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To appeal to cat owners, just target their cats. And what better way to do so than with an advertisement that is literally catnip? In this diabolically clever ad campaign for Bulk Cat Litter Warehouse, Rethink Canada came up with the idea of spraying paper with catnip concentrate. Direct mail ads were printed on the…
Facebook just entered into an agreement to buy the hugely popular messaging app, which recently passed the milestone of 450 million active monthly users. The cost? $16 billion (more on the price below). Wow. Wait…How Much? According to the release, the purchase price is $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in Facebook stock, plus another…
NASA has created the first ever map of radioactive material in a supernova remnant, revealing one of the biggest mysteries in the universe: How stars blow up in these explosions, sowing the universe with heavy elements like iron, titanium or gold. The 3D simulation above shows the explosion process in Cassiopeia A, rendered from data…
Airplane seats aren’t exactly designed for comfortable sleeping—so if you’re on a long-haul flight, a travel pillow is a must. And since the three blankets that most planes carry aren’t enough for 100 passengers to share, this clever two-in-one neck pillow has everything you need to at least try and get some shut-eye on a…
This may just be the epitome of baby chick luxury: A coop made out of vinyl repurposed from old movie billboards. The Oregon poultry farmer responsible for this spectacular feat of ingenuity, Mark Anderson, uses the colorful barn as a shelter for chickens in the first phase of their lives. And the accompanying photographs on…
Touchscreen displays in our cars aren’t going away anytime soon. So designer Matthaeus Krenn figured that now was as good a time as any to radically improve their interfaces, replacing grids of ugly buttons and options with an elegant and minimal multi-touch UI —-that the driver doesn’t need to look at. Because, of course, the…
Get ready for input and then also some output; Google I/O is officially scheduled for June 25-26th.
Not only has winter turned our cities into frozen hellscapes—it’s also turning them into electrified death traps. According to Gothamist, a section of Sixth Avenue is currently closed off due to dangerously electrified doorknobs and grates—and melting rock salt might be to blame. The phenomenon of “stray voltage” isn’t all that uncommon, but it’s more…
It won’t be cheap, but you could soon be the owner of a piece of World War II history in the Czech Republic. Oskar Schindler’s factory in the tiny village of Brnenec is going on the market. Yes, Oskar Schindler is the same Schindler who had a list. Truth be told, this factory is a…
For a mountain biker, the place where you start your run shouldn’t really matter. But this transparent, fabric-enmeshed cycling pavilion is the kind of place you might find yourself wanting to hang around in. The 300-square-foot platform is perched above Chile’s Central Valley, a broad piece of verdant green that’s sandwiched on either side by…
Electronic cigarettes have exploded in popularity over the past few years, probably because they let you smoke indoors again. And now there’s even more reason to keep an e-cig in hand all day long because Supersmoker has added Bluetooth capabilities to its latest model. It means you no longer have to fumble for the phone…
The advent of genetically modified crops has promised heartier food and higher yields that could potentially reduce poverty and malnutrition rates the world over. Two decades later, they’re also broadly maligned and mistrusted. But is it finally time to put down the pitchforks? A Brief History of GMOs Humanity’s dominance over the natural world is…
Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson is a master of light and color, creating trippy experiential works that mess with our perception. The artist’s latest piece, recently installed at the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park in Des Moines, Iowa, is like walking inside a human-scaled spectrograph. Dubbed the panoramic awareness pavilion, the outdoor sculpture consists of…
[Fluxmachine]
The Best of Warner Bros. 50 Film Blu-ray Collection is one of the most popular entertainment items we’ve ever listed, and today it’s down to its lowest price of $179. This set includes digital copies in addition to the blu-rays, and features films like Inception, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, and The Dark Knight,…
The new version of Google Maps for desktop that was introduced at last year’s I/O is finally coming out of preview and into just plain old “view” today. Welcome to the future.
The 3Doodler was the first handheld 3D printer to hit the market, but its use of heating elements and hot plastic meant that it couldn’t be used by kids—arguably one of its main demographics—without parental supervision. So Hasbro’s come up with a much safer alernative called the DohVinci that uses a new kind of Play-Doh…
It’s finally time! Google just announced that it’s “exploring” the idea of bringing Fiber to nine more metropolitan areas across the country—34 cities in total. And based on the map Google made to show what the expansion would look like, you’re in luck if you live in the South. Don’t get too excited, though. Google…
Redesigning New Orleans for flooding, new buildings in Williamsburg that don’t suck, and a skyscraper in L.A. that will soon be the tallest west of Chicago. Plus: Google’s urban expansion and dying department stores, all in this week’s Urban Reads. How New Orleans’ new water plan will dramatically reshape the city’s streets and canals to…
Tired of sitting in traffic? Just take the completely automated, high-speed safety lane! At least that’s what the singing, time-traveling family of the 1950s did in this amazing film from General Motors. In 1956, over 2.2 million Americans visited the General Motor’s Motorama exhibit. It traveled from city to city showing off the latest and…
