The following objects are no-nos:
• Blogger, Orkut and Facebook The first of these surprises me, as Iran has the fourth largest community of bloggers in the world—even Ahmadinejad has one. (His latest entry reads "My package from Amazon arrived today—although it took its satanic time. Canceled cabinet meeting and the Ayatollah and I hit the games room all morning. GTA IV FTW." ) Anyone who wants to start one up has to inform the authorities, however.
• Celebrity magazines "Using photos of artists, especially foreign corrupt film stars, as instruments to arouse desire, publishing details about their decadent private lives, propagating medicines without authorization, promoting superstitions," goes the explanation.
• Boots and hats Only when worn by women, although I suspect that the Village People's steel toe-caps and leather cap might not make it past the "Down With This Sort of Thing" crew.
• Neckties Although they're not averse to slipping a length of rope around miscreants' necks, I guess a skinny number with piano keys down the front is just taking it too far.
• Breasts on mannequins Some shop windows display clothes on showroom dummies with mastectomies that look like they've been done with an ax and covered with flesh-colored duct tape. Yeah, lose that image from your brain now.
• Western music The artist worst hit is, apparently, Kenny G, so for that let me just say Viva la Revolución!

What, no gadgets banned? Wrong. camera phones are off limits. High-speed internet, too. The reckoning is that denying these items will allow citizens to remain in a state of moral purity. The state has even invested in US-built software that can scan images and files sent by phone to ensure that the morals of its citizens remain pure. And, in a way, they've got a point. Can you remember life before broadband? Yeah, it wasn't pretty—half an hour to open a single hi-res image. Porn traditionalists who like basic missionary sex must have been dying as they strained to see what was going on below the protagonists' expressions of ecstasy as the pic revealed itself, millimeter by agonizing millimeter. Not quite the skin smorgasbord Westerners now enjoy.

Nuclear reactors aside, what does the Iranian gadget freak get to play with? LG, apparently. The Korean electronics company is big in Iran, which gave it the green light last year to produce five cellphone handsets in collaboration with an Iranian manufacturer. LG stuff is advertised all over the place. Switch on the (silicone-free) Iranian music channel and you'll find the commercial breaks clogged up with plugs for LG's RoboKing robotic vacuum cleaner.

Whoah there! So, Barbie is about to be sacked, but autonomous vacuum cleaners are totally fine? Mullahs! Ahmadinejad! Do you not realize what you are doing? Now, I'm no great defender of Barbie (as a kid, I read war comics, climbed trees and played Doctors & Nurses) but these robot vacuum cleaners may be more of a threat than the blonde, pneumatic doll. In the grand scheme of things, I would think Barbie is a more traditional symbol of womanhood than a robotic floor cleaner that does the drudgery of housework, freeing the ladies of the house to dream of getting jobs, drivers licenses and other sorts of trouble. Are you sure you've got the correct target?

When you think of Dyson—if you think of the expensive British vacs at all—you probably think "suction." After all, the slogan "doesn't lose suction" is plastered on all of the Dyson vac marketing material. But James Dyson's first innovations were not in vacuums, but in wheelbarrows of all things. Sir James built a wheelbarrow with a ball on it—the ballbarrow—adding stability to a traditionally wobbly device.As you can see in the video above, the DC24 pivots right and left as you twist your wrist, allowing it to corner like it's on rails. It has two tiny rear wheels, but they rarely touch the floor. It's all ball.

Does that make it worth the money? It's up to you—we're not going to tell you it's the best vac in the world. It's just fun to see a product as part of an evolution, rather than some standalone brain fart. If you want to know more about Dyson's early days (he designed boats, too, including something called the seatruck), have a look at this old Core77 interview. And if you want to know how his Airblade did against the Mitsubishi Jet Towel, well, just check out our Ultimate Hand-Dryer Battlemodo. [Dyson]

It also sports a HEPA filter, telescoping handle and automatic height shifter. Plus, the rep promised me it could totally handle the Oreck challenge and lift a bowling ball, which totally sold me.

