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EcoModo – The Best of Treehugger

This week at TreeHugger: Say hello to the “Cuter Scooter,” the latest electric, foldable, affordable scooter from the brain maniacs at MIT. The Danish city of Gren is putting RFID to work for the green good with a pretty slick idea involving bikes, traffic and keeping the two from running in to each other. Get…

Original Sonic the Hedgehog Now Available for the iPod

Just in case you haven’t had a chance to play the original Sonic the Hedgehog on your Wii or Xbox 360 lately, now there’s yet another platform that’s offering the classic platformer for sale: the iPod. Yep, for $4.99 you can now download the classic Sonic the “I remember this being better” Hedgehog for all…

Mouse-Pad Hurling to Go Olympic By, Let’s Say, 2048

In the spring of 2006, Yasuhiro Matsunaga had a dream. It wasn’t complicated, like how to bring about racial harmony or build a rocket ship. Matsunaga had discovered a bunch of mouse pads in a storage locker, and his dream was to toss them all. Not into the trash, though. Matsunaga’s mama had taught him…

Get Your Friends Hooked On The Legion

Does the Legion of Super Heroes confuse your loved ones? This gang of super-powered teenagers in the 30th century has an admittedly complicated backstory, including a dozen home planets and a billion soap-operatic entanglements. Luckily, the perfect holiday gift is also the best Legion teaching tool. Eye For An Eye, out this week, collects the…

Google Year-End Report Card: B

Google is the Tetsuo of tech. It’s already massive, but it grows uncontrollably in a million different directions and almost feels like it’s on the verge of creating its own gUniverse. [Ed. note: “Gooniverse”?] At times, it’s both amazing and scary to watch. 2007 was the biggest year yet for Google, but crazily enough, most…

Sno-Baller, for Lazy Ice Warriors

Don’t you hate it when your hands get all frozen forming those snowballs? There’s a gadget that’s made to solve that problem, called the Sno-Baller. Now your snowballs can be just as precise as everything else in your life. And in the summer when there’s no snow, you can use this press to create gigantic…

Asus Releases the Luxury U6 Notebook Series

Asus has announced the availability of the U6E and U6S notebooks in the US. Each boasts glossy, high-shine covers,and genuine leather along with an Intel Centrino Duo processor, up to 2GB of RAM and 250GB of hard drive space, and either the NVIDIA GeForce 8400M G or Intel’s GMA X3100 GPU. And just for kicks…

Massive Detonation Leaves A Permanent Scar

The largest piece of gunpowder art in history detonated last year in Fujian province, China. Cai Guoqiang, a New York-based artist, designed the “controlled explosion” to leave burn marks in the shape of a 59-foot-by-30-foot banyan tree. Check out the results. Image by AP Photo/EyePress.

Nokia SU-27W Digital Pen to Finally Ship

On the heels of the Epos digital pen we showed you earlier this month, now Nokia gets into the act with the Nokia SU-27W Digital Pen, and this one goes a step further with Bluetooth connectivity. The idea is you write or draw something with this fat instrument on an ordinary piece paper, and everything…

The Star Trek Script They Tried To Kill

You can soon see the story that was too hot for Star Trek: The Next Generation. David Gerrold’s AIDS allegory “Blood And Fire” will be an upcoming episode of Star Trek: The New Voyages. Gerrold, writer of “The Trouble With Tribbles” and author of The Man Who Folded Himself, is directing his own script. Still…

The Zipit 2 is being upgraded to send and receive SMS to and from cellphones, for just $4.99 a month. Available via download between December 20 and its official February launch, the Zipit will only receive texts from a pre-approved list, making it spam-free. https://gizmodo.com/zipit-z2-wireless-messenger-lets-teens-im-for-free-gal-319767

Nutty Salt and Pepper Shakers Are All Screwed Up

Salt and pepper shaker collectors will be interested in this innovative way to dispense those table staples, looking a whole lot like nuts and bolts. They’re actually constructed like a Slinky. Bend one of these bolts, and the gaps between its coils get wide enough to release your chosen seasoning. Good thing there’s an “S”…

Japan Shoots Down Space Missile

Giant rockets fought in space yesterday when the Japanese military shot down a mid-range ballistic missile using this Standard Missile 3 (SM-3). The ballistic missile was zooming along 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean. Japan is the first US ally to attempt these kinds of space war moves, and they did it from a US…

All Giz Wants: One Plug For Everything

Come with us into the world of fantasy, where there’s just one kind of plug and its associated cable that will work for every electronic device. What we would like to see is one cable that carries audio, video and power to or from whatever device you need to use. It needs to be small,…

New PSP Firmware Available, Too

Last night we mentioned that new PlayStation 3 firmware 2.1 was available (specs here, testing here). But we should also point out that PSP firmware 3.8 is available now as well. The big new feature? The device is now internet radio ready. You’ll also score some fancy new visualizations. No, it’s not a pocket DVR…

A Weapon That Makes You Hear Voices in Your Head

Apparently troops in Iraq have invented an off-label use for sonic pain guns that can project a focused beam of sound at someone’s head. Because the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), pictured here, can deliver any sound at a distance, soldiers are using it to beam words directly into the ears of enemies. The idea…

Elvis the RoboCat Still Figuring Out This ‘Moving Around’ Thing

Elvis the cat had a run-in with a truck that resulted in him losing the use of his back legs. Naturally, the only solution that owner and Battlebots (remember Battlebots?) engineer Carlo Bertocchini could come up with was a crazy robotic box for Elvis to be placed in to return his mobility. The best part…

PS3 Game Developer Claims to have Crossed Uncanny Valley

We’re fascinated with the battle against uncanny valley—that point in graphics or robotics where the human likeness isn’t quite reached, which in turn repulses the viewer. And while we’ve seen graphics card makers and robot designers tackling the problem before, for the first time a video game developer claims to have bridged the gap. Quantic…

Cellphones Conquer Land Lines for First Time in 2007

According to a recent piece in the NYTimes, 2007 will be the first year in which the dollars spent on cellphone subscriptions trump traditional land lines. Among other points, they site that in 2006, households spend an average of $542 on residential lines while only spending $524 on wireless services. Add another year of cellphone…

1999 A.D. Controversy

Back in April, I started posting clips from the 1967 film 1999 A.D. I never expected controversy. The video below should hopefully clear things up. Many thanks to Skip at A/V Geeks for the link. There is a fair amount of skepticism from people questioning the authenticity of material I post here on the blog.…