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Navigon Updates MobileNavigator iPhone App With Facebook and Twitter Connectivity, Panorama View 3D Mapping

Not only has Navigon added a bunch of new features to its iPhone app, the price is $20 cheaper—although if you want Traffic Live and 3D maps, it still adds up to $100. Nonetheless, it sounds worth it. https://gizmodo.com/navigon-mobilenavigator-for-north-america-hits-the-app-5320284 The update has a few nifty angles—there’s the connection to your Facebook or Twitter accounts for…

Tech News Kat Hannaford

Notion Ink’s Adam Tablet Will Have Flash, Output At 1080p and Have Battery Life 2x Longer Than iPad

Flash, a longer battery life, outputting video at 1080p, a $1m app competition—these are just some of the ways Notion Ink is hoping its Android-powered Adam tablet will be able to win customers over. The tablet has gone through several different guises since renders were unveiled in December. From the slick silver-edged device, to the…

Tech News Kat Hannaford

LG Mini GD880 Phone Has 16:9 Ratio And Looks Hot To Trot

This LG Mini GD880 is so good-looking it makes my brain hurt at the injustice of it (presumably) running LG’s S-Class OS, and not Android. Still, there’s some nice spec to back up this slim 16:9 phone. Just like the Chocolate phone before it, the display has a 16:9 aspect ratio, in this case at…

Tech News Kat Hannaford

Goodbye, Heroes, Goodbye

Tonight is the last episode of Heroes. Ever. I have nothing to drink but mint tea. I’m joined by two tea-drinking friends, and my cat Space, who is now out of her TV writing job. Will all the heroes die? The title of our very last episode is “Brave New World.” A world without Heroes…

Television Annalee Newitz

Software Bug Causes Toyota Recall of Almost Half a Million New Hybrid Cars

Toyota just announced a recall of its 2010 hybrid cars. Four hundred thousand worth. The reason? A change in “brake feeling” caused by faulty antilock braking software. There is no fix for cars on the road yet. This problem, unrelated to the sticky gas pedal issue that other drivers complained about. But I’m still wondering…

Tech News Brian Lam

Some Good News, and Some Bad News, About Adobe Flash 10.1

The good news first: Adobe’s promising Flash 10.1 is going to hit smartphones—Android, WebOS, Windows Mobile—and desktops in the “first half” of this year, a slightly less squishy date. And it’ll come over the air. The bad part? The “over the air” thing is also kind of “up in the air” as to what that…

Tech News Matt Buchanan

Publishers Tell Google and Their Ebook Plans to Get Bent

The vision of ebooks Google has presented to publishers: allowing people to print copies, cut and paste portions, and paying publishers 63 percent of the revenue. The vision the publishers presented in return: Go eff yourself. https://gizmodo.com/massive-google-editions-ebook-store-pushed-back-until-n-5382439 That’s right, Google’s finally getting around to opening an ebook store too—called Google Editions, and it’s been in…

Tech News Matt Buchanan

Parisian Oops: A More Realistic Google Ad

Click to viewSure, Google’s Superbowl ad was cute and left us giggling, but how would a French romance powered by Google really go? [UCB—Thanks, Mackenzie!] https://gizmodo.com/googles-superbowl-ad-has-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-all-at-5465890

Tech News Rosa Golijan

An HD Video Tour of the International Space Station

If you’re a huge space buff, you might not be surprised by anything in this video tour of the International Space Station. But it’s still great to just get a simple walkthrough of this incredible project and all its corners. Anyone else get a bit bit light-headed watching all those twists and turns? [CrunchGear]

Space & Spaceflight Rosa Golijan

Apple Job Posting Suggests Cameras in Future iPads

Apple’s hiring again and this time they’re looking for “Performance QA Engineers” in their “iPad Media” department. Based on the description for the job, we might be seeing an increase in iPad camera rumors: The Media Systems team is looking for a software quality engineer with a strong technical background to test still, video and…

