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As Michael Bloomberg’s reign comes to a close, our mayor/billionaire underwriter is talking up his next move, which involves teaching other cities to be more like New York. But behind the scenes, he’s also scrambling to push through dozens of building projects that will define his legacy. A few days ago, the mayor announced his…
If you’re hosting a holiday themed gathering of some kind this year, there’s a chance you’re going to play Netflix’s “Fireplace For Your Home” on your television in the background. Why will you do this? It’s hopelessly tacky. And yet, it will feel totally right; a bit like eating fruitcake and decorating with poinsettias. But…
Flickr has a brand new feature, rolling out today, that provides code for embedding images or image slideshows directly into other websites. It looks to be a simple way for sharing sets of images without resorting to cumbersome galleries or uploads. To access the embed code, just click the share button beneath any of your…
The smartwatches are coming, and they’re coming fast. And while the big guys like Apple and Google haven’t chimed in yet, the party has definitely kicked off. Qualcomm might not be your first guess at an attendee, but it comes bearing a unique little gadget. It’s not quite what you want, but it’s at least…
The Canon EOS SL1 won a lot of fans for packing the venerable T4i into a smaller package, and now you can get it for an appropriately shrunk-down price. Amazon has the body only today for a mere $369, by far the lowest price ever. If you want two kit lenses and a few other…
Buying an iPhone is not confusing. You have a 50% shot of getting it right (unlike the 100% success rate you’d had a few months ago). But if you still need help in deciding which iPhone is best, here’s how we would rank them all. 1. iPhone 5S Duh. 2. iPhone 5 UPSET! Why? Aluminum…
A war is brewing between machines and snow, and its battle tactics are being studied—rehearsed, practiced, mapped, rerun, and mastered—in the vast parking lot of New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, home of Super Bowl XLVIII. The New York Times waxed poetic, reporting the scene: “As ballets go, this one was rather mechanical. A cast of front-loaders…
There are something like one million Android phones for every person on the planet right now (plus or minus one). Most of them suck. Many are great. Here’s the definitive list that tells you which is which. Here are the ground rules. Every Android phone available on the websites of the big four US carriers…
This is Manhattan’s Central Park as seen by Sergei Semenov. Taken earlier this year, this incredible scene is actually a straightened panorama, stitched from multiple photographs taken from a helicopter. There’s an interactive version, but this perspective—exaggerated by the straightening process—is more impressive than that. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us…
MyGlass, an app that pairs Google Glass with iOS devices, is back on the App Store after briefly appearing and disappearing earlier this week. If you’ve got both Glass and an iWhatever, you can download it here. [Slashgear]
You might have just found out that your credit card number may be compromised. Target reports that up to 40 million customers may have had their names, card numbers, expiration date and security code stolen via hacked credit card checkout scanners. Here’s how to find out if you’re one of them, and what to do…
A new update to Shazam’s iPhone app ( no Android)adds the “Auto Shazam” feature introduced to the service’s iPad app recently. Flip the switch on and the app will continuously listen to the world around you, grabbing tags for music and TV out of the air automatically. Watch out for your battery, though.
This was seen from the International Space Station. But this is not an interstellar cloud formation. It is here on Earth. You won’t believe your eyes when clicking on the much larger version: It was taken by an astronaut from Expedition 30/31 as the International Space Station was flying northwest over the Chinese coast towards…
Not all is as it seems in this tower, planned for Stockholm: The floors and columns are all made from wood, rather than steel and concrete. In fact, the timber tower will be the tallest wood building ever built when it’s finished in 2023. Why the wait? The architects, Berg | C.F. Møller, will spend…
Delivering America’s military might to foreign shores is no small feat, especially when that might is the size of an M-1 Abrams tank. For more than half a century, we’ve relied on one of the largest military aircraft in existence to do so—a plane that ended up costing just a little more to build than…
This brilliant Drone Survival Guide contains “the silhouettes of the most common drone species used today and in the near future,” each drawn to scale and marked as surveillance or killing machines. You can print it yourself (PDF) or order a folded offset print on Chromolux ALU-E mirrored paper. They claim the guide itself can…
As the analytical tools of archaeology rapidly shift toward the use of non-invasive, digital visualization—including such things as ground-penetrating radar and LiDAR—we’re seeing more and more examples of archaeologists setting off into distant landscapes, drones in hand. https://gizmodo.com/drone-mapping-lost-pyramids-in-the-andes-1447970230 A short news item posted by the University of Alabama in Huntsville this week is thus just…
Dow Chemical Company would like to clear up a massive misunderstanding. STYROFOAM™, registered trademark, is not the foamy white stuff that makes up coffee cups or takeout trays or packing peanuts or egg cartons or even movie props. No, STYROFOAM™ usually comes in light blue sheets, and real STYROFOAM™ is used for building insulation and…
Photographer Martin Adolfsson’s book Suburbia Gone Wild, published earlier this year, documents the weird and expanding mirage of seemingly endless copies and duplicate environments called suburbia, like some poorly diagnosed spatial syndrome taking over the landscapes of the world from Mexico to Egypt, Thailand to India, to here in the United States. The rooms are…
After yesterday’s rumors that hackers had swiped Target customer credit card information on Black Friday, the retail giant has officially confirmed that there was indeed a security breach—one that potentially affects up to 40 million of its customers. But it’s not just Black Friday shoppers who have cause for concern. Though the initial hack occurred…
