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" Dressed For Wi-Fi The emperors of wireless freeloading have new clothes. This fun, gimmicky and somewhat useful T-shirt lights up every time a Wi-Fi signal is detected within range. Conjured up by Think Geek senior merchandiser Ty Liotta, the $30 machine-washable shirt features an electroluminescent display attached to the chest with Velcro-like material. A ribbon cable, meanwhile, feeds down the inside into a battery pack on your hip. Powered by three AAA batteries, the pack doubles as a Wi-Fi scanner, which monitors radio frequencies operating on the 802.11b and 802.11g Wi-Fi standards.  Due to its simplicity, the shirt can&amp;#039;t detect whether the signals are public or secure, putting hackers and freeloaders out of luck from easily piggy-backing off someone else&amp;#039;s connection. But it does measure signal strength. &amp;quot;The shirt is more fun than utilitarian,&amp;quot; Liotta says. &amp;quot;But when we thought of the idea, we wanted it to actually work.&amp;quot; This reporter, in fact, purchased and wore the shirt over the weekend, subjecting himself to both praise and parody. Yet despite its dorkiness, the shirt is selling like hot cakes. Since its debut on Think Geek&amp;#039;s Web site three weeks ago, thousands of shirts have been sold, Liotta says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s more popular than we thought it would be,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It might be our top-selling holiday product this year.&amp;quot;  iPhone Boys Looking for ways to top their elaborate iPod costumes (we had our own from last Halloween--made out of Plexiglas, a light bulb and portable speakers--Tampa&amp;#039;s Reko Rivera and Bobby Hartman, both 21, decided to go all out with Apple&amp;#039;s latest and greatest gadget: the iPhone.  The duo first considered a portable DVD player before settling on a video iPod as the source of the getup&amp;#039;s video display. Mimicking the iPhone&amp;#039;s touchscreen is a borrowed 42-in. LCD patched together with a harness fashioned from PVC pipe. For the costume&amp;#039;s outer shell, the pair used insulation board (found commonly in air conditioners), while the TV&amp;#039;s speakers blast out techno. The entire costume is powered by a car-battery charger, strapped onto the back for balance. As with many Halloween costumes, a mom did the sewing (in this case, for the iPhone&amp;#039;s colorful skin). The two costumers, however, get the biggest props for the live video demonstration of the iPhone&amp;#039;s interface, edited together in Final Cut Pro directly from the raw footage preloaded onto the large iPhone displays hanging in Apple and AT&amp;amp;amp;T stores. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve been getting all very positive responses,&amp;quot; Rivera says. &amp;quot;People come up to us and ask, `Oh my God, how did you do that? How much does it cost? Does Apple pay you guys?&amp;#039; &amp;quot; Although the outfits cost $250 each to make, the pair has won $2000 in costume prizes--some of which will go to buying a new Xbox 360, they say. Rivera, a professional DJ, and Hartman, who plays in a rock band, have even been approached by companies offering them advertising jobs. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re asking ourselves, `How can we top this?&amp;#039; Maybe with multiple screens or real touchscreens,&amp;quot; Rivera says.         Digg, the T-Shirt The popular social news site that allows you to vote, or Digg, for your favorite stories, is about to move off the Web and into the real world. Just don&amp;#039;t Digg too hard in real life. Travis Hydzik, 24, of Perth, Australia, has created a Digg T-shirt that lets you push and watch as an LED counter on the T-shirt increases. Hydzik purchased the DIY Digg-button kit and combined it with a shirt, a spool of conductive thread, foam, a 4-volt battery and nylon netting. &amp;quot;I regularly browse Digg and just wanted to incorporate Digg into something,&amp;quot; says Hydzik, who has a degree in mechatronics (a cross between mechanics, electronics and computing) from the University of Western Australia. &amp;quot;I stumbled upon the plain `Digg Me&amp;#039; shirt and the Digg-button kit and put two and two together.&amp;quot; Hydzik spent his spare time on the weekends soldering and wiring the shirt. &amp;quot;I had never done anything with wearable electronics,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I did quite a bit of research on how to incorporate electronics into clothing, wearable fabric switches and conductive thread.&amp;quot; Three and a half months later, the mechanical &amp;#039;Digg Me&amp;#039; T-shirt is ready to take on even the most fickle Diggers--although we&amp;#039;re sure Hydzik is glad there isn&amp;#039;t a &amp;quot;Bury Me&amp;quot; option on the shirt.         Halo Costume Factory It&amp;#039;s taken almost eight years for Adam Grumbo to perfect the design for his Master Chief costume from the hit video-game series Halo. The wearable suit, created out of liquid plastic, comes with a fake light-up gun and a helmet featuring a cooling fan and LEDs. Grumbo, a graphic designer based in Austin, Texas, invested more than $3000 of his own money and spent years researching liquid plastic and molds in order to create the Master Chief suit. &amp;quot;Everything I tried failed miserably,&amp;quot; he says of his initial foray into video-game costuming. Although it took several attempts to get the outfit right, the results were well worth it: The 26-year-old has earned more than $20,000 selling his original prototypes to Halo fans. &amp;quot;I was just trying to sell them off to get money to pay for a new Xbox,&amp;quot; he adds. To create the costume molds, Grumbo watched how-to videos and read books about molding and casting. These days, he can assemble a full suit in a weekend, with the help of his friends. Because the molds are already created, it now costs about $500 for materials for a new suit, he says. &amp;quot;The hardest part is getting all the pieces of armor to stay on your body,&amp;quot;Grumbo laments. &amp;quot;I went through a lot of pain wearing it to certain places without having it properly attached.&amp;quot; Grumbo says he gets from 10 to 15 messages a day from Halo fans asking him to build suits for them. But instead of doing their work, he directs them to his Web site, which teaches them how to make their own suits.        "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/a2235/4229449/>