Tech News Rosa Golijan

It May Be Creepy, But This Case’s Ad Is Popcorn-Worthy

I hate spiders, I hate horror movies, and I hate gimmicky computer cases. But I love the commercial for the Lian Li Mini-atx case. Maybe it’s just because it reminded me of Steve Irwin. There aren’t details on availability and pricing for this case, but who cares when the promo video alone is fun. [CrunchGear]

Tech News Rosa Golijan

Prepaid Cellphone Users Less Likely to Return Calls

Some folks decided to study the calling habits of 5.3 million people over an 18-month period. 350 million phone calls later, they came to an almost obvious conclusion: Prepaid cellphone users make and return fewer calls than their postpaid counterparts. You can click on the image to take a closer look at the graphs. Initially…

Tech News Rosa Golijan

Best Buy’s MacBook Pro SKUs Go Missing, Might Mean Core i5 Refresh Soon

The upcoming i5 MacBook Pro refresh might be closer than we thought, with TUAW discovering that Best Buy emptied their systems of the current version. Since they’re not likely to go MacBook-less for long, that points to soon. [TUAW] https://gizmodo.com/intel-promotion-leaks-core-i5-macbook-pro-update-5447089

Tech News Jason Chen

The Most Beautiful Pulp Magazine Cover Art We’ve Ever Seen

Robot uprisings, demon armies, women fighting dragons and men striding the cosmos have never looked cooler, or lovelier, than in the pulp magazine cover art going on display at the University of Connecticut. Beware: Some of it is quite spicy. UConn’s Benton Museum is hosting a massive exhibition showcasing the Robert Lesser Collection of Pulp…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

The Scale That Thinks It’s a Rug

This concept scale that doubles as a decorative rug might—might—be the thing to finally get me taking better care of myself. Designer Kwan Sunman’s Rug With Scale project does away with the cold, judgmental form factors of your average bathroom scale, ensconcing it instead in a warm and inviting rug. The readout from the scale…

Tech News Brian Barrett

SyFy Rebranding Makes Time Magazine’s Top 10 Worst Corporate Name Changes

In honor of Comcast’s decision to rebrand itself as XFinity, Time Magazine published a list of the 10 worst corporate rebrandings, and the Sci Fi Channel’s decision to become Syfy made #3. Writes Time, “Spell Check On Syfy: Unless science fiction is spelled syience fyction, owners of the popular television network need some serious spelling…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Google Wants To Control All Communication

Google’s two new announcements: integrating a Twitter-like service into Gmail and a goal of a real-time speech translation service shows what direction they’re taking the company: Into the space between you and every other human being on the planet. https://gizmodo.com/gmail-is-the-new-twitfaceplurk-5466938 To be fair, these two developments are really far apart in their delivery dates. The…

Tech News Jason Chen

Why Paint Your Room When You Can Get a Color-Changing Wall Instead

See this wall of colorful squares? It’s actually a concept design consisting of a bunch of small triangular panels which can be spun ’round on whim to change the way your room looks. Or to spell out naughty things. Ok, so the concept photos only spell out “S-E-X” which won’t make too many people giggle…

Tech News Rosa Golijan

The Space Shuttle Blasts Into The Night

Early this morning in the pre-dawn hours, the space shuttle Endeavor shot into space for a two-week trip to the International Space Station. This will be its last nighttime launch. This launch occurred amid the controversy that began last week when President Obama announced his future plans for the NASA space program, which included scrapping…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Microsoft Blames Your Laptop—Not Windows 7—For Battery Issues

After upgrading to Windows 7, some users saw a new warning message suggesting that they need to replace their laptops’ batteries. Some screamed “bug,” some shouted “conspiracy,’ but Microsoft denies that anything’s wrong. In an entry on Microsoft’s MSDN blog, Windows division President Steven Sinofsky explains that the warning message is a new feature in…

Tech News Rosa Golijan

Navigon Updates MobileNavigator iPhone App With Facebook and Twitter Connectivity, Panorama View 3D Mapping

Notion Ink’s Adam Tablet Will Have Flash, Output At 1080p and Have Battery Life 2x Longer Than iPad