Geek Weekly: Our top weird tech stories for 27 November

Technology Decisions’ weekly wrap of IT fails, latest tech, new must-have gadgets, ‘computer says no’ moments and more.

Attack of the Azure Blob. Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform suffered intermittent outages last week, affecting not only customer websites but also Microsoft Office 365, Xbox Live and other products throughout Europe, the US and Asia. The outages lasted 11 hours or more. Azure Vice President Jason Zanderon says the outage was caused by “a bug that got triggered when a configuration change in the Azure Storage Front End component was made, resulting in the inability of the Blob [Binary Large Object] Front-Ends to take traffic”.

Who says post offices are on their way out? A ‘computer glitch’ at government service centres prevented South Australian drivers from registering or renewing the registration of their vehicles. But Public Sector Minister Susan Close had the solution, telling ABC Online, “We’ve had to close all our customer service centres, but what people can do, if they really need to renew their registration or their licences, is go to Australia Post”. A stamp of approval from the Minister, then.

Shopping will never be the same. ‘Future Hunter-Gatherer’, a concept by Chinese student Pan Way, who won this year’s Electrolux Design Competition, would have you chase holographic grocery items around your house. Upon catching them, their real-life counterparts will be delivered to your door. We can definitely see this catching on. Or maybe not.

But relax, its okay. If the idea of chasing imaginary groceries around the house gives you a headache, the solution could be IteraXon’s Muse, an EEG-equipped headband that tracks your brain’s alpha waves to help you monitor and lower your stress levels. We say forget holograms; this thing’d be useful for normal supermarket shopping.

Image courtesy of Microsoft