If the germ genocide works, the only things that suck (sorry, had to) are the price ($400, like another sweet vacuum) and that the UV light doesn't make for a fun light show to keep you entertained while you vacuum, which is what I was hoping for. More pics after the jump.

– Matt Buchanan

Product Page [Halo]

Product Page [Via Nerd approved]

So does this mean there's a more sophisticated robotic vacuum lurking around the corner? Could be, though I'm still waiting for the day we have robot maids. – Louis Ramirez

Dyson Preparing a Roomba Killer [New Scientist via Gadget Lab]

Anyway, some people might enjoy vacuuming their house with the new $400 LG Kompressor because it's not only a very powerful cleaning device, but a very powerful cleaning device that transforms the filth from your floor into neat, sterile-appearing blocks.

These dirt/cheetohcrumb cubes can then be used to construct your very own adobe houses (we're certain), and the dust compression kompression allows you to vacuum up to four times longer before emptying the bagless unit. Plus, at $400 it's not any more than a Dyson (which in no way fulfills our obsession with the gross nature human existence). – Mark Wilson

LG Kompressor [via coolestgadgets]

What I'm trying to say is, I'm hot for a vacuum cleaner. Does it work? The good news, is yes. It lacks the guttural howl of the standard Dyson, but whirs along just fine. Think of it as a V8 vs a turbo charged 4-banger in some light rally car. That's the good news.

The bad news is that my apartment is gross. Click through for an icky picture of what one minute of vacuuming picked up off what I thought was a clean floor. (And hit the gallery for a component by component tour.)

I'm not one to say if a vacuum like this is worth $450, but I wouldn't throw the svelte Slim out of my hall closet.–Brian Lam

Dyson [Gizmodo]

But it is only $16, and I really could use something small...– Mark Wilson

Product Page [via uberreview]

1979 Kirby Hunting Tophy [via make]

RoombaWii - The Wii-mote controlled Roomba [Spazout]

Plug him into your USB and a simple on/off switch toggles moderate suction power. The naturally slim bill shape makes for an easy fit between the keys, as if God intended ducks to one day suck crap out of your keyboard. About $12 if you can translate your way through the site. – Mark Wilson

Product Page [via tokyomango]

Sometimes you'll need to vacuum under tight places, like underneath a PC, the cracks of a sofa, or inside a drawer. This adorable duck-shaped vacuum is perfect for just that. It's USB powered and uses its bill as a suction mechanism. Just think—next time you're doing lines off your TOOL CD during an all-night LAN party with yourself and the cops come a-knockin' because of a noise complaint from your neighbor, you can just plug in this duck and suck it all up. No one will ever suspect you did a thing with a vacuum this cute!

USB Duck vacuum cleaner for PC [Akihabara]

USB Vacuums that are not ducks [Amazon]

Sharpened Up for a Bit of the Ol' Ultra-Useless

As a Geekish-American pre-teen, I kept two publications stashed beneath my boxspring: the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue (especially the one with Elle McPherson in the Dominican Republic) and the latest Sharper Image catalogue. Man, how I loved peeping those seemingly fancy gadgets, and dreaming of the day when I'd have $395 to drop on a Laserx laser pointer. Yes, $395—it used a "helium neon gas plasma laser tube" with a range of 55 yards, so it was obviously worth every penny. And, like Elle in the swimsuit issue, the Laserx was backlit and airbrushed to inspire a Pavlovian response—my first taste of printed gadget porn.

Then my pops actually ponied up for the $129 "sound soother," and my Sharper Image worship ended right quick. Thing was a hunk of junk, and all of the "primal forest sounds" were reminiscent of walkie-talkie buzz.

