I doubt that this will become a common practice, but Martin Reisch managed to get into the US using his iPad. He had a scan of his passport on his iPad, and he had forgotten his real one at home, which was two hours away. He was delivering some gifts for the kids of a friend. After a few minutes of deliberation, the border officer gave him permission to enter the US. He was also allowed to leave the US with the same iPad passport.

I guess if the barcode is scannable, then it could be possible that this might become more a more frequent occurrence, but without the security measures built into a physical passport, it would be pretty easy to doctor a digital image of one. It makes you wonder what might happen if passports someday become entirely digital. Just swipe your phone or tablet, and go through.

[via Ubergizmo]

The little hand-cranked shredders are also great for getting rid of business cards from unsolicited sales visits, that fortune you didn’t like from your Chinese lunch, and the occasional ATM receipt.

You should be able to find these for about $12 bucks over on Stupid.com, but they’re currently sold out, so you might have to settle for a crummy elephant shredder instead.