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Google Might Finally Be Ready to Mercy Kill Google Voice

If there’s one thing Google can do to help make its messaging better than ever, it’s to kill the hulking zombie that is Google Voice and transplant its good parts into the still-living Google Hangouts. It hasn’t happened yet, but now there’s evidence in the Hangouts app that it might be coming soon. Deep in…

The Most Adorable Deadly Alien Encounter You’ll Watch All Day

Here’s a short animated film that has us in stitches. An astronaut ventures to Alpha-9 to kill the terrible alien beast that lives there. What happens next is unexpected—and also hilariously macabre. The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9! was Jake Armstrong’s School of Visual Arts graduation film. This isn’t the first time that Armstrong has earned…

Can You Tell the Monet From the Microscopic Imitation?

One of these is Claude Monet’s famous painting “Impression, Sunrise.” The other is a replica, constructed using an aluminum nanostructure, measuring around 300 microns in width. But can you tell which is the real deal? Printing, at whatever scale, is simply a case of laying down lots of small dots which, when observed at the…

The hand-drawn version of Frozen looks a lot better than the 3D one

Call me nostalgic but, when I first saw thesehand-drawn concepts fromFrozen, I couldn’t help but think that a classic 2D version would have looked so much better. The warmth and beauty in these drawings are not in the flashy computer animated version. This is not concept art from the abandoned hand-drawn Snow Queen feature film,…

Earth To Echo Makes Those Old-School Spielberg Films Feel New Again

The influence of classic Spielberg movies is all over Earth to Echo. The plot is lifted from E.T., but the movie also borrows heavily from Goonies and other 80s movies about kids hanging out. But stylistically, this movie borrows nothing. In fact, it shows how to conjure the “80s kid movie” vibe without wallowing in…

The Best Products of the Year, Chosen By Designers

What were the best products designed this year? The IDSA, or Industrial Designers Society of America, has announced its International Design Excellence Awards, naming 176 winners across 23 categories. We picked a few of the most interesting and innovative winners, from a surgery-performing robot to a lightweight bike helmet. Digital Design: BOOK by FiftyThree Designed…

Concept Art Reveals How Frozen Might Have Looked As A 2D Animated Film

We’ve seen a lot of Frozen concept art that takes us through various incarnations of the film. This concept art, however, captures the final version of the film while looking closer to Disney’s traditional animation. Disney visual development artist Cory Loftis (who was also behind the hilarious comic of inaccurate sloth facts) has posted several…

Sherlock Will Return In 2015

Martin Freeman has spilled the beans about the triumphant return of Sherlock, and thank goodness. Too long have we gone without our Benedict Cumberbatch snark. And in even better news it sounds like the series will be making their first Christmas special as well. In an interview with The Telegraph, Freeman revealed that the gang…

The Utterly Unsurprising Origins Of Bigfoot’s DNA Samples

An unprecedented peer-reviewed genetic survey of more than 30 biological hair samples purportedly left behind by either Bigfoot or the Yeti shows they actually came from creatures considerably less mysterious… such as bears, horses, and cows. In preparation for the study — the first of its kind — Bryan Sykes and his team at Oxford…

Every Job In America And What It Pays, Charted

What are people doing in America for work and just how much are they making at those jobs? This chart, which looks at the distribution of Americans through different industries and their median salaries, answers that question. The chart is the work of Nathan Yau over at Flowing Data, who used the new stats from…

Oculus Rift Developer Creates Weird Third-Person View Hack

This man is living the dream of starring in his own real-world video game, using a complex camera rig and an Oculus Rift headset to view his own life from the popular behind-and-up-a-bit third-person perspective. He is also, presumably, very confused. The project uses a pair of GoPro cameras, fixing them to a 3D-printed mount…

​Will We Ever Get A “Perfect” Movie Trilogy?

Greetings, mail mates! Today we’re looking at how Bryan Singer’s legal woes might affect his future with the X-Men, why you should give The Leftovers a chance, and of course a discussion about The Game of Thrones Character Who Must Not Be Named. Let’s do this thing. Oh, many of you wrote in asking questions…

NASA’s Orbital Carbon Observatory Has Launched!

After the original Orbital Carbon Observatory crashed into the ocean, and the first attempt at launching the replacement observatory was scrubbed yesterday with less than a minute left in the countdown, we finally have a satellite capable of tracking carbon in our atmosphere. I was there. I’m at the Vandenberg Airforce Base in California, part…

Think unboxing your new phone or tablet is cool? How about a space plane? This is the moment that European Space Agency scientists saw their IXV Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle for the first time after it arrived in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, last week. That’s quite a package to open. [ESA]

Google’s Cube Lets You DJ Six Videos at Once

Music videos are wonderful, but you can only watch one at a time. No longer—thanks to a weird, but rather fun, project from Google called The Cube, which lets you play and manipulate six at once. A product of its Creative Labs division, you can grab a cube—with mouse or finger—to reveal a different video…

Data Cuisine Uses Food And Flavor To Create Edible Infographics

Imagine a soup whose recipe is based upon local fishing statistics. Or a pizza with ingredients inspired by a city’s ethnic demographics. These are just a couple of examples of “Data Cuisine,” which uses the culinary arts not only to visualize data, but to taste it. The concept, created by data visualizer and artist Moritz…

The More Features Your Phone Has, the Longer You Spend in the Toilet

It’s perhaps a more fundamental law of technology than Moore’s Law, if we’re honest with ourselves. [Truth Facts]

A Map Showing All The Solar System’s Solid Surfaces Stitched Together

Via XKCD comes this awesome map of of the solar system’s terrestrial surfaces pieced together as if it were a massive jigsaw puzzle. The illustration reveals the surprising scarcity of solid land in the solar system. Titled “Space Without the Space,” Randall Munroe’s map excludes the surface area of not just the gas giants, but…

Can Meditation Really Slow Ageing?

It’s seven in the morning on the beach in Santa Monica, California. The low sun glints off the waves and the clouds are still golden from the dawn. The view stretches out over thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean. In the distance, white villas of wealthy Los Angeles residents dot the Hollywood hills. Here by…

How to toss food in a pan like a cool pro chef

This is, without a doubt, one of the coolest tricks of the professional chef. And, let’s be honest, we have all tried it at some point with different—sometimes disastrous—results. The guys at Serious Eats explain how to do it properly. Your meal doesn’t get any better when you flip it in a pan, but it’s…