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Atomic Power Plant of the Future (1939)

The October, 1939 issue of Amazing Stories published this painting of the atomic power plant of the future. The image can also be found in the book Out of Time by Norman Brosterman. If you look closely you can see the streamlined cars and trains of the future driving by. As noted in the book,…

Why Does The Sci-Fi Channel Greenlight Crap?

When the Sci-Fi Channel announces it’s making two new TV movies and neither of them is science fiction, what does it say about the genre on television? Add to that the fact that they both sound hideous: Ba’al [is] about a rogue Smithsonian archaeologist, dying of cancer, who will stop at nothing to retrieve the…

Re-Animator Flick On Hold Because Zombies Are Way Too Political

My heart is breaking because Jeffrey Combs just told SciFi Wire that we may be waiting a lot longer for the much-anticipated House of Re-Animator, the fourth in the Re-Animator series, and the second to be directed by its anarchist-comedian mastermind, Stuart Gordon. Apparently its political message, about a zombie Vice-President who runs amok, cuts…

TiVo Rocks the Rhapsody Music Service

It’s been muttered about since the first of the year, but now it’s official and in full effect: TiVo gets the Rhapsody Music Service, and users get a month-long free trial without providing a credit card, or even signing up. It’s just one click. (Okay, like two.) It’s a match-up of make-life-easier products, albeit two…

A Careful Taxonomy Of Why “The Seeker” Sucks

The Harry Potter ripoff movie The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising made a pretty abysmal 3.7 million in its opening weekend, and that’s because producers turned its ultra-dark, time-travelly source material (Susan Cooper’s brooding young adult book series) into a craptastic superhero adventure. They even added a Harry Potterism to the movie title, tagging it…

Give Us A Movie About Cybrids

To make up for the lack of human eggs needed to create stem cell farms, scientists have invented the “cybrid,” an animal egg pumped full of human nuclear DNA. The idea is that stem cell cultures farmed out of these cybrids can be used in humans because they will be mostly human — except for…

Quick Apple hack updates: The iPod touch is reported to have reached a read milestone for the filesystem. The iPhone’s 1.1.1 firmware has a few apps ported to it, but it’s still not easy for general consumption. We’ll do full posts when more easily implemented hacks are finished. [TUAW]

Repurpose Blank CDs For Better Lumbar Support

Blank CDs are on their way out as a day to day storage medium, and by the looks of things they don’t make for a very comfortable chair either. The inexplicably titled “Panda Chair” was designed by Belen Hermosa using hundreds of disks lined in rows. It may be uncomfortable, but I suppose lying on…

Journeyman and the iPhone

The Quantum Leap meets Early Edition flavor of NBC’s Journeyman makes it a pretty fantastic show with just two episodes in the can and the third airing tonight. But what’s with the blatant iPhone product placement? It’s almost a character in itself, allowing the guy to Google Finder-spydeR stuff on the go, check to see…

Mr. Clock Robot Alarm Doesn’t Take No for an Answer

If you need a little extra incentive to wake up in the morning, the Mr. Clock Radio may be just what you need. He can wake your lazy ass up in one of 30 different ways—from gentle coaxing to flat-out drill sergeant-style orders. He can even tell fortunes, read the time aloud, wink and blink,…

Dockey miniUSB to USB Connector Saves Space

Rather than take a long and tangled miniUSB to USB cable with you wherever you go, this swiveling Dockey condenses it all into a small, keyfob-sized connector. It’s essentially just the two ends—USB and miniUSB—attached to a swiveling joint that lets you position your phone, PMP, or Bluetooth headset at just the right position to…

Bug Labs: First Look at the Hardware Designs

The first renderings of the final hardware cases for Bug Labs open source gadget platform are up on their website. As you can see it’s really coming along since the last time we got a look at it. It’s looking halfway decent now, although a little clunkier than I would have expected. It will be…

In Car, Hands-Free Text Messaging Using Microsoft Sync

Microsoft has teamed up with voice recognition software firm Nuance to develop its own hands-free text software for use with Microsoft Sync. The software would allow users to dictate SMS messages and possibly emails later on down the line. This would undoubtedly result in far less cellphone-related accidents, not to mention instances where I flip…

Hitachi’s Concept Remote Looks Minimalistic, Comes in Leopard Print

We saw the large version of Hitachi’s remote control last week, but they’ve got a smaller, sleeker and sexier version that comes in many different colors, including leopard print. The main focus of this one, like the other one, is the gigantic trackball in the middle, with the “back” button being the only other button…

Indiana Jones Home Theater

This Indian Jones themed home theater doesn’t have a list of super-impressive AV gear. But it does have a model of the monkey, gold idol, and 1/2 scale ark from Raiders, and replicas from Last Crusade like the Grail, and a set of Indy-ish jacket, hat, whip, and torches. Better than the Star Wars theater?…

Video: The Rocket-Powered X-Wing’s Flight…and Death

Click to viewYou might have seen the liftoff, but here’s a video of the day we spent in the desert, awaiting the first (and explosively final) launch of the 1/2 scaled rocket-powered X-Wing fighter. I cried a little when it went down. (Turn up the volume, there’s some good dialog drowned out by the din…

Nine Inch Nails Dumps Record Labels, Going Direct to Fans

Hear that? It’s the RIAA quaking in their diamond-coated boots as yet another A-list band gives labels the finger: Pretty hate machine Trent Reznor announced today that “as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally free agent, free of any recording contract with any label.” Instead of futzing through the hapless middleman of…

The Sprint CEO troubles have come to a head as CEO, Chairman and President Gary Forsee resigns. Too bad he didn’t forsee some better business decisions. [PC World] https://gizmodo.com/apparently-things-arent-so-dandy-over-in-sprint-nextel-307694

640GB Flash Hard Drive For a Paltry $19,000

Sure, it costs $30 a GB, but Fusion-io’s new ioDrive flash card promises ridiculous 800MB/sec (Read) and 600MB/sec (Write) sustained data transfer rates. That would mean performance on par with DRAM, which would be about a thousand times faster than any existing disk drive. Basically, it’s like packing an enterprise SAN into a PCI express…

Canadian Gang Members Love Blackberries, Maple Syrup, Hockey

Blackberries aren’t just the communications tool of choice for dudes that wear suits to work, but apparently are also the favorite device of Canadian gang-bangers. Yeah, I’m as surprised as you are that there are gangs in Canada, but doesn’t it make sense that Canadian gangs would be tech-savvy and polite enough to communicate via…