(Photo: Rakuten)

Aching for a little skin-on-skin contact, but afraid to initiate anything with an actual living, breathing human being? Totally in love with your iPhone, but at a loss for how to express your affection? We've got the solution for you.

Introducing the hand-shaped iPhone "case," which is basically a case with a big hand glued to it so that when you hold your phone up to your ear, it feels like you're holding someone's hand. Aww.

The case--from Japan, natch--has a silicone hand affixed to the back, and it comes in both adult and child's sizes (side eye). Look, you can use it as a holder for your pens and lipgloss! Place it in your back pocket and it looks like you have a severed hand poking out of your jeans. Slip a diamond ring on its finger and you're effectively engaged to your iPhone case. It's every geek's dream.

(Photo: Ratuken)

(h/t Boing Boing)

(Photo: Richmond.edu)

If Wall-e has anything to say about it, Segways--or, a form of wheeled transportation for people too busy to use their two legs to walk--are the symbol of the great American downfall. In the future, we'll all be wheeled around while we snort potato chips and play Tetris with our minds.

Not content to just discourage people from using their bodies, the inventor of the Segway now has a new genius ploy to incentivize completely giving up: it's a pump that sucks all the food you just ate right out of your stomach, allowing people to eat whatever they want without facing the caloric impact. So ... kind of like scientifically-sanctioned bulimia, minus the puking part?

The Independent reports that Segway creator Dean Kamen has applied for a patent for his wondrous diet device, touted as an alternative to gastric bypass surgery, that allows a patient to drain their "stomach by connecting the pump to a valve surgically installed in their abdominal wall."

Sounds awesome, except the pump is apparently having difficulty sucking out large foods, and some patients have reported "clogging," which is as gross as it sounds. No pretzels, chips or steak can be consumed while you're receiving crazy Segway-guy stomach pump treatment, so really, why even bother?

(Screencap: Yahoo)

FYI: Anyone looking for a good Apple deal this holiday season should probably steer clear of Texas gas stations.

Yahoo reports that a woman in Arlington, Texas purchased what she thought was a new iPad at a gas station. The man claimed to be selling the device--which normally retails for $800--for just $200.

Jalonta Freeman thought the deal was "too good to pass up," but after she handed him the cash, he drove off. Then, when she opened the iPad box, it was actually just a tablet-sized mirror with a picture of the Apple logo and the iPad homescreen taped to it.

So... it was a Microsoft Surface, then? (Zing.)

Ms. Freeman isn't the first person to be taken in by a fake iPad ruse. According to a police officer Yahoo spoke to, scams like this always increase around the holidays, so we should be extra vigilant about the kind of electronics we purchase at gas stations.

This is what you look like with a messenger bag. (Photo: Taylor-Lautner.org)

We hate to exacerbate your case of the Mondays, but we have some terrible news: Murses--you know, purses, but for men?--are on the rise, mostly because everyone carries their iPads everywhere. Somehow we don't think this is the world Steve Jobs envisioned for us.

In the good old days, men used to stuff their scant necessities like wallet and keys into deep denim pockets. Now--with the proliferation of tablets, laptops and gadgets--men are turning to "manbags" to store these crucial items. This is a cultural phenomenon unlike any we have seen before, and one we must surely protect our children from.

According to the Daily Mail, 4 in 5 men now carry a "manbag," and they are making dudes effeminate. This is important because while women are expected to carry bags, men are not; iPads are completely subverting cultural norms, thus we should use this quick and dirty study as a telescope through which we can view our epicene future.

Dudes carrying bags around because they like to have their stuff with them is surely a sign of the impending apocalypse. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a murse.

(Photo: Popcorn Indiana)

Popcorn is delicious. Sometimes it gets stuck in your teeth and sometimes it leaves your fingers salty and soaked in butter, but overall it is a delicious food and if you don't think so the door is over there: GOOD DAY, SIR. But that whole messy fingers thing does definitely deplete some of the pleasure of eating such a lovely snack. So rejoice! Popcorn just got disrupted, y'all.

