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Android app developers don’t always play by the rules when it comes to icon size, which can leave the home screen looking like a bit of mess. But now Google is forcing icons to assume a unified size, pleasing design pedants everywhere. Google has guidelines about icon dimensions for Android, but developers often ignore them.…
You can rely on Siri for searching the internet, sending a text message and, err, laying down some sick beats. Turns out that Siri can beatbox—just don’t expect too much from it. Ask Siri to beatbox for you, and it will spit out a loop that it’s “been practicing.” You’ll hear it repeat the phrase…
The experimental rock band Yeasayer has released the video for its new single “I Am Chemistry,” and it’s suitably strange. Imagine an animated version of The Martian with more dancing and hallucinogenic drugs, and you might not be far off the mark. The video was directed by New Media, and the single is the first…
According to The Guardian, leader of the online advertising world and CEO of Alphabet Eric Schmidt will have a “brief conversation” this Friday with Pope Francis, presumably not about moving the @pontifex Twitter account to Google+. Self-driving popemobile: more likely. The Pope meeting with major business leaders isn’t unprecedented. During his trip to the US…
When it’s not churning out smartphones and giant tablets and uh, giant container ships, Samsung also does healthy business manufacturing microprocessors. It does such a good job, in fact, that chip-making rival Qualcomm will be using Samsung’s foundries for its next big thing. The Snapdragon 820 was announced late last year. It’s a chip you’re…
In iOS 9, Apple introduced Wi-Fi Assist, a theoretically good feature that defaults to cellular data when your wi-fi connection is sucking. Unfortunately, in doing so, it quietly went through my data plan without telling me. In the latest beta of iOS, Apple is fixing that. Kind of. Wi-Fi Assist is still present in iOS…
Swiss scientists may have found the answer to a troubling mystery about the early evolution of our universe. After the Big Bang, the universe cooled down for a billion years in a kind of cosmic dark age. But then it mysteriously reheated. Electrons and protons that had been happily joined in hydrogen atoms were ripped…
Yes, there is a Big Red Button for… something. Although plenty of journalists have been passengers in Google’s cars, Steven Levy is probably the first one to sit in the drivers’ seat. (Although, technically, aren’t we all passengers in Google’s cars?) Levy writes about his experience at Backchannel in a thoroughly entertaining (and very long…
The Pritzker Prize was announced this morning, an award many consider the highest honor for design. This year’s prize went to Alejandro Aravena, a Chilean architect you may not know—but definitely should. The Santiago-based architect is young as far as Pritzker laureates go (48), and he might not have a famous fire-igniting skyscraper to his…
Japan is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world and home to some of the most innovative companies that have ever existed. But today was not its finest day. Tokyo is currently hosting the Wearable Device Technology Expo, and thanks to AFP photographer Yoshikazu Tsuno, we get to see all the gadgets…
The maniac inventor Colin Furze cooked up a truly spectacular thing this time around: he made a giant firework wheel. As in, fireworks are attached to a wheel (not unlike a windmill) which is attached to a truck which is then all lit at once which is then spun around in circles which then explodes…
In a flurry of buzzwords, YouTube star PewDiePie and Disney’s Maker Studios announced a partnership that brings us Revelmode. What is Revelmode? Well, that’s a little less clear. Revelmode is being called a “network.” Which is technically true in that the end result is a bunch of content creators working under a single brand name,…
GOP presidential candidate and sweater ascetic Jeb Bush’s emotional register on the campaign trail hovers between “mildly deflated” to “moderately chagrined”—but LOOK at how his eyes light up as he realizes that the expensive and impractical gadget he’s been wearing can make phone calls. Finally, a ! moment for our favorite dour Floridian scion! “My watch…
The LA gas leak may be a climate disaster, but a similar problem is playing out all over the world. Now, thanks to infrared technology, we’re starting to see just how much methane the oil and gas industry is hemorrhaging—mostly, out of laziness. It took two months for one of the largest methane leaks in…
Calling Sony’s new smart light a “light” is doing this weird gizmo a disservice—it’s much more than that. Unappealingly named a “Multifunctional Light,” this ceiling gadget has temperature, humidity, and luminance sensors and can even detect when you’re home, turn on the TV, control the AC, and play music. Oh, it’s also a light. The…
A substantial landslide closed part of Washington state’s highway this week. The more impressive part? This mess is going to take days to weeks to clean up. The rock slide closed a chunk of US2 in central Washington between Wenatchee and Chelan early on Sunday. The stretch of road—Pine Canyon in the Wenachee Mountains, part…
Like battling with an Etch A Sketch to draw a simple circle, Lego doesn’t exactly lend itself well to building curved shapes. But the folks at Bright Bricks managed to build a lifesize version of BB-8 for the Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiere in the UK that looks perfectly spherical. The engineered support structures…
A British vlogger was excited to try out his brand new hoverboard when he got a nasty surprise this week. And naturally it was all caught on tape. The hoverboard (sorry guys, that’s what they’re called now) caught fire after a night of charging and the vlogger’s very first attempt at using it. As the…
Update (2pm 1.13.2015): MTA officials are now saying that L train service between Brooklyn and Manhattan may be down for years, while they repair the Canarsie Tunnel. Suddenly, this gondola plan sounds extra brilliant… Williamsburg has a problem. The neighborhood’s become so popular so quickly that some fear local infrastructure will buckle under the exploding…
If people pouring tens of thousands of dollars into upgrading a Honda leaves you scratching your head, elaborate PC builds should baffle you even more. Some people take great pride in their sick computers, though, and what better way to show off than with a luxury yacht-shaped case? Lian Li’s new PC-Y6 Odyssey case looks…
