Matt Buchanan, Author at Gizmodo

Sensear Noise-Cancelling Headphones Block Hearing Loss, Not Your Mom Nagging You

These Sensear headphones aim to be quite the noise-canceling, speech-enhancing wunderkinds. They’re specifically designed to protect against Noise Induced Hearing Loss in high-noise environments (above 85 dBA) while letting you communicate clearly with the people around you. The setup uses a combo of software and hardware, like a directional multi-microphone system “that is gain selective…

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

Bicycle/Bike-Lock Sculpture Wards Off Thieves, Actual Bike Riders

If you want to be really, really sure no one’s going to jack your bike while you’re in the library, you could always take a cue from this sculpture of an ultra-mobile bicycle by a Vancouver artist. And by ultra-mobile, I mean not mobile in any way, shape, or form. Flickr [via Boing Boing]

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

Rumor: EMI’s DRM-Free Tracks Hitting iTunes This Week

Electronista is reporting that “according to French sources familiar with negotiations for multiple online music stores,” Apple is set to drop EMI’s DRM-free catalog onto iTunes this week. Techs are entering the last stages of encoding and prepping the files to go live. https://gizmodo.com/official-emi-to-release-music-drm-free-248836 While previous statements seemed to indicate a gradual release starting this…

Commerce Matt Buchanan

Japanese Camera Phone Diet: Snap Shots of Your Dinner, Learn How Fat It’ll Make You

Concerned with expanding waistlines in the land of tenpura, katsudon, and American fast food, doctors and insurance companies in Osaka have launched services that let patients send glamour shots of their grub to nutritionists from their cellphones. The nutritionists then offer a nutritional breakdown, analysis and advice, laying out what’ll turn you into a fatty…

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

LEGO Star Wars Space Port: That’s a Lot of Free Time

Just in time for the 30th anniversary, someone conjured up one sweet rendition of a Star Wars-style space port via LEGO, complete with the Millennium Falcon, AT-AT walkers, and an Imperial Shuttle. The only thing it’s missing is a Slave I model, because you can’t have the Falcon without Boba Fett close behind. Incredible LEGO…

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

Chic Trash Bags: Because Your Garbage Is Better Than Everyone Else’s

You don’t have to look like Joe Dirt when you haul your Memorial Day barbecue detritus to the curb tomorrow if you chunk it in these snootier-than-thou fashionable trash bags. Covered in a damask pattern with a baby blue drawstring, they make standard black or white garbage bags look plain uncivilized. Or they just make…

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

Up Close and Personal Time With Cellphones Bricks Nissan I-Keys

If you have an I-Key from a 2007 Altima or Infiniti G35 jangling around in your pocket, don’t let it snuggle up to your cellphone. Apparently incoming and outgoing calls have the nasty potential to switch up or wipe out the I-Key’s internal code, leaving you with a sweet-looking but useless hunk of metal. A…

Tech News Matt Buchanan

RIM Rolling Out Wi-Fi Enabled BlackBerry Later This Year

RIM’s co-CEO, Jim Balsillie, revealed at the JP Morgan Technology Conference on Wednesday that they will be dropping a Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerry “in the back half of this year.” On the backend, Wi-Fi networks will essentially be treated like additional cellular networks because of the way the BlackBerry Enterprise Server already handles customer roaming between different…

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

TheraSpa Sound Therapy Eyeshades: You Might Want to Sleep on It

There isn’t much to say about the TheraSpa Sound Therapy Eyeshades. Either you want a fruity-looking padded eyemask that hooks up to an MP3 player to lull you to sleep with the soothing sounds of death metal or you don’t. Oh, it also comes with five pre-recorded sound programs, like Babbling Brook and Chirping Song…

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

iPod Systems Grow Up: Audio Pro Porto Stands Tall

Breaking from the boombox-esque mold of many iPod sound systems, the Audio Pro Porto is one of the most refreshingly portable setups we’ve seen in a while, and looks like it would be right at home on the beach next to a bucket of Coronas. It also comes with an FM radio, two 3.5mm stereo…

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

Disc Pod Dispenser Makes Past Methods of Disc Retrieval Painfully Obsolete

We see a lot of pointless gadgets around here, but sometimes a product comes along that blows us away with its utter lack of utility. The Disc Pod Dispenser is basically a Pez dispenser for discs. Load it up, push a button, and one pops out. Is twisting the plastic case off of a spindle…

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

Heartbeat Indicator Mouse Tells You to Set Down the Dew Dude

Besides reminding you that “life’s click,” the Heartbeat Indicator Mouse uses sensors positioned under your thumb to assess your level of health (like, surprise, your heart rate). It also keeps tabs on how long you’ve worked, or at least how long you’ve been holding the mouse. Better yet, it can transmit all of this info…

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

Monster iFreePlay Headphones Turn 2G iPod Shuffle Into Headgear

Tired of all the pocket (or shirt, if you’re a tool) real estate your iPod shuffle takes up? Monster’s iFreePlay cordless headphones (which look extremely familiar) let you jack your shuffle directly into a side dock built into the left ear. https://gizmodo.com/mutant-ipod-nano-headphone-headphones-feh-236395 These arguably work better than their nano counterparts, though, since you can control…

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

Enigma Ceiling Fan Circulates Air, Slices and Dices

Ceiling fans are usually staid and boring, despite their obvious pimp-out potential. Enter the Enigma Fan, with a single, swooping five-foot blade that looks like it could roll some serious heads. Besides its boomerang-esque blade, it comes with a halogen light, and can be controlled via remote. Totally worth $800 if you’ve got it to…

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

Pandora’s Zing-Powered Wi-Fi Prototype

In addition to all of the Sprint and Sonos goodies we broke before Pandora’s press conference last night, we mentioned the company would show off a Zing-powered Wi-Fi prototype. TechCrunch managed to shoot a few pics of it, and we were right: it was built by SanDisk, so it naturally looks like the Sansa Connect,…

Tech News Matt Buchanan

Activision Confirms Wireless Guitars for Guitar Hero III

Guitar Hero fans, rejoice! It looks like with Guitar Hero III, you won’t have to worry anymore about rocking out so hard that you yank the controller out of your system. Activision has announced that Guitar Hero III will finally (thankfully) feature wireless guitars for all systems. https://gizmodo.com/x-keys-usb-extender-lets-you-rock-out-from-150-feet-260995 The Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 versions…

Tech News Matt Buchanan

Columbia Professor: “Open Up That Spectrum, Mr. FCC”

Right now to enter the wireless market, you pretty much have to go through of the Big Four wireless providers, who, as Columbia professor Tim Wu puts it, “tend to approve only established partners whose devices fit their business plans, which is why we have yet to see all those wireless devices that were supposed…

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

Virtual Hallucination Headgear Is, Uh, Crazy

Virtual Hallucinations is an earphone-and-goggle training device for cops, paramedics and social workers which builds empathy with the mentally ill by putting them through the same experiences. It pretty much does what it says: simulates either schizophrenia or a really bad acid trip. The first scenario puts you on a bus being attacked by predatory…

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

NoseFrida Lets You (Yes, You) Suck Snot Out of Your Child’s Nose

Sweden is known for two things: supermodels and apparently, snot suckers, since this nasal aspirator has been used by “Swedish Moms and Dads for years.” Basically, if your child is refusing to blow their nose, jam the $15 NoseFrida against their nostril (but not inside) and start sucking on the end to pull out all…

Gadgets Matt Buchanan

The World’s Five Cheapest PCs

Leading Forbes’ list of uber-cheap PCs (all under $300) is the $85 MicroClient JrSX from Norhtec, a book-size desktop that boasts (or perhaps doesn’t) 128MB of RAM, a 300Mhz processor and a flash card-based storage system. Missing from the package are a keyboard, mouse and monitor and audio. That’s right, no audio. Anything with sound…

Tech News Matt Buchanan

Matt Buchanan

Sensear Noise-Cancelling Headphones Block Hearing Loss, Not Your Mom Nagging You

Bicycle/Bike-Lock Sculpture Wards Off Thieves, Actual Bike Riders

Rumor: EMI’s DRM-Free Tracks Hitting iTunes This Week

Japanese Camera Phone Diet: Snap Shots of Your Dinner, Learn How Fat It’ll Make You

LEGO Star Wars Space Port: That’s a Lot of Free Time

Chic Trash Bags: Because Your Garbage Is Better Than Everyone Else’s

Up Close and Personal Time With Cellphones Bricks Nissan I-Keys

RIM Rolling Out Wi-Fi Enabled BlackBerry Later This Year

TheraSpa Sound Therapy Eyeshades: You Might Want to Sleep on It

iPod Systems Grow Up: Audio Pro Porto Stands Tall

Disc Pod Dispenser Makes Past Methods of Disc Retrieval Painfully Obsolete

Heartbeat Indicator Mouse Tells You to Set Down the Dew Dude

Monster iFreePlay Headphones Turn 2G iPod Shuffle Into Headgear

Enigma Ceiling Fan Circulates Air, Slices and Dices

Pandora’s Zing-Powered Wi-Fi Prototype

Activision Confirms Wireless Guitars for Guitar Hero III

Columbia Professor: “Open Up That Spectrum, Mr. FCC”

Virtual Hallucination Headgear Is, Uh, Crazy

NoseFrida Lets You (Yes, You) Suck Snot Out of Your Child’s Nose

The World’s Five Cheapest PCs

Roborock F25 GT Cordless Vacuum and Mop Hits Its Lowest Price in Spring Sale, 20,000Pa Cleaning Power Without the Premium Price Tag

New Details Add a Bizarre Twist to NASA’s First ISS Medical Evacuation

ASUS TUF 27” HDR Gaming Monitor Briefly Returns to Black Friday Pricing for a Limited Run in Amazon’s Big Spring Sale

‘Speed Racer’ Is Getting a Glorious New Remaster

Dreame Pocket Pro Hair Dryer Is Now Over 3x Cheaper Than Dyson’s Deal in Amazon’s Prime-Exclusive Spring Sale

Pompeii Study Confirms Roman ‘Wine’ Ritual Previously Known Only From Texts

JBL Clears Out a 5.0-Channel Compact All-in-One Soundbar at a Record Low Beyond Its Portable Speaker Deals

Andy Weir Says Paramount Rejected His ‘Star Trek’ Pitch, Proceeds to Blast Modern ‘Trek’

Anker Solix C2000 Gen 2 Portable Power Station Is 50% Off as Amazon’s Spring Sale Pushes Into Its Final Clear-Out

Anker’s USB-C Docking Station With Detachable Hub Hits an All-Time Low in Amazon’s Spring Sale, Likely the Last Chance Before Prime Day

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

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

Sonos Era 100 SL Review: The Cheapest Way Into Wired Sonos Sound

Asus ROG’s Massive Swift OLED Gaming Monitor Epitomizes Excess in the Best Way

The Ikea Varmblixt Smart Lamp Fills a Donut Hole in My Life

Nothing Headphone A vs. Headphone 1: Which Pair of ANC Wireless Headphones Wins?

Asus ROG’s Cetra Open Wireless Gaming Earbuds Might Be Better Than Wearing a Headset

Nintendo’s Talking Flower Is Annoying as Hell. I Love It

Level Lock Pro Review: As Good as a Secret Smart Lock Gets