The Popinator is a machine created by Popcorn Indiana that launches a piece of popcorn at your mouth every time you say the word "pop."

"It's a fully-automated, voice-activated popcorn launching machine," says a cool guy with a cool haircut in a video about the cool popcorn device. It can toss popcorn into the mouths of pretty young interns and old dudes who look like they should hold off on the butter. It is delightfully whimsical--the kind of product that would raise half a mil on Kickstarter and would fit in perfectly in a startup kitchen.

A rep for the company told Mashable that it's still only in the prototyping phases and they're unsure how much it will cost. Might want to start saving those pretty pennies now.

Duuuuude. (Photo: TrendsUpdates.com, Paul Cooper)

Sometimes, particularly as pangs of hunger creep up on you just before bed, you want a little snack without worrying where on your hips said food will take its revenge. It's normal, really. Human.

But sometimes, well--sometimes you want to inhale a steam of boiled food ingredients through a cauldron-like futuristic device. Luckily, a French scientist is here to sate your utmost desires. David Edwards, a professor at Harvard, has created what one Redditor called "a food bong."

According to the CBC:

The idea is called Le Whaf, where ingredients of a meal are boiled into a liquid, strained, then poured into a large French gadget, similar to a glass cauldron....

"It's a vase that has an ultrasound planted in the bottom of it, so it agitates the liquid hard enough and fast enough that it will create a cloud," Aitken said, "It is used, essentially, as a vehicle for flavour."

The cloud of food can be inhaled through a straw.

The device is apparently growing in popularity among European dieters because it's a non-caloric appetite quencher. You could also like, live above a really delicious smelling restaurant, but we assume that's simply not as chic.

We're sure it won't be long before Le Whaf carves a space for itself in the startup ecosystem, particularly amongst those offices where group starvation is a team building exercise.

Yum. (Photo: flickr.com/straight-nochaser)

Rejoice! Voicemail is on its way out. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, voicemail. [USA Today]

Leave it to a bunch of Brooklynites to rig a way for their tomato crop to wirelessly transmit soil information. [Wired]

Brace for incoming gadget announcements. [L.A. Times]

Whither Twitter? [PandoDaily]

"Known I was a dragon since 1996. Happily married and happy in my identity: it's made sense of a lot of things for me." You're welcome. [@TumblrTXT]

Robotic cat ears: very GIFable.

"What is that?" exclaimed The Observer's managing editor as he passed by this reporter's desk and spotted an opened box that displayed a woman's face looking rather coy in a bizarre gadget. The box was for a set of cat ears that read and interpret your brainwaves, and they were all the rage at Comic-Con. We read so much about them that we asked their distributor, Nuerosky, if they'd be kind enough to send us a test pair. The ears arrived today in all of their glory, immediately horrifying/fascinating/annoying our coworkers.

The ears go on your head like a headband, with a black plastic censor that stretches across your forehead and lays just above your left eyebrow. A big black battery pack that takes four AAA batteries protrudes from the left side of the headband, where a wire and a clip dangle. You're supposed to clip the thing to your left earlobe, which makes them hard to wear with earrings (sorry, ladies). Press the button on the battery pack and voila, you're ready to freak out anyone in your general vicinity.

As far as brainwave-reading goes, they work pretty well: when we were highly focused on something (like writing this blog post, for example), they perked up and wiggled back and forth. While listening to a coworker, they stood straight up. While zoning out, they drooped down, indicating that our brain had more or less become a blank slate. Everyone seated nearby could tell how we were feeling at any given moment, which is ostensibly the purpose of the ears, but also rather creepy. "Your boss can tell when you're not working!" pointed out a friend.

