John Mahoney, Author at Gizmodo

Bird’s Nest Architects’ Latest Unveiling: A Vertigo-Inducing Jenga Apartment Tower in NYC

Fresh off the billions of eyes that have been on the beautiful Beijing National Stadium, Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron have set their sights on NYC with this incredible 57-story residential tower, unveiled today. It consists of 145 unique apartments that are stacked into the sky like a Jenga tower that’s already been well-poked…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 15

LED Coffee Table Plays Four-Way Pong (Can Surface Do That?)

Well, yes, it probably could, but as yet it’s only there for picking the interior color for your new BMW and the like. So for now, this DIY coffee table with a matrix of 4,092 LEDs is what I want in my living room. Using 65 microcontrollers and four Atari 2600 joysticks, the circuit wizards…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 15

Bandai’s Luminodot: Lite-Brite HD For Big Kids

For those of us who grew up sticking colored plastic pegs into a black board, Bandai Japan has gone all the way and brought our favorite toy up to its full potential-this is the Lite-Brite we always knew we wanted. The Luminodot packs a super-dense 70×50 grid, which accommodates 3,500 light pegs on a slick…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 15

HTC Touch HD Gets Beautifully Confirmed in Official Shots, Specs

After the spyshots got us drooling, official images of the gorgeous HTC Touch HD have popped up on HTC’s site, along with complete specs. Aside from the sweet WVGA 480×800 screen, GPS, Wi-Fi, TouchFLO UI and dual cameras are also confirmed for the WinMo Pro 6.1 beaut. Unfortunately, the 3G goodness is only for Euro/Asia…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 15

Verizon To Drop Official BlackBerry Storm Details Today?

So indicates this internal VZW email sent that BGR has gotten a hold of. Word is verizonwireless.com/storm will launch some time today (right now it’s a 404), with official word of the first touchscreen BlackBerry from RIM, which should be getting a November 1 release. That gibes with what we’ve been hearing, so hopefully the…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 15

Paralympics: The Games Where Bionic Athletes Reign

Tech and the Olympics are a recipe for controversy. Before double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius (right) was finally approved to compete in the Olympics (he failed to qualify, barely), naysayers claimed his carbon-fiber Cheetah blade prostheses gave him an advantage over non-cyborg competitors. And Speedo’s LZR suit has been decried for rendering meaningless any world records…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 12

The Week in iPhone Apps: Games, File Sharing, and More Games

At the Let’s Rock event this week, Apple pushed the new iPod touch hard (and iPhone too, obviously) as a viable gaming platform. Steve even went so far as to call it the best portable gaming platform out there. Strong words for DS and PSP fans, but the crop of games popping up in the…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 12

More Sneak-Peaks at the Forthcoming Zune 3.0 Software

We’ve already seen Mixview, Zune 3.0’s more visual take on a Genius-like auto-generating playlist, as well as some videos showing the new Wi-Fi features like Buy From FM on the device itself. Today some more interface shots of what Microsoft will help turn the Zune guy back have surfaced for you perusal. Like iTunes 8,…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 12

Jailbreak Your iPod Touch 2.1 Firmware Now

Using QuickPWN for Windows, you can now follow about 13 not-too-tough steps to be on the leading edge of the iPod touch 2.1 jailbreak curve, if that’s your thing. There is a good chance that iTunes 8 won’t recognize it though, since it can now detect custom firmwares. So if you’ve upgraded to 8 you…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 12

Actual HTC Opal Spyshots Surface (Touch’s Twin)

The Touch-like HTC Opal we saw renderings of earlier this week looks like it definitely exists, according to these leaked shots. Yeah, if you’re having a hard time seeing a difference from the original Touch, so are we. We saw some specs too that indicate it’s very similar (still no 3G, same processor), but here…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 12

Silicon Valley’s Birthplace of the Semiconductor: Now a Fruit and Vegetable Stand

We all owe a lot to this place. The birth of the world’s first silicon chip happened here, and now, it’s a nice place to pick up some fresh produce. Bits has a great history of the site-now known as the Fiesta Super Market at 391 San Antonio Road in Mountain View (home also to…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 12

Hulger’s Maple and Brass Pappa*Phone: Skypin’ With Wood

These great-looking handmade VoIP handsets, designed by Hulger, are individually handcrafted to order out of solid American maple by Furni in Montreal. They’ll work with all the usual VoIP and chat apps via USB on PC and Mac for $300. Is wood the new glossy white plastic? I kind of hope so, cause when done…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 12

iPhone Snaps and Saves a Recoverable Screengrab With Every Home Button Press

So said Jonathan Zdziarski in his O’Reilly webcast today, in which he also demoed a way around the iPhone passcode lock, as promised. To achieve that zoomy minimizing effect every time you press the home button (i.e., every time you finish reading your text messages, emails, web history, contacts-think how many times you press that…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 11

Apple Backdating Suit Settled, Jobs and Co,’s Insurance Will Pay Apple $14 Million

Steve and the gang already threw a party when the last federal investigator on the stock backdating case filed out of 1 Infinite Loop (“Hey, you forgot your 5-year old Thinkpad! Haha, suckers!”). But now, the remaining civil suits that were still active have been settled (with no admission of wrongdoing) for $14 million, all…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 11

