Smart. And a little gross. An Italian company has resorted to using remote-controlled toy submarines to run fiberoptic cable through the sewers of Milan.

I guess Mafia games are a big hit these days. Zynga’s Mafia Wars, a multiplayer game that’s playable on social networks like Facebook, as well as the iPhone, has attracted some 4 million gamers to its clutches. (This, despite the fact that it’s more or less a rip-off of the earlier Mafia Life game.) Part of the game’s success, I think, can be attributed to the fact that, unlike in games like World of Warcraft, there’s not as much of a social stigma attached to “whacking” rival mobsters—slaying dragons and whatnot is still sorta “nerdy,” something that good ol’ Cnet says, too. So we’re in good company here.

This has to be a viral campaign of some sort, but seeing as though we’re on the cusp of a three-day weekend I’ll bite. GameStop is selling three unusual Nintendo Wii bundles that, I don’t know, belie all logic. There’s the “Take a Bath With a Buddy” bundle, the “Pirate Tattoo” bundle, and the “Summer Fun” bundle. Yeah.

Before I go defile myself with burgers and beer I wanted to jailbreak my iPhone 3GS for you all. The process was amazingly simple. Using a Windows netbook - it doesn’t work under Windows 7 - I simply installed iTunes and ran purplera1n. It took a second to reboot then it rolled through recovery mode, rebooted, and an app called Freeze appeared. Freeze then installed Cydia and all was right with the world.

If you’ve ever come to Japan, and especially to Tokyo, you will have noticed this country’s love for digital signage systems. They’re practically everywhere and some of them are quite cool. Now Tokyo-based Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) has announced plans to set up a digital signage system [JP] that consists of a total of twelve 42-inch LCDs.

There was a bit of chatter going around yesterday that a fourth Resident Evil film was in the works. Well, it appears that it’s all true and that the fourth installment in the Resident Evil franchise will begin shooting by the end of the year with a scheduled September 17, 2010 release.

If you enjoy being frustrated and agitated first thing in the morning, then you’ll appreciate this DDR-style alarm clock that forces you to finger-dance various combinations on the built-in four-way pad in order to get the alarm to stop making noise.

Believe it or not, many bloggers suffer from some sort of repetitive stress injury or even carpal tunnel syndrome. We’re human — mortal even. Cut us and we bleed red just like everyone else. Give us an atomic wedgie and we weep like an anxious child waiting for the bus on the first day of school in a new town. Run us over in a car and we — you get the idea: bloggers are weiners.