Technology makes magical things happen. It can send people to Mars, including you, faithful Gadgetell reader. Technology can be used by jerks to put images that could hurt your future career on Facebook. Technology even has the power to make the rest of the world disappear — you could miss a bank robbery while tweeting. All of this is true and in this week’s Oddball Tech.

Welcome back to the oddball tech stories of the week. We all know that robots are quite good at building cars (well, some cars), vacuuming, and serving tennis balls. Did you know that they could one day help us colonize Mars? Technology is good, however sometimes it makes us do dumb things. How dumb? How about stealing a computer from a jail? It actually gets dumber. Keep reading.

If you didn’t already know, the Mars Phoenix mission came to a close yesterday. You may remember the Mars Phoenix as the robot that found water on Mars over the summer. When the Phoenix outlived the original estimates, those in charge pushed it a little further until it finally stopped communicating with Earth yesterday. Normally this might make an interesting story about the fact that it died, but would really only depress those that were involved.

This time was a bit different, though. The Mars Phoenix was giving updates through its time through Twitter. Through Twitter the Phoenix told us how its mission was going, when he went into safe mode, instances when its solar panels were blocked by a sandstorm, and even answered questions that other users posed. Continued after the break.