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Plastic Packards Whiz Through The Steamlined City of Tomorrow

Shortly before the end of the Second World War, Army-Navy Screen Magazine (a newsreel version of what would later be called a television news magazine) began a new series on the world of tomorrow to be faced by soon-to-be veterans. The first installment was called “Tomorrow Television,” and while most of it is not very…

Panasonic $3,500 AE3000 Projector: Green and Smart with Crazy Contrast

Some 1080p projectors are getting down below the $2,000 mark, but the real news is that insanely good projectors are appearing in the $3,000 range. On the heels of Sony’s VPL-HW10 comes Panasonic’s AE3000, which has 60,000:1 contrast ratio using LCD projection technology. The $3,500 system handles motion blur withsomething like the 120Hz seen in…

Curious about how science fiction has treated transgender people? Critic Cheryl Morgan has a run-down of science fiction books with gender-switching themes, from John Varley and Joanna Russ to Ian McDonald and Maureen McHugh. I didn’t know that Joanna Russ had modified her views since writing The Female Man, but apparently she has. [The Bilerico…

Panasonic Reprices PZ850 Flagship 65″ Net-Connected Plasma: Now Only $7,000

We’ve covered Panasonic’s flagship connected plasmas from the beginning, first at CES and then later when pricing was announced. Today at CEDIA they’ve bumped pricing down, and confirmed availability for this month. The 65-inch TH-65PZ850 will sell for $7,000 (we reported it earlier at $8000), while the 58-incher will sell for an even $4,000, down…

LEAK: Comcast’s Mobile Store Is Actually Quite Promising

Earlier today, we published the article Comcast’s Video Download Store Is Wholly Unremarkable about Comcast’s expansion of Fancast, a place to download movies a la Amazon Unbox. Then a reliable tipster filled us in on where Fancast is going—specifically, in the mobile market. And we have to say, it’s caught our attention.Fancast is essentially Comcast’s…

CEDIA 2008 Infiltrated: Booths Under Construction, A Few Tidbits Already Powered Up

We snuck in (or casually moseyed in, actually) to CEDIA’s main show floor, which is still being set up for tomorrow’s opening, and we’ve learned a few things in advance of any announcements. Sony’s Motionflow wall which was in the process of being powered up had a 240Hz set like the 200Hz Bravia we saw…

Iconic My Document Laptop Sleeve Now Purchasable

The My Document ntoebook folder folder we posted back in May has finally made its way to the US by way of Thinkgeek. Always an expert at setting up shipping agreements with overseas manufacturers, Thinkgeek now offers this for $29.99 + shipping, which is much easier than arranging an import from Taiwan yourself. It fits…

Will The City Of Ember Kids Team Up With Brendan Fraser?

The new City of Ember poster is out and I can’t help but wonder if those two crazy kids ever bumped into Fraser and company from Journey To The Center Of The Earth on their subterranean journey? Also, I did not know the little girl could walk on air. The full poster image is below.When…

Virtual Lake Floating Lounge Brings the Sandman Every Time

Even the most crippling insomnia is surely no match for the Gentle Wave lounge. Using a handheld remote, users can control a rocking motion that is designed to simulate floating in a lake. It can also be used to manage the intensity of the sound wave massage emanating from its dual 50-watt transducers. Combine that…

Microsoft to Set IE8 Apart From Chrome by Giving It Twice the Bloat

Here’s something you don’t want to hear describing your latest browser: “epically porcine.” Yes, that’s exactly how software research firm Devil Mountain CEO Craig Barth described it. Just how bad is the bloat on the latest beta? Well, on a 10-site scenario test, Firefox 3.0.1 consumed 159MB of memory. IE7 consumed a heartier 250MB. IE…

LG Sets Price for BD300 Netflix Blu-ray Player: A Reasonable $400

LG kicks off the press conferences here at CEDIA in Denver. After teasing the Netflix-streaming LG BD300 Blu-ray player, a double threat if I ever saw one, they finally told us the price today: $400, well below the $500 mark LG was aiming to stay under. (Keep in mind, the Netflix box by Roku is,…

Lunar Dirt Will Be In Your Home, Air and Water

All of the off-world buzz these days may be around Mars and Titan, but NASA contractors are looking to send human life a little closer to home. Project Constellation, NASA’a agenda for the future of spaceflight, outlines plans for the construction of a lunar outpost starting in 2019. But with no water and no atmosphere,…

PNY 2GB Thumb Drive to Come Pre-Loaded with Ghostbusters, Make All Other Thumb Drives Look Humorless

When you’re going to buy a USB thumb drive, there’s not much differentiating all the brands other than looks. Usually, people just grab the cheapest or the least stupid-looking. That won’t be the case when PNY unleashes it’s newest 2GB drive. Why? It’ll come preloaded with Ghostbusters, that’s why. Ghostbusters! There’s no word on the…

UK Authorities Don’t Want Wanted

This just in: Authorities in the UK found the movie adaptation of the comic Wanted to be “condon[ing] violence by glorifying or glamorising the use of guns,” while at the same time failing to be offensive to the general public. That’s the result of an investigation into the promotional posters for the movie by the…

If a Porsche Shacked Up With an iPod Dock, You’d Get the Eton P’9120

Can you imagine all the little Eton brothers and sisters sitting around the dinner table, when in walks the Eton P’9120? Its speakers and remote are different…not like mommy or daddy’s at all. Awwwwkward. Anyway, the Eton P’9120 is a Porsche-designed Eton iPod dock packing an alarm clock and XM satellite radio antenna. And its…

The Wind-Swept Clouds of Mars

The Phoenix Lander look a series of photographs of the polar skies this week, and researchers have turned them into a short movie that gives you a shivery sense of what it would be like to stand under Martian skies. Those are ice water clouds, swooshing overhead very much the way clouds do on Earth.…

50-Foot Robot Spider Plans to Attack the UK on Friday

Commuters at Liverpool’s Lime Street station need only to glance at a nearby office block to bear witness to their impending doom. What they will see is a 50-foot, 40 ton spider that currently lies dormant, but it is set to “come alive” on Friday. Apparently, the spider is a component in an elaborate bit…

Cleavagefield Puts J.J. Abrams’ Shaky Cam To Better Use

Click to viewIf there was one thing missing from J.J. Abrams’ monster movie Cloverfield, I would have to say it was cleavage. Forget the amazing CG parasite tunnel bugs, the crumbling buildings and aerial shots of a monster destroying New York, director Jim Wynorski uses his shaky-cam to film a group of well-endowed ladies getting…

Rumor: iTunes 8 Brings ‘Genius’, A Smart Music Grouping and Recommendation Engine

It appears that some of Kevin Rose’s predictions about iTunes 8 have been corroborated by other tipsters to MacRumors, which says that there’s going to be a “Genius” feature that generates playlists containing songs that have similar qualities to other songs. MacRumors calls this unconfirmed because they didn’t receive the tip from one of their…

14 Build-Them-Yourself Modular Gadgets

Modular gadgets are great because they are part toy and part serious technology. In other words, when we reconfigure a device, it reminds us of how much fun we had (and still have) with Legos and other building toys. The folks at OObject have put together a list of 14 modular gadgets and concepts—like Bug…