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The Fire Phone might be underperforming, but its accompanying earbuds are great. Gizmodo’s Eric Limer had great things to say about them that you can read below, and you can pick them up for just $10 today, with a $1 MP3 credit thrown in for good measure. That’s an easy recommendation for pretty much anyone,…
This animal selfie compilation got me thinking: If the courts say these photos can’t be owned by humans because they are taken by animals, shouldn’t there be some kind of international legal mechanism to make the people who use the photos pay some money to protect each species? Makes sense to me. Above: My dog…
Google+ first popped up as Mountain View’s answer to Facebook, but as the platform has grown its most useful components have been nothing to do with social networking in the traditional sense. Here are three features that might make it worth your time to dust off your Google+ account and dive back in. Location sharing…
Back in 2013, Lorraine Loots started her 365 Paintings for Ants—one delicate, tiny beautiful painting for each of the 365 days of the year. As you can see in this video and photos of her work, they are really neat and precious. Lorraine Loots makes her beautiful miniature paintings in in Cape Town, South Africa.…
Either the folks at Leica are just plain out of ideas, or they simply enjoy playing jokes on the camera community. Their latest stunt is the $19,500 Leica M Edition 60. It’s a digital rangefinder with no rear display. Yep, it’s impossible to review your digital images. Why? We’re not sure, but Leica probably has…
Chris Wood loves glass. So much she’s dedicating her life to the study of its properties, creating these beautiful installations in which light and color become a quasi-three-dimensional object. Chris Wood is a designer and artist interesedt in light and the physical and visual qualities of glass. She studied Glass at the Royal College of…
Softcard just announced a partnership with Subway. Starting October 1, you’ll be able to eat fresh by using the company formerly known as Isis to make a mobile payment. Softcard can’t get excited about exclusivity, however: Subway is also an Apple Pay partner.
Minecraft is a sprawling game with a huge, enthusiastic fanbase. But to outsiders like Conan O’Brien, the cubist adventure can look a little juvenile… which is probably why he imagined the Minecraft team celebrating their $2.5 billion deal with Microsoft like this. While Conan shows the Minecraft leader in high spirits, the real-life version is…
A toasty pair of knitted mittens will certainly keep your hands warm once Old Man Winter arrives, but what about the rest of you? In addition to a parka and long underwear, nothing helps your body fight freezing temps like a belt of bourbon, or a shot of whiskey. And no matter where you are,…
The public restroom is not a place worth celebrating, generally speaking. It is a place of absolute necessity, awkward small talk, and worst case scenarios come true. Cintas, a company that specializes in—what else?—bathroom supplies, is dead set on changing that perception. Which is why it sponsors a contest to find the best restrooms in…
As mesmerizing as an aquarium full of fish can be, it’s hard to not feel bad about imprisoning them in a glass cell. And maybe that’s partly what inspired Adam Ben-Dor, the creator of that awesome animated Pixar-like desk lamp, to build the Abovemarine; a glass bowl on omni-directional wheels that lets its sole swimming…
One of the walls of the Ham Yard Hotel, in London, displays this amazingly cool wall clock composed by 135 traditional clocks. The hands are synchronized to display not only time but also beautiful geometric shapes. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
Smart home thermostats are becoming quite common and, for the Nest at least, downright popular. But most of these systems only monitor from one direction—that is, the user remotely checking the home. The new Wi-Fi-equipped Ecobee 3 system, however, works both ways; the device is watching its watchers with remote sensors. The Ecobee 3 from…
Have you stared into the soul of internet today? No? Well, here’s your chance. The folks over at Everything is Terrible have taken 50 VHS production company intros—those little animations that played on tapes back when you still used them—and layered them into a single deeply disturbing video. Last week we wrote about a series…
The deepest pool in the world is called Y40 and is located inside the Hotel Terme Millepini, in Italy. It contains 4300 cubic meters of thermal water at a temperature of between 89-93F (32-34C) and it’s impressively deep, 131 feet deep (40 meters.) The pool is conceived for training apnea and scuba diving. This graphic…
Surprisingly enough for a space junkie like me, I’ve never seen this image of the MIR—the Soviet space station that was destroyed on reentry on 2001 after 5,519 days in orbit. The photo was taken from the space shuttle Atlantis on the mission STS-71, docked in the photo below. What an amazing view. SPLOID is…
Are you a Russian oligarch, struggling endlessly to find gratuitous gifts to buy your other Russian oligarch friends? Well, put down that bedazzled-platinum Apple Watch: nothing beats a solid-gold 9kt PS4 or Xbox One. Lovingly hand-crafted by Gatti Labs in Italy, they presumably still function as games consoles, even despite the bling-tastic coating. Unlike your…
If you download Kindle ebooks from dubious sources aka anywhere other than Amazon, watch out. A security researcher has discovered a security hole in the “Manage Your Kindle” page on Amazon’s website that outs your Amazon credentials to hackers when you upload a malicious ebook. Amazon’s provides an extremely handy “Send to Kindle” plugin for…
NASA Inspector General Paul Martin has alerted of the awful state of the asteroid defense system, a program mandated by Congress in 2005 to detect and track at least 90 percent near-Earth objects greater than 460 feet (140 meters) in diameter by 2020. This is bad news. From the report: While the program has discovered,…
You’re not going to be able to use that NFC chip in your shiny new iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus for anything other than Apple Pay. No tapping to pair your phone with NFC-enabled speakers, no NFC tags all over your house, no nothing. Sorry to burst your bubble. According to an email that…
