Skyscrapers are literally everywhere. Which means that you have to think about safety in times of danger. During the 9/11 attacks people were jumping out of the World Trade Center and falling to their death. What if they had had a way to at least try to get down safely?

Kevin Stone has designed the Rescue Reel, a device to help people vacate skyscrapers in during just such emergencies. Much like a fishing reel, the device is a simple harness to lower people to the ground, letting the individual plan his own escape. The user would open a small container, which is hooked to an anchor, then the user can slip into a one size fits all harness and use automatically controlled centrifugal braking to manage their descent.

Digital Cowboy announced their Media Cowboy DC-MC35ULI set-top box that acts as media hub and a lot more. It may look like it was endorsed by DC comics, but nope. It’s not the set-top-box of choice for Batman and Superman. It works with many media sources and is capable of playing most audio and video formats in 720p.

It will work with a 3.5 SATA hard drive and can also work as an iPod dock. It’s an easy way to directly connect your media. The built-in Ethernet will make it easy to share all your files with others over a network.

If you’re a Batman fan, you can always go the usual route and collect figures, comics and little die-cast cars. Or you could get off your butt and build an actual working Batmobile. That’s what sculptor Bob Causey did. He built this working Batman Forever replica in his garage.

It’s actually drivable, with or without a costume and sidekick. It’s got a ton of great detail. Including a full-interior, retractable hard top, and three LCD displays. It takes a true Batman fan to build something like this.

If you recently jumped on the Blu-ray bandwagon, chances are you’ve got a bunch of DVDs that are pretty much useless now. Warner Bros. wants to help. The company is now offering a trade-in program called Red2Blu that allows people to trade in 25 Warner Bros. HD DVDs and have them replaced with Blu-ray versions.

The new program isn’t free though. It will cost you $4.95 per disc plus $6.95 for shipping on each DVD. Interestingly, you don’t have to send in the discs to the WB, you just need to send in the cover art for the HD DVD discs you want replaced.

Check out this store in New York. The Brooklyn Superhero Supply store in Park Slope, Brooklyn is a place where you can buy all sorts of superhero supplies. Tools of the trade like grappling hooks, bottles of chaos and gravity, capes, invisibility paint, jars of anti-matter, secret identity kits, deflector bracelets and so much more.

The staff treats the products as real superhero supplies and the customers as real superheros. They even try to get you to quote a superhero oath at checkout.

If you’ve been journeying far and wide across the interwebz, you may already know what this vehicle is all about. We covered it last July and it’s making the rounds again. If you haven’t seen it, here’s a refresher. This isn’t the Amish discovering Hot Rods, it trains horses.

And we still think Batman may have had something to do with it. I mean, look at the design. Bruce Wayne has his hands in everything. Why not race horses? It allows trainers to be close to the animals while training them and monitoring their vital signs. It has very precise and controlled speeds ranging from walking to 60kph.

Sure, this looks like an innocent bust that shows off your love of the writer/poet/ladies man, but throw back his head and it reveals a secret switch. Do you remember this yet? It’s from the old Batman TV series from the ’60s. Bruce Wayne hid his secret switch inside and used it whenever it was time to get into the batcave. It sat next to the red Bat-Phone.

Shakespeare’s switch can control almost anything electronic: lights, window shades, music, even swiveling bookshelf batcave entrances. It isn’t cheap though. You’ll need to spend Bruce Wayne bucks to get it. The limited-edition statue is selling for $315.

In what could be the first step toward recording your dreams, researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor. That means it won’t be long before you can share your thoughts and dreams with others the way you share your flickr pics. They’ve successfully displayed simple images produced in the human brain on a computer screen.

The device converts electrical signals sent to the visual cortex into images that can be viewed on a computer screen. In the experiment, they showed test subjects the six letters in the word neuron and successfully reconstructed the word on screen by measuring brain activity. So, is this awesome or scary as hell? I vote scary.

You may now pilot the Batmobile for the low price of $0.99, thanks to Glu Mobile and your iPhone/iPod Touch. You can mess around and drive through the Batcave, the streets of Gotham City and even rooftops.

It looks like more fun then any Bat-fan should be able to have for a dollar. According to Kotaku there’s only about a minute or so worth of gameplay, but still we’re talking a lousy buck here. It looks nicely put together and well thought though. So it will be an awesome minute.

Blu-ray won the HD format wars a bit less than a year ago. Since then Blu-ray has been adding features and updating the specifications for more interactivity and features. Many Blu-ray players are now Internet connected offering interactive features like BD-Live.

Warner Home Video has announced its first BD-Live enabled Blu-ray film is coming. The film is The Dark Knight, the latest Batman film that was the last performance of actor Heath Ledger. I saw the movie at the theater and it was fantastic.

You’ll notice, I didn’t say stuffers. You won’t want to stuff a stocking with these, but rather chuck them until you stab the stocking, so that everyone knows that the Batman was there, making for a chilling and very creepy Christmas morning.

The Twin Bat Throwing Knife Set is made of solid 440 stainless steel that can probably slice and dice the flesh of anyone you gift them too. Two authentic bat shaped throwers are included as well a nylon case with belt loop. They’re cheap at only $9.99. “The stockings were hung by Batman with glee, when he threw some Bat knives that nearly hit me….”

Why are geeks drawn to Legos? They’re fun sure. You can create original stuff and recreate almost anything imaginable. It probably has something to do with why the pyramids were constructed in Egypt. Humans just need to create. And since the dawn of time geeks have been the most innovative and creative. Here’s a look at a bunch of random cool statues all done up in lego. Statues used to be made from bronze, steel, gold, concrete… But the age of Lego is at hand.

According to the description on this eBay auction, some nutty doctor in California took a 1973 GT Opel and converted it into a Batmobile to bring to the hospital for kids. The kid part is a noble idea. But a 1973 Opel? It’s unique, we have to give him that.

The auction ended at $9,000.00. Some of the specs include: a SONY Digital Navigation System #NVX-F160, SONY Pre-Amp XDP-U50D, SONY 10 Disk CD Changer CDX-U404, SONY Hi-8 VCR, Pioneer CD player DEH-85 in the dash….comes with the batman theme on cd!, Alpine Bat Phone #91530, Super Nintendo NES Game system with Batman Forever game, SONY Interface Equalizer #XE-744 and a whole lot more. Strange, but we dig it.

Blu-ray was able to beat HD DVD early this year to become the HD format champion. After it won the format wars many hoped that the price for Blu-ray players would become more affordable. So far that price drop hasn’t really materialized.

According to ABI Research, the Blu-ray price drop may finally be here. ABI says that prices for Blu-ray players this holiday season could be as low as $150 to $200. Amazon has a Samsung Blu-ray player for $200 that includes four Blu-ray movies with it. According to ABI Blu-ray hardware makers need to reduce prices to gain the momentum needed to penetrate the market further.

There’s always room for dessert and nothing beats a fresh and cleverly made geek cake. In recent years “Geek cakes” have become an art form, hopefully not your pet name used by your significant other. One thing is certain, if geeks love a thing, chances are it will become a cake. So, we wanted to take a look at some of our favorite geek desserts and celebrate the clever bakers and icing artists that make geek birthdays and weddings just a bit more fun. Click through for cake and prepare to get hungry.