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You spend a long time staring at your smartphone screen, so don’t settle for a backdrop image that’s staid and dull. These Android and iOS apps bring a wealth of superb ready-to-go images right to your handset in an instant, so the only problem you’ll have is choosing your favorites. 1) 500 Firepaper Any wallpaper…
Every tablet maker is always looking to outdo the competition. Usually that means progressively thinner and more powerful hardware, but Xiaomi decided to flip the script and turn one of its tablets, the Mi Pad 2, into a full-on Transformer. Before you go on thinking that Xiaomi has somehow technologically leap-frogged the competition by a…
It’s getting harder and harder for pinball machines to compete with the cutting-edge graphics on home gaming consoles, and even VR now. But by adding an interactive element allowing players to design their own tables, artists Jérémie Cortial and Roman Miletitch have found a way to make pinball relevant again. With Flipppaper, the virtual pinball…
In March 1968, a Soviet Golf II submarine carrying nuclear ballistic missiles exploded and sank 1,500 nautical miles northwest of Hawaii. Five months later, the US government discovered the wreckage—and decided to steal it. So began Project AZORIAN, one of the most absurdly ambitious operations the CIA has ever conceived. The potential payoff of Project…
Once a crowded holiday resort town, Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt is now hauntingly empty. Before the Arab Spring in 2011, about 15 million tourists visited the North African country each year. But after several terrorist attacks major airlines suspended flights and foreign offices around the world warned of terrorist threats, Egypt is not such a…
The TSA Randomizer iPad app has two jobs: 1) point left or right, and 2) do it randomly. It’s an app a novice coder would write. And it cost the TSA $1.4 million. In the video below Android developer Chris Pacia takes a crack at building the Randomizer himself, and gets the whole thing done…
If you find yourself in trouble you can always use your phone to dial 911. Or you can reach for this compact 3D-printed lens that turns your smartphone’s camera flash into the Bat-Signal, summoning someone who can help but who also has a way cooler car than the police do. Designed by Dalpek, the 3D…
Next fall you might be watching Thursday Night Football on Twitter, according to Bloomberg. Apparently the social network has won the rights to stream Thursday night NFL games online. We’re having a very hard time picturing what this looks like. The newswire claims that Twitter won out in a bidding war against Verizon, Yahoo, and…
They may just be plastic, metal and wires, but robots can elicit… physical responses in humans. That’s according to a new study by researchers who analyzed what happened to volunteers when they touched automatons in areas that would be thought of as intimate on an actual human being. A team of scientists from Stanford University…
HP’s new Spectre has a horrible case of laptop envy—specifically of Apple’s MacBook. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported HP’s (lofty) goal to out-innovate its Cupertino competitor with its new Spectre laptop. Although this ostentatiously designed laptop is an impressive piece of engineering, it’s all wrapped in gaudy aesthetics, and that could be a problem.…
It can be hard to imagine how your place will look when you’ve remodelled it. But IKEA has a solution, with a new VR system being made available on Steam that will help you plan your kitchen. The new app, which uses the HTC Vive headset, currently allows you to explore three different kitchen set-ups.…
The boundaries between technology and automotive sectors continue to blur, and now Toyota and Microsoft have announced that they’ll be working together to imbue cars with artificial intelligence that will, they promise, humanize the driving experience. That might sound like an odd idea given the rise of self-driving vehicles, but it’s going to be a…
Your shirts may yet be spared your clumsy eating. A team of scientists has created a new kind of super slippery coating called X-SLIPS that can shed all kinds of water- and oil-based products—like ketchup and mustard! The new coating has been developed by researchers from Pennsylvania State University and University of Illinois at Urbana−Champaign.…
Artificial intelligence is meant to be taking over the world, but along the way, it seems to be helping out humans from time to time. Today’s example: Facebook is using its artificial intelligence network to describe photos to the blind. If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, the vast majority of my friends’ posts…
Between them, DJI, 3DR, Parrot and (soon) GoPro dominate the market for consumer photography drones. So when all those companies announce that they’re forming a group to lobby for sensible drone policies, it’s worth taking note. The four companies have formed the Drone Manufacturers Alliance, a group that will specifically focus on “policies that promote…
To coincide with the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Blu-ray today, Sphero has released an update to its BB-8 app, enabling the tiny toy droidto watch the movie along with you, and to react to what’s happening on screen with sounds and motion. If you’re having a tough time finding someone willing…
On the list of first-world problems, not being bothered to plug in your Tesla is very near the top. Luckily for lazy Model S owners, the Department of Energy is on it. Wireless charging has been around for years in cellphones, but it’s never really caught on, due to its low efficiency, lack of universal…
While the US is making slow but steady progress toward an autonomous future, China is fast-tracking plans to get self-driving vehicles on the road. And one of the chief forces behind this revolution is an engineer who recently worked at Google competitor Intel. A fascinating profile in theNew York Times looks at Gansha Wu, who…
It’s no secret that tech companies are cesspools of homogeneity—sometimes embarrassingly so. While a big initiative launches in the White House to help diversify the industry, here’s another very inspiring project that seeks to tell the stories of underrepresented voices in the tech world. Techies is the work of Helena Price, who posted an open…
The placebo effect is real, we all know that. Our bodies can be tricked into getting better and healthier even when we’re take taking sugar pills or fake drugs or undergoing treatment that isn’t even supposed to help us get better. If we believe it will help, it sometimes really does help. Ted-Ed dives in…
