World's First Digital Makeup Pad

Simone, call your office.

Here's Warren Buckleitner's story from yesterday's New York Times on this waycool new device.

The Many Faces of You (Clean Up With a Click)

Want to see what you look like with purple eyeliner? Digi Makeover, a $60 digital makeup pad from Radica (www.radicagames.com), lets you try out different looks on your TV screen.

You start by positioning the Digi Makeover’s camera about three feet from your face and taking a picture of yourself. It is a bit of a trick to line up eyes and mouth with the on-screen guides, but that is necessary to avoid getting lipstick on your cheek later on.

Next, you can try out six types of effects: eyes, lips, blush, tattoos, jewelry and hair. With the blush and eyeliner, the harder you rub the small touchpad with your stylus, the darker the coloring.

Professional makeup artists have nothing to fear from the Digi Makeover, which runs on four AA batteries or an AC adapter (not included). Still, the images will keep you chuckling, especially when you put a purple wig on Grandpa.

A photo booth mode pastes your face into 16 picture frames, and you can save 5 pictures in memory. But the only way to export pictures is to connect the device to your VCR and record the output.

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The above was the good news.

The bad news: it's vaporware — doesn't show up on Radica's dysfunctional website nor does it appear on the website of any of the stores purported to sell Radica products.

A Google search by the crack research team — including the "Dark Web," the internet equivalent of dark energy and matter — yielded zilch.

Ray Kurzweil's reflections on "Simone" are worth the price you paid to view this post.

Wait a minute....