Those of us lucky enough to see Kyle "qDot" Machulis give his presentation last year at Arse Elektronika know that he and his irrepressible sex tech pals are working on brain interfaces for cybersex. Some of the ideas he's proposing will make it into his talk at this year's Etech conference.

How would a brain interface sex toy work? You could meet up for cybering in SecondLife, control your sexy avatar with your BCI device, and keep your hands free for . . . you know, stuff. Or you could do some cross-network biofeedback action. As you get more excited, your brain would direct a cursor to a special spot on the screen, or move your avatar in a certain way. Then your cybering partner, who is of course controlling your special vibrating space egg, could send a command from her computer to rev that vibration up higher. Pretty soon, your brain is hitting the special spot, the space egg is zooming, and you've got the perfect BCI sex toy.

Please, Mr. Machulis, invent this as soon as possible. I need one like five minutes ago.

Just hyperventilate, get your heart going fast enough, and the computer will turn on. Apparently they've tested the system on several users and it's working pretty well. Usually I only hyperventilate at my computer when it is turned on and doing something annoying (Firefox on Mac OS ahem), so I'm glad there isn't an EKG power-off command in the works. [New Scientist]