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The Toughest SciFi Soldiers For Your Squad

The aliens are invading and you want to assemble a crack squad of commandos to fight the tough battles and serve as human meatshields. But where can you find the best commandos in the galaxy? It’s time to mine science fiction history for some of the steeliest break-your-face soliders so you can sleep easy when…

Meet io9 Intern Nivair Gabriel

Say hello to Nivair Gabriel, who just received her io9 implant and started as our spring intern. She comes to us from MIT, where she’s working on a degree in aerospace engineering. Not only has she done multivariable analysis of design factors involved in constructing a large-scale, remote-controlled airplane, but she’s also working on becoming…

Acer Mystery “Blue” Mobile Gadget Press Conference

We’re at Frank Gehry’s IAC Building in Manhattan, and Acer president Gianfranco Lanci is at the podium promising something exciting in the color blue (incidentally, Pantone’s official color of the year). The company itself is #2 worldwide in notebook sales, solid #3 in all PCs worldwide, especially after acquisitions of Gateway and Packard Bell. With…

Modular DNA PC Concept Lets You Build it Like LEGO

This modular DNA PC concept looks quite similar to the Bookshelf Microsoft ISDA design concept from a few years ago, but it’s slightly different in that it’s almost entirely made out of cubes. The core idea is the same: you’ve got a base “PC” that you add features and peripherals onto by attaching them together.…

Time-Stopping Superpower Results in Bad Sitcom

Okay, so maybe there are better uses for the ability to freeze time than helping your friend be the world’s greatest DJ. Like saving Helen Hunt after she’s just been thrown off a building. This is your chance to ensure the world gets Mad About You and As Good As It Gets! Actually, that may…

Hi-Tech Desk Concept Includes Integrated Laptop Dock

This concept desk looks like standard Ikea fare upon first glance, but a closer examination reveals a recessed middle that’s contoured for a custom Samsung laptop to dock into. Once locked in, the laptop keyboard sits flush with the rest of the desk, bringing new meaning to the term desktop PC. A novel idea, but…

The Future of Portable Entertainment Is Not an Apple Product

The Future of Portable Entertainment has a 2.8″ touch screen, a 1.3MP camera and one big honking square orange button. And you all Apple haters can rest now, because The Future of Portable Entertainment “is not an Apple product.” Or so says the company that makes this cloned piece of crap metal and plastic called…

Alien invaders are back, Das Boot style! Instead of seeing the world destroyed by a puny virus or environmental disaster, we’re going to get the full-on intergalactic world-smash, maybe for the first time since 2005’s disappointing War Of The Worlds. Wolfgang Petersen will direct Uprising, about a group of human freedom fighters after a “powerful…

Archos 606 is their First 3G-Equipped PMP

This seems to be a France-only deal, but Archos’s upcoming 606 looks like their first 3G data-equipped player to be available anywhere in the world. The player looks around the same size as the already-released 605, but is completely black, has a 30GB hard drive, and certain pricing details that are only relevant for France.…

Show Off Your TV, Audio-Video Gear’s Beauty: Frame it

With flat-screen TVs becoming more elegant and less “boring black box,” perhaps we’re ready for the kind of Pimp My Lounge styling that Vismara Design’s Media Center frames offer. Turning your TV and audio-video system into a sort of giant art installation-cum-digital picture frame, they’re available now in baroque or art deco styles, in silver…

Testing the Brain Machine

Mitch Altman is a mad engineer, the kind of guy who invents things designed purely to question social norms. He achieved notoriety for creating the TV-B-Gone, a tiny device that will shut down most TVs by flipping through a couple hundred known remote-control “off” signals at the touch of a button. And now that he’s…

Canadian Robot Conquers Space

The looming 12-foot tall robot Dextre (pronounced “Dexter”) just hitched a ride on the Space Shuttle Endeavour to be assembled on the International Space Station. When he’s put together, the Canadian robot will be able to take on high-risk activities, like changing out components, that would otherwise require a spacewalk by the astronauts. Dextre’s arms…

Japanese Oral Grip Machine Tortures, Improves Smiles

The Japanese are not unfamiliar with using gadgets to improve their appearance, but this Oral Grip Machine just looks and sounds too painful to be used while not inundated with sake. It’s a couple pieces of plastic you shove in your mouth to work your oral muscles out with for four minutes at a time,…

Urban Outfitters (proprietors of all things hip, ironic, and kitsch), is now offering some cool bobble heads in honor of the Star Wars episode of Family Guy [swongled.com]

8 Unstoppable Rules For Writing Killer Short Stories

Short fiction is the “garage band” of science fiction, claims Tor Books editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden, so it’s time to step on that fuzzbox and thrash as hard as you can without knocking over your mom’s weed-trimmer. Actually, I think Nielsen Hayden was referring to the fact that you can try more crazy experiments in…

Nokia N78 US 3G Version Leaked on FCC

We only just heard about the Nokia N78 last month, but it’s already making its way to the US by way of the FCC. It’s got a 3.2-megapixel auto-focus camera, AGPS, Xenon flash, Wi-Fi and FM radio. Wireless Info points out that the 3G supported seems to be AT&T’s (seeing as, you know, AT&T is…

[www.foobies.com] Testing if this share tool works. -JC

Facade Vase: Recycle Your Water Bottles as Flower-Holders

The Facade Vase from Orcadesign is a wool slip-on cover that lets you turn an unwanted plastic bottle into a minimalist vase. It’s a design that will clearly please eco-friendly types and cheapskates too. We can see the conversations now: “Here you go, honey, I’ve got you a flower and (glug, glug) a vase!”… “Oh,…

Samsung’s YP-S2 Pebble MP3 Players Probably Hurt When Thrown

These Samsung YP-S2 Pebble MP3 players look quite similar to the Creative Zen Stone (because they both look like small rocks), and hold about 1GB of MP3s and WMAs. They’ve got about 10 hours of playback, but don’t do a whole lot else (other than looking and feeling like rocks). They’ll be available in the…

X-Men 3’s Ratner Wants His Own Private Superhero Team

Not content with almost tanking the X-Men franchise with X-Men: The Last Stand — Killing Cyclops off-screen, Brett? Really? — Brett Ratner is now turning his attention to more superpowered teenagers for his next project, Harbinger. Paramount Pictures have optioned the popular 1990s comic series after Ratner expressed interest in “start[ing] a superhero franchise from…