Altec Lansing’s Redesigned Speakers and iPod Docks Get Retro, Manly Look

I must say I’m digging Altec Lansing’s new design approach with their consumer audio gear. In these Expressionist Bass speakers and new inMotion iPod docks, we see A-L ditching white plastic tubes and glossy piano-black slabs in favor of vaguely retro, almost steampunk industrial designs with big screws, black, chrome and brown color schemes, prominent…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 11

ION LP 2 Flash Turntable Rips Your Vinyl Records Straight to a Thumb Drive or SD Card

We’ve seen turntables designed especially for digitizing your crusty old vinyl for years, but ION’s LP 2 Flash deck one-ups all that I’ve seen by recording straight to an SD card or USB thumb drive for quick transferring to a computer or recording straight to your PMP. And if you get tired of being so…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 11

Google and Friends to Bring Satellite Internets To 3 Billion People in Africa and Other Developing Markets

Today Google, along with HSBC and a few other investors, helped place an order for 16 low-orbit Thales Alenia satellites to begin the push for a massive broadband deployment in Africa and beyond that it hopes will help connect the 3 billion people in the world who are currently webless. It’s a noble plan, with…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 10

Leica’s $11,000 Noctilux 50mm f/0.95 Lens Is a Nightvision Owl Eye For Your Camera

Yeah, you read that right: f/ zero point nine five. As in less than f/1, which was where Leica’s legendary Noctilux was positioned before and as low as Canon goes with their 50mm f/1.0L glass, making it the world’s fastest major consumer lens on the market today (f-numbers are logarithmic, so that’s over a full…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 10

SpaceX Moves Launches to Cape Canaveral, Closer to Rockets That Don’t Always Explode

After three fiery failed test launches of its Falcon 1 rocket (the last one carrying NASA’s first solar sail craft and Scotty from Star Trek’s ashes), Elon Musk’s SpaceX is setting up shop at a new launch site-Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40, which is just south of SLC-39A/B, from which the Space Shuttle and…

Space & Spaceflight John Mahoney Sep 10

Cool Visualization Shows World’s Spending On Electronics By Country (We Spend A Lot)

Here we see ol’ Mercator, if country sizes were drawn according to the amount of discretionary income spent on electronics by its citizens. As the world’s largest economy, the US being the biggest blob here at $162 billion for 2007 is not that surprising. But what might be surprising is Japan, who spends more on…

Tech News John Mahoney Sep 10

John Mahoney

Bird’s Nest Architects’ Latest Unveiling: A Vertigo-Inducing Jenga Apartment Tower in NYC

LED Coffee Table Plays Four-Way Pong (Can Surface Do That?)

Bandai’s Luminodot: Lite-Brite HD For Big Kids

HTC Touch HD Gets Beautifully Confirmed in Official Shots, Specs

Verizon To Drop Official BlackBerry Storm Details Today?

Paralympics: The Games Where Bionic Athletes Reign

The Week in iPhone Apps: Games, File Sharing, and More Games

More Sneak-Peaks at the Forthcoming Zune 3.0 Software

Jailbreak Your iPod Touch 2.1 Firmware Now

Actual HTC Opal Spyshots Surface (Touch’s Twin)

Silicon Valley’s Birthplace of the Semiconductor: Now a Fruit and Vegetable Stand

Hulger’s Maple and Brass Pappa*Phone: Skypin’ With Wood

iPhone Snaps and Saves a Recoverable Screengrab With Every Home Button Press

Apple Backdating Suit Settled, Jobs and Co,’s Insurance Will Pay Apple $14 Million

Altec Lansing’s Redesigned Speakers and iPod Docks Get Retro, Manly Look

ION LP 2 Flash Turntable Rips Your Vinyl Records Straight to a Thumb Drive or SD Card

Google and Friends to Bring Satellite Internets To 3 Billion People in Africa and Other Developing Markets

Leica’s $11,000 Noctilux 50mm f/0.95 Lens Is a Nightvision Owl Eye For Your Camera

SpaceX Moves Launches to Cape Canaveral, Closer to Rockets That Don’t Always Explode

Cool Visualization Shows World’s Spending On Electronics By Country (We Spend A Lot)

OpenAI: Hey, We Also Have a New Tool That Is So Scarily Powerful We Can’t Release It

Razer’s Wireless Gaming Earbuds Are Back With Upgraded ANC

How ‘The Testaments’ Uses Voiceover to Add Layers to Its Characters

The Trump Regime Really Wants You to Know About Its Cool Secret Agent Gadgets

Artemis 2 Day 9: Follow the Mission With Our Live Updates 🔴

Chimpanzees Are Murdering Their Former Friends, and Researchers Can’t Wrap Their Heads Around It

Yellowstone’s Dreaded Supervolcano Has an Unexpected Power Source, Study Says

Meta Is Pulling Down Ads That Seek to Recruit Clients for Social Media Addiction Litigation

One of the Greatest ‘Star Wars’ Characters of All Time Is Getting the Action Figure She Deserves

Antarctic Expedition to ‘Danger Zone’ Accidentally Discovers Previously Uncharted Island

Asus Zenbook A16 Review: Start Considering Snapdragon on PC, for Real

Aqara Thermostat Hub W200 Review: Almost Better than My Ecobee

HP Omen Max 45L Review: 4K60 Gaming Has Never Been So Easy

Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni Review: Window Cleaning Robots Have a Long Way to Go

AirPods Max 2 vs. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen): Which ANC Headphones Win?

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

Aqara Smart Lock U400 Review: Hands-free Unlocking at Its Best

MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Review: A Solid 2-in-1 Laptop With Some Glaring Flaws