankin’ new Galaxy S hardware?

Usually when the words “Free giveaway” and Twitter are mentioned, it’s either a very rigged opportunity or complete scam altogether. But a budding giveaway compliments of Samsung Mobile UK are proving to be very real. Apparently, people who have been voicing their iPhone 4 frustrations have been contacted by @samsungukmobile stating that a iPhone 4-to-Galaxy S trade in is in store free Galaxy S is in store. Yes, you read that right. A FREE Samsung Galaxy S in exchange for without having to even send in your iPhone 4.

It really seems too good to be true. The account only has 148 followers and less than 100 tweets at the time of writing — a tad low for an “official” Twitter account for a major electronics company. Though a quick scan of the Twitter account reveals plenty of admissions by followers having already received their replacement phones. Wired UK has apparently confirmed the claim with a member of their publishing house that it’s legit. We’ve fired off our own email (and tweet) to @samsungukmobile and will update everyone when we know something a little more concrete. Stay tuned…

Update

We have yet to hear back from Samsung UK, though Gizmodo has had better luck. A rep for the manufacturer said this:

“Recently there has been a real increase in online activity from consumers dissatisfied with some of our competitors’ products. We decided to contact a cross section of individuals to offer them a free Samsung Galaxy S as a replacement, as we’re confident that once people have the phone in their hands, they’ll see how impressive it is for themselves.”

So there ya go. Free Galaxy S’s for the time being. Seeing as how you don’t even need to send in your iPhone 4 means this will probably end sooner rather than later. Best get on it!

BlackBerry devices get their own “Death Grip” testing software.

Apple may have sidestepped the issue by calling out other manufacturers’ devices, but that doesn’t mean other manufacturers are taking the issue lying down. The humorously titled “Death Grip Meter” developed by Xtreme Labs and Fixmo does just what one would expect — tests the resilience of your BlackBerry’s signal when putting that strangling hold on it.

It’s nice to see RIM at least allowing the software to exist and not going all commando on it, axing it from App World and all. It’ll be interesting to see if the reported drop in signal strength actually coincides with any real-world call quality issues as it has on the iPhone. Think we’ll see a follow up iPhone version? Yeah, I think not…

Go ahead and give it a shot. Anyone dropping calls while choking the life out of your Berry?

Paint your own Android figure at Comic-Con

Heading to Comic-Con this week? Pick up one of the paint by numbers…without numbers…Android figures. With a stark white canvas, the possibilities are limited only by your imagination. What can you create? Be sure to send us in some photos!

Sandman Bed is the castle of sleeping nerds. 40″ LCD, LED backlights, and all the A/V equipment you could dream of.

Most areas of our lives we love to geek out. In whatever ways possible, advertising our nerdy intentions is in some weird way, fulfilling. But there’s one area that many of us travel to each night that is void of any such geekery — our beds. Now some of you may still be rockin’ the Darth Vader or race car kiddie bed, but those are rare in our older years. Not to mention, most adults just don’t fit into such small containers. But this, this bed is for the king of nerds.

Developed by Visual Comfort and RB Vision, the “Sandman Bed” is a A/V junkies dream. In the foot board you have your typical stowaway spot for a large 40″ LCD TV. And then there’s the rest: LED backlit headboard, drawers not for clothes, but A/V equipment and optical disk drives, CAT5, and RF all packed into the frame. Adding to the luxury of such a finely crafted sleeping vessel are the options for various types of wood, leather, and upholstery finishes.

Looking for a price tag? £4995 ($7,630vUSD) will net you the luxury wood finish while £5995 ($9,150 USD) is required for the premium wood finish. Are you in the market for a $10k bed?

Sharkoon golf ball-looking PC case fan appears cheap, pushes a ton of air.

PC enthusiasts who decline the efficiency of water cooling know that some serious case fans will be needed. Melting silicon and various metals are never a fun sight or smell. Taking a quick stroll through a site such as Newegg will highlight just how many options there are for PC fans in general. There’s literally hundreds upon hundreds. But a rather striking newcomer manufactured by Sharknoon has a rather weird choice in design — a golf ball.

The Silent Eagle 800 features all white fan blades that nicely contrast with the all black fan housing. Further hitting home the golf ball point, the blades of the fan are dimpled just like a real golf ball. According to the manufacturers specs, the design is good enough for moving 93.85 cubic meters of air while spinning at only 800rpms. If you’re counting such things, that equates to a silent running 12.4 decibels when things start getting hot. From 140mm fan, that’s not too shabby. Sure, there’s more windy options out there, but they don’t look like golf balls, do they?

Some go for performance. Some go for looks. Looks like Sharknoon is giving you both for 12.99 euros. Any takers?