As I've matured into a halfway respectable adult, I've now come to regard many Sharper Image gadgets as hilarious, or pathetic, or both. Especially those sold during the company's heyday, before anyone could stroll down to the local discount store and pick up an electronic toothbrush or nosehair trimmer.

In the past two column, I appealed to you, dear readers, to pass along word of ludicrous, low-end Sharper Image gizmos of yore. Your submissions after the jump, as well as some items I discovered through my own research—including, yes, the Bug Vac (pictured above right). PLUS: Low End Theory is gently reminded that wattage output is logarithmic

First, a little history lesson. When it started up in the mid-70s as a vendor of executoys, the Sharper Image wasn't much of a gadget emporium. It was more about selling replica swords and the like, including (as one elephant-memoried reader mailed) a 9mm pistol knock-off that looked exactly like the real thing. (This was obviously before the laws turned against toy guns, forcing manufacturers to paint the barrels orange.)

The gadgets started coming in the mid-80s, right around the same time everyone got in a tizzy over the Heathkit HERO and other personal robots, not to mention the first Macintosh. And thus began the Sharper Image's long love affair with gizmos that, on one level, seemed ahead of their time, but on another level are unadulterated crap.

Let's start with the Vocalizer 1000, billed as "the world's first voice-controlled music synthesizer." You'd speak or sing into the mic, and it would turn your oh-so-lovely tenor into, say, a cowbell or the French horn. Not entirely unworthy of admiration, but everything ended up sounding sort of like the infamous sound soother—very white noise-y. Recently saw one on eBay for $8, so there's no question that the Vocalizer 1000 meets the Low End Theory criteria.

The Bug Vac debuted on the Sharper Image in the late '80s, though now it is widely available. Gotta love the idea—we here at Gizmodo are staunchly against gnat, fruit flies, and other household pests—and the price was right at $20. But check this: the original unit's storage cartridge could only hold 40 bugs at any given moment. Um, excuse me? I run into more than 40 bugs each morning on my way from the bed to the shower. I'll just stick to squashing them with my size-12 sneaker.

For a dollar less in the same era, you could purchase the fake car-phone antenna, which isn't a gadget so much as a manipulative toy for tricking ladies into overestimating your net worth. It actually didn't sell very well for the Sharper Image, which gives me fresh hope in America's innate goodness.

I could go on and on about the various foot massagers and in-shower CD players that have graced the pages of the Sharper Image catalogue over the years. But gotta wrap up with the contest winner, submitted by a man whose name belongs in the pantheon of greatness: Douglas Bridges. This Gizmodo reader is to be lauded for directing us to the Truth Quest lie-detecting phone, which he spotted on eBay for $47. The phone allegedly analyzes the stress in a caller's voice, and signals the level of truthfulness with a series of LEDs: green for "he's telling the truth," red for "he's a bald-faced liar," and yellow for "your guess is as good as mine." Note, too, that the Truth Quest offers "sleek European-style phone features," not to mention a redial button. With that sort of advanced technology at your command, $47 is a steal indeed.

Don't interpret this column as an outright slam on the Sharper Image. I'm all for their massage chairs, especially the new iJoy ZipConnect. Just having a little fun at the expense of a company that's offered its fair share of outrageously useless duds. We're laughing with you, Sharper Image, not at you. Though given how touchy you've been over criticism of your air purifiers, maybe you're not enjoying the ribbing.

LOW END THEORY FALLS FOR IT: Thanks for the reader who pointed out the amateur mistake I made in last week's column: declaring one stereo system superior to another merely on the basis of wattage. Hyping wattage, of course, is an old stereo-salesman trick. Tim Denner wrote in to remind us that "wattage is logrithmic (sic); to double the sound, multiply your wattage by 10." So our whole riff on dollars-per-watt? Claptrap. We'd have been much better off comparing decibel sound pressure levels—if only Record Shack had that sort of info on its handwritten hype sheet. Thanks, Tim, and apologies for the dunderheadedness. Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appear every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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