The ears themselves are not exactly the most comfortable accessory we've ever worn, but we imagine that they mostly exist for novelty's sake: They're perfect for a party trick, or for scaring your kids or just to pass around for amusement between friends. We couldn't stand having them on for more than 15 minutes at a time, because the animatronic noises they make when reading your brainwaves, combined with how tight the headpiece was on our (apparently huge) head, made them rather uncomfortable and distracting.

But! They were totally awesome and fun to use. We can't begrudge anyone their $100 gadgets. Alas, we're pretty devastated that we have to send them back. We might have to ask for a pair for our birthday.

Betabeat endorses both sun and sand. (Photo: flickr.com/wheany)

Expect posting to be a little light around these parts tomorrow. Unless the Singularity happens between now and lunchtime tomorrow, our plans have room for little other than Coronas on the beach or, in the event of thunderstorms, Magic Mike.

However, Betabeat would never be so neglectful as to leave our readers without a little Instapaper fodder for your own lazy Independence Day. We've therefore rounded up a few long reads for tomorrow's downtime:

1. In which Steven Levy talks blue jeans with the Twitter cofounder: "The Many Sides of Jack Dorsey," Wired 

Once, Dorsey says with quiet awe, Morrison provided rigid, unwashed jeans to dishwashers at a New York City restaurant. They wore them constantly in the filthy steaming kitchens, creating a bewitching pattern of wear that was painstakingly replicated by Morrison’s jeansmiths.

2. Kara Swisher takes a flying leap into the digital future--in 1998: "I Cut the Cord: Our Reporter Goes Totally Wireless–And Lives to Tell About It," Wall Street Journal  

But I loved whipping out my phone on a beach to make a restaurant reservation. I adored calling friends from the Painted Desert to describe the view. Craig McCaw, the Christopher Columbus of cell phones, the man who allowed me to walk and talk and chew gum at the same time, was my idol. Was I some sort of communications freak?

3. Eulogizing the Minitel: "On the Farms of France, the Death of a Pixelated Workhorse," New York Times

Conceived in France, by the French, for the French—efforts to export the technology met with little success—the Minitel was long ago overtaken by the borderless, freewheeling Internet. It has remained in service, though, and it still has its devotees, including about 2,500 dairy farmers in Brittany who rely on it to call for the inseminator when a cow is in heat or to request that the authorities come to haul away animal carcasses.

4. Gadget lovers take a regret-filled stroll down memory lane: "Tech remorse: worst gadgets we ever bought," Ars Technica

As cute as the thing was—it came in a palette of kitchen-friendly colors that included "sunshine" and "meadow," and was sponge-cleanable—it was particularly pointless for something that cost almost as much as a real PC.

5. News you can use: "Exactly How Hot Is It? Picking the Right Weather Site for You," The Atlantic Wire

There is a whole world (wide web) of temperature- and precipitation-related sites out there. Let's put aside weather website loyalties for a moment and make sure we have the right site for our sensibilities.

Try not to bust a gut eating hotdogs or lose a hand lighting firecrackers, everybody.

Upon our initial reading about the Transition, our first question was a Philosoraptor-esque one: how is a car with wings not the same thing as a plane? Oh, but we were so wrong. Except for the fact that it can literally zoom through the air, it also functions as a typical car does: the Transition can get up to 70 mph on the highway, and comes with wings that fold up, so it can fit in your garage. The whole thing is very Jetsons, minus the floor trap door (we hope).

According to the AP, the car "has two seats, four wheels and wings that fold up so it can be driven like a car. Last month, it flew at 1,400 feet for eight minutes. Commercial jets fly at 35,000 feet."

With a price tag of $279,000, the trick is finding people both rich enough and brave enough to take the Transition for a spin. Apparently 100 people have already shelled out $10,000 each as a non-refundable deposit, and those numbers are expected to increase following the autoshow.

Considering this reporter alternates between popping Xanax and clutching her seat mate's knee while distorting her face into a look that reads "We're all going to die!" every time she flies, we probably won't be testing out the Transition any time soon. But if you're more rational than we are, you can plop down a deposit for the Transition here. Happy flying!