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Sketchbook Ink, Rockmate, and More

With this week’s best iPad apps, we’re helping you flex your creative muscle. We’ve got all kinds of tools to help you be a media-making machine. Sketchbook Ink: When Apple announced the new iPad back in March, it hyped some forthcoming apps on it, too. One of those was Sketchbook Ink, which hit the App…

Tech News Leslie Horn

This Terrible Thief Used a Stolen iPhone to Take Pictures That Synced Back to the Owner’s Computer

That’s Nelson above. That’s Nelson partying. That’s Nelson with his girlfriend. All those pictures were taken with an iPhone he stole. Pictures that were sent back to the phone’s original owner, Katy McCaffrey, through Photostream. McCaffrey posted a hilarious Facebook photo album detailing Nelson’s various adventures with her stolen phone. According to McCaffrey, her iPhone…

Tech News Casey Chan

The Supernovae That Burn at the Center and the Edges of Everything

From Earth, the Pinwheel Galaxy looks to us like just a pinprick of light in the Big Dipper. But it’s an enormous galaxy that’s twice the size of our own. And in this new image of the galaxy from NASA, you can see that the Pinwheel is bursting with supernovae — the purple regions in…

io9 Annalee Newitz

NASA Tells Future Moon Explorers to Stay Away From Its Old Space Junk

With company after company going after Google’s Lunar X Prize, NASA appears to be a little hot and bothered by the prospect of people messing with all its crap it left behind during prior missions. So it essentially claimed dominion over the moon and passive-aggressively designated a bunch of areas to be off-limits. According to…

Space & Spaceflight Adrian Covert

Exposure therapy can make this picture less scary — by altering your brain

Exposure therapy is the practice of exposing people to things they fear in small doses, and it has helped vast numbers of people get over their phobias. But why? Now, a new study has shown that as little as a single session with a tarantula permanently alters the way an arachnophobe’s brain works. Photo of…

io9 Tim Barribeau

13 Ways to Smuggle Your Booze

Three day weekends were made for booze, but there’s a catch. Baseball games, parks, concerts, and bars: none of them allow you to bring in your own booze. We’re not saying you should break the rules and bring clandestine beverages into such locations, but if you wanted to, here are some great ways to do…

Tech News Brent Rose

Nat Geo’s New Documentary Series “Links” History’s Greatest Tech

Technological invention is a process, not an act. Even the most rudimentary technologies, like wheels, are based on previous discoveries. As such, one can trace the origins of today’s most advanced machines back through history to their earliest ancestors—or one could just watch the National Geographic Channel’s new five-part documentary, The Link, and skip all…

Television Andrew Tarantola

The Secret to Becoming a Magician (in 1882)

What’s amazing about the complete scan of 1882’s brilliant, batty, bizarre How to Become a Magician over at the Public Domain Review isn’t just the fact that it tells you how to make ice in a “red-hot vessel” (you’ll need a platinum cup and “sulphuric” acid). Rather, it’s that this book has that weird Victorian…

Books & Comics Michael Ann Dobbs

Da Vinci Mobile Vaporizer Lightning Review: Smart, But Not Quite Genius

Sometimes you just can’t wait to get home to light up. Maybe you don’t have to wait: The idea behind the Da Vinci is that you toss it in yourr bag and medicate on the road—no need to worry about lighters or replacement batteries. What Is It? A travel vaporizer. Wait, no it’s an essential…

Reviews Andrew Tarantola

If you are elderly and poor, prison is better than a retirement home

If you are in old age, with no family and little money, your options are slim if you need living assistance. Wasting away at home is a tragic possibility and government funded retirement homes might only be an option once your assets are depleted. Would you be better off committing a crime and going to…

io9 Keith Veronese

All the Beautiful Chairs of ICFF

Furniture designers love chairs. More than any other piece, it’ s a fertile ground for expression and innovation. A well-designed chair is essential to our comfort in a way a table or lamp isn’t. So it shouldn’t come as a shock that the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York this past week was chock…

Tech News Adrian Covert

New Noise-Cancelling Technology for Restaurants Uses 123 Speakers to Serve Up Peaceful Meals

The days of having to shout over the noise at a restaurant may be over, thanks to a new digital noise-cancelling technology designed together by Meyer Sound and former Phish manager-turned-restauranteur, John Paluska. Utilizing a combination of speakers, microphones, ipads, sound-dampening materials, and human ears, the staff at Comal can make the restaurant as loud…

