For those people who still have trouble figuring out which way to slide George into the vending machine, a prototype from Hitachi makes things a little simpler: it identifies caffeine-fiends by reading the pulse in their fingertips. More

Since Nintendo first asserted sole domination over the handheld gaming market with the release of the paperback-sized Game Boy in 1989, the company has striven time and again to make its pocket systems smaller, meeting fantastic financial success along the way. Nintendo did it with the Game Boy Pocket , the Advance SP , the Micro , the DS Lite and again ever so slightly with the DSi — the last even at the expense of backwards compatibility and battery life. Now, for the first time in the company’s history, it’s made an existing platform bigger , with questionable reasons as to why. Does the Nintendo DSi XL squash its predecessors flat?

Unfortunately for Lin Ring, her $14,600 surgical fingerprint switching procedure was able to fool the scanners, but could not prevent immigration officials from noticing the scars on her fingers. Ring was deported from Japan twice: once in 2007 and again some time later after she slipped back into the country with her fake prints. Apparently, fingerprint altering procedures are becoming big business for shady doctors looking to make a quick buck. Japanese authorities claim that the practice is widespread in China, but if there is money to be made, I’m sure it is a problem all over the world. In this case, prints from Ring’s left hand were surgically implanted on her right—which makes me wonder why prints were not taken from both hands in the first place

MacRumors found three interesting patents that point to various new interaction techniques. The most interesting is the fingerprint ID directly on the screen so that the iPhone can see which finger you’re using and accept gestures appropriately. The fingerprint ID also, of course, can theoretically act as a security device so that only you can activate your phone. There’s also haptic (physical) feedback when you’re hitting things, as well as using the touchscreen as an RFID reader. None of the three are really mindblowing in themselves, on the surface, but if implemented intelligently might make for a big step forward in the iPhone product line.

A 62-year-old tourist was trying to enter the United States when he was stopped at customs to have his fingerprints scanned. This was a problem for both him and the customs agents, for he had no fingerprints. The man, dubbed Mr. S in news reports, was detained for hours as agents checked to make sure he wasn’t some sort of sneaky criminal or terrorist. But no, it turns out his fingerprints were removed without his knowledge. He was taking capecitabine, a follow-up drug for chemotherapy for cancer of the head and neck