JJ Abrams’s rotundly adorable new BB-8 droids are already primed to steal the spotlight in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But if you were wondering whether the droids could get any cuter, the answer is, yes, if Apple got involved.
It started nearly thirty years ago, when Ben Reardon encountered a robot playing a classical guitar at the 1988 World Expo in his hometown of Brisbane, Australia. He was only a teenager at the time, but he knew right then what he had to do.
If you often find yourself lying awake at night wondering what the moon will look like in a thousand years, you can rest easy now. NYU design student Yingjie Bei has built a device that’ll tell you everything you were wondering about the lunar cycle, and probably, much much more.
Legos have been experiencing something of a renaissance lately. With adults now using their childhood building bricks in more creative ways than ever, it was only a matter of time before somebody decided to bring a portable, customizable, Lego-based desktop computer into the world.
If all the talk of weak battery life has left you lukewarm about the idea of a smartwatch, or if you're interested but still prefer the look of an analog timepiece, you'll want to keep an eye on Vector, the company that swooped onto the smartwatch scene out of nowhere this week.
I’m just getting started fiddling with modular synthesis. Everything I know up to this point is pure book-learning. I’m like the Prioress in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. She has no firsthand experience of the culture (“And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly, / After the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe, / For…
Often as not, some of the best listening on SoundCloud is simply of people trying their hand at new tools. One person’s test run of a fresh plug-in is someone else’s arm-chair, near-first-hand peek at the creative process. Take Brian Biggs, aka Dance Robot Dance, who is documenting his efforts at old-school tape…
This children's music toy handles the 5 major instruments.
Video of the "viola organista," an instrument designed by Leonardo Da Vinci five centuries back, but only now just built for the first time, via Robert Sorokanich of Gizmodo. More details at theage.com.au.
How tiny is this experimental radio, reports Robert Sorokanich of Gizmodo? "At its heart is a micrometer-sized oscillator powered by one-atom-thick graphene."
Over at Kotaku.com, Kirk Hamilton focuses on the three-note melody that plays when the new Microsoft Xbox One is turned on. The startup sounds of both Microsoft and Apple computer devices have gotten attention in the past, thanks to work done for the companies by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. Hamilton contrats this with…
Nerf changed the way we all played indoor basketball without a proper court; replacing trash cans and balls of paper with plastic nets and foam balls. And now you can take your scaled-down game to near NBA-caliber levels with Eastpoint's new wireless hoops and scoreboard that keeps tab on time and points complete with…
These things look like iPhone 4 clones down to the buttons on the metal band and the glass finish. So much that they are probably risking a cease-and-desist. Except they are travel USB-based electric shavers from Shavetech. Your own Jon Ive baby face comes at $40 a pop. [Shavetech]
You might not have ever heard of Misfit Wearables but you'll want to pay attention starting now that its first gadget has made its debut.
I want this: a thimble that turns everything it touches into a touch-sensitive screen, so you can use quick gestures to make things happen. Imagine going around the world, moving your finger like a magic wand, making things happen. You know, like Minority Report wave-in-the-air thimbles, but touch-based.
Are you being eaten alive by mosquitos? Is the itch driving you completely and utterly insane? Us too! So when we heard about this magic wand that supposedly takes the itch away, we had to call it in to make fun of it.
LG has announced that its new Google-powered smart TVs, announced at CES in January, will launch in the US towards the end of May.
While Sony has a track record for making beautifully slim laptops, so far it's ignored Intel's prescribed ultrabook gimmickry. That stops now, with the newly announced Vaio T—but sadly, it's a laptop that's doomed before it even hits the shelf.
Samsung's Galaxy SIII is due to launch officially on May 3rd. We've already seen some blurry images of what might be the phone—but now an even more convincing example has surfaced in Vietnam.
IKEA constantly manages to churn out innovative, affordable products. The latest, however, is seeing it move directly into the technology sector: it's launching its own TV, which comes integrated into a piece of furniture to completely banish cables from your home.