Tech News Adrian Covert

These are the oldest musical instruments ever discovered

Some of the world’s first musicians may have been flautists. Archaeologists reanalyzing artifacts from a cave in southern Germany have determined that two prehistoric flutes — one fashioned from bird bone, the other mammoth ivory — are somewhere between 42,000 and 43,000 years old. If the researchers are right, these primitive instruments predate the previous…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Awake does The Prisoner‘s ending… sort of

The ending of Awake was always going to be kind of unsatisfying. The show was cut short after just one season and there were huge metaphysical questions as well as an Evil Conspiracy up in the air. So it’s probably for the best that the show’s creators opted for the Full Mindfuck ending, as opposed…

Television Charlie Jane Anders

How Facebook Security Guards Your Info

It goes without saying that Facebook has the responsibility to protect a huge number of users—900 million to be exact. But how, exactly, does it go about doing that? The Verge has an interesting look at the behind-the-scenes hidden security measures that are routine for the social network, but that we don’t often think about.…

Social Media Leslie Horn

The All-Out Supernatural Cheese Rampage We’ve All Been Waiting For

The first trailer for The Apparition looks so relentlessly cheesetastic, we can hardly stand it. This movie has everything: feckless scientific researchers who set out to prove that you can summon supernatural entities with the power of the mind, a monster that is sort of like a virus and sort of like a ghost, and…

Trailers Charlie Jane Anders

An incredible anatomical drawing of the Hulk’s skull and musculature

Over at Scientific American, amazing science artist Glendon Mellow has posted my current favorite picture in the entire universe: An anatomy drawing he did a few years ago of Hulk’s skull, based on the skulls of actual early hominids. (Click to enlarge — we’ve also got the text below.) Writes Mellow: I tried to draw…

Movies Annalee Newitz

Use Facebook to Throw a Party Without Making Everyone Hate You

BBQ season is about to unleash its smokey, greasy, beer-y vibes all over you. Are you ready for a summer of meat and day drinking? Good—but first, here’s how to get everyone together online without offending anyone. Paperless Post is for weddings. Mass text invites end in chaos. Group emails are a pain in the…

Social Media Sam Biddle

This Ice Shot Glass Mold Is Your Serve-Vodka-Like-A-Pro Deal of the Day

There are so many options out there right now for ice cube shapes that it can be difficult knowing which one to choose. Do you go with the Star Wars themes, or crazy geometric shapes? Well, if you’re really serious about your ice cubes, you’ll want your beverage inside your ice. And for that, you’ll…

Tech News Andrew James

The Oldest Musical Instruments Ever Found Are 43,000-Year-Old Mammoth Tusks

Scientists have found the oldest musical instruments ever recorded, which are carbon dated from 42,000 to 43,000 years old, and have turned up just in time to ask your dad if they’re what he listened to on the radio as a kid. A team from Oxford University found the flutes in a cave in southern…

Tech News Kyle Wagner

Sketchbook Ink, Rockmate, and More

This Terrible Thief Used a Stolen iPhone to Take Pictures That Synced Back to the Owner’s Computer

The Supernovae That Burn at the Center and the Edges of Everything

NASA Tells Future Moon Explorers to Stay Away From Its Old Space Junk

Exposure therapy can make this picture less scary — by altering your brain

13 Ways to Smuggle Your Booze

Nat Geo’s New Documentary Series “Links” History’s Greatest Tech

The Secret to Becoming a Magician (in 1882)

Da Vinci Mobile Vaporizer Lightning Review: Smart, But Not Quite Genius

If you are elderly and poor, prison is better than a retirement home

All the Beautiful Chairs of ICFF

New Noise-Cancelling Technology for Restaurants Uses 123 Speakers to Serve Up Peaceful Meals

These are the oldest musical instruments ever discovered

Awake does The Prisoner‘s ending… sort of

How Facebook Security Guards Your Info

The All-Out Supernatural Cheese Rampage We’ve All Been Waiting For

An incredible anatomical drawing of the Hulk’s skull and musculature

Use Facebook to Throw a Party Without Making Everyone Hate You

This Ice Shot Glass Mold Is Your Serve-Vodka-Like-A-Pro Deal of the Day

The Oldest Musical Instruments Ever Found Are 43,000-Year-Old Mammoth Tusks

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