Tech News

Drinking Away the Day Is Acceptable With a Calendar Made of Tea

What has your calendar done for you lately? Just reminding you of the day isn’t going to cut it anymore—that’s why god gave us smartphones. So if traditional calendars want any hope of staying relevant, it’s time to start pulling double-duty. Which is exactly why we love this ingenious—if perhaps mildly unsanitary—drinkable tea calendar from…

Gogo has just announced that the FCC has granted the in-flight Wi-Fi provider with a “blanket license to operate up to 1,000 Ku-band Satellite aircraft for international and domestic service.” What? Basically it just means that Gogo will soon have expensively slow service on transatlantic flights.

Costco UK Will Happily Sell You This Awesome $115,000 F1 Simulator

What do you rely on your local Costco for? Gigantic boxes of diapers? Bulk packs of chicken fingers? In the UK, when you’re stocking up on bangers and mash, you can also go home with a full-size $115,000 Formula One simulator. Although, sadly, they’re not sold in bulk packs for bigger savings. The simulator is…

Can This RGB Dotted Reflector Really Improve Digital Camera Shots?

A photography lighting accessories company called B2PRO claims to have come up with a simple way to improve digital photos taken with an external flash and reflector umbrella. Instead of just being covered in a highly reflective fabric, the RGB Umbrella actually features a complex pattern of red, green, and blue dots across its surface—like…

This Liquid Hydrogen UAV Just Flew for Two Days Straight

In 2009, the Office of Naval Research’s super-endurance drone, the Ion Tiger, flew for a record 23 hours, 17 minutes—the longest ever for a fuel cell-powered UAV. But late last week, the ONR demolished its own record with a 48-plus hour foray into the great blue yonder. The original Ion Tiger relied on hydrogen compressed…

BlackBerry Is Bringing BBM to iOS and Android This Summer

Today, during the BlackBerry Live Keynote, the company announced that it will be launching BlackBerry Messenger—BBM—on iOS and Android this Summer. This is a big move for the company, which has found itself increasingly trapped in a badly-built prison of its own making. Now, BlackBerry will make one of its most popular features to users…

Intricate, Ultra-Accurate Blueprints of Botanical Life

Illustration and science have always gone hand in hