Wilson Rothman

Slow-Motion Sneeze: MythBusters Get Gross To Protect You From Swine Flu

We love high-speed photography, but seeing Adam hurl a juicy sneeze at Jamie in super slowmo is enough to make us smash our EX-F1s. Still, it’s for a noble cause: Awareness and avoidance of H1N1, aka Swine Flu. [Discovery]

Quick Test: Seagate’s 1TB Portable FreeAgent Go

The season of the 1TB bus-powered USB drive is upon us. WD was first; now Seagate is shipping the FreeAgent Go, a chunky SOB—three platters worth of storage powered and connected by one skinny cable. The good news is that these things work well, despite the larger drive and lower power. They’re not about performance—5400…

Remainders – What We Didn’t Post

Marge Simpson To Pose for Playboy…Kindle Books To Cost More Abroad…Twitter Recommended for Nobel Peace Prize…Windows Mobile 7: So Close and Yet So Far Marge Simpson is going to be on the cover of Playboy on Oct. 16, and I don’t know whether to laugh, puke, subscribe, or shake my head in utter dismay. What…

Four Old Gadgets We Love (and Four We Hate)

Anna Jane Grossman is the author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By. She has compiled a special short list for Gizmodo: Four old gadgets we love and we’ll really miss, and four we’re glad are gone: Technology is all about what’s new and what’s next—today’s iPhone is just tomorrow’s paperweight. What…

What We’ll Miss Boomboxes Boomboxes forced social interaction. Yes, they may have sometimes been disruptive, but at least they were egalitarian: anyone could whip out a so-called “ghetto blaster” if they wanted to determine which song everyone else would hear. Today’s public places are flooded with people living in their own little aural universes. Personal…

Regretsy: For Anyone Who Didn’t See the Creepy Side to Making and Selling Your Own Crafts

As much as I admire people who believe enough in their artistic output to foist it on others for money, I knew Etsy had a dark side. Well, someone with the no-nonsense pseudonym Helen Killer just showed it to me: Here are a few choice excerpts from Regretsy (NSFW); just a taste, mind you, no…

Remainders – Things We Didn’t Post

Apple Loses Mighty Mouse Trademark, Probably Shouldn’t Have Used It In First Place…Paramount Asks Moviegoers to RSVP In Advance…AT&T Is #1 In Customer Service?…Scary Google Results with Sergey Brin You may have heard by now that Apple no longer has claim to the name Mighty Mouse, since small-volume mouse maker Man & Machine, who had…

Qualcomm’s Mirasol Ultra Low Power Display Is Almost Magic

Ebook readers suffer because they use E-Ink, which isn’t in color and doesn’t refresh fast enough to do video. Qualcomm is quietly showing off its Mirasol display, now in full color with 30-frame-per-second video. See for yourself: The video was shot by IntoMobile. As they describe it, the tech sounds like a massive DLP chip—that…

Remainders – Things We Didn’t Post

An Owl in a Box…Google Finally Solves PDF Searching…Lo and Behold: Teens Prefer the Apple…Rock Band Coming to iPhone? We could try to justify this post in many ways, but it would be a stretch. We can’t even call BS and claim it’s Photoshop. The fact is, it’s just an owl in a box. And…

Something Not Quite Right About Limited Edition Fender MyTouch 3G

I am as much a fan of the silky Strat as the next person raised on classic rock—especially Mark Knopfler’s modified one—but this Fender finish on the MyTouch 3G Android phone doesn’t seem very rock ‘n’ roll. The phone itself was, alas, not on display at CTIA in San Diego, a phone convention increasingly known…

If You Lived Here… Your Van Would Be On Fire

Something tells me the Google Street View team should be equipped with emergency response gear and training. What tells me this? This van that’s totally on fire, for one thing. UPDATED Yesterday, the Toronto Star saw the same Google SV item we did, and investigated. According to the workman who owns the truck that isn’t…

WD Puts E-Labels on My Book Elite and Studio, Includes Dock With My Passport Elite Portable Drive

Hard drives have become so generic and commoditized, manufacturers are always trying to draw attention to their products in new ways. WD’s My Book desktop drives now get an ebook-like screen, while the portable My Passport Elite gets a dock. As cool as the e-labels concept is—soon to be found on My Book Elite (USB…

Remainders – Things We Didn’t Post

The App Store Finally Flashes Some Nipple…Feds Want Bloggers to Disclose Bribes—But Others Can Keep On Taking Them?…Sony’s PlayStation Motion Controller Has a Codename (Spoilers Ahead)…Apple Gets Huffy With Environment Haters OK, it’s not “pornography” (I can tell because I don’t want to pay for it, to riff on the old saying) but there’s a…

Garmin Nuvifone G60 GPS Phone Review: Do Not Buy

Garmin makes the best portable navigators out there. Millions of people, including me, are fans. But following notoriously lengthy delays, the first Nuvifone should have been euthanized, not put on AT&T shelves next to the iPhone—for $100 more. The Nuvifone G60 GPS phone is out this week for $300, an absurdly high price for even…

Computer Benchmarking: Why Getting It Right Is So Damn Important

We’re constantly bombarded with benchmark results, used to pitch everything from web browsers to cell service. But if benchmarks aren’t built properly, results are erroneous or misleading. Here’s what goes into a great benchmark, and how to make your own. Why Do Benchmarks Matter? Benchmarks typically measure the performance of the bottlenecks in your system.…

MotionX GPS Drive Review: Hands Down the Best Value In GPS Apps

People bitching about TomTom’s $100 iPhone navigation app can either a) bitch louder or b) download MotionX GPS Drive by Fullpower. It’s $3 per month or $25 per year, and it works just fine. I am not going to tell you this is the best turn-by-turn road navigation app in the world. The designers made…

The Future of Mice (If There Is One)

While touring Microsoft’s Hardware division, I saw some concept mice that renewed my faith in the quintessential desktop accessory, ones that had capacitive touch surfaces and cameras that enabled an array of precision multitouch gesture. Take a look: The name of the game is multitouch. The Applied Sciences Group at Microsoft—who helped create with Natal—are…

Many Best Buy Store TV “Sales” Still Priced Higher Than BB Website

HDGuru already has tomorrow’s Best Buy circular, and while there are some genuine deals—certain Sony and LG TVs are at their lowest Best Buy price ever—most “sale” prices are still higher than BB online. See details at [HDGuru]

Chair Designed During Windows Panic Attack?

We already knew about painting by Windows error, but this mindbending chair at the London Design Festival looks like it was designed in the middle of a full-on Win 98 meltdown. [Core77] https://gizmodo.com/art-painting-by-windows-error-5150108

Gokivo Drops Monthly Rate to $5/Month

Possibly in response to the amazingly low price of Fullpower’s MotionX GPS (stay tuned for full review), Networks In Motion has reduced the monthly rate of its Gokivo iPhone app to $4.99. [iTunes Link] https://gizmodo.com/iphone-navigation-app-battlemodo-part-ii-the-best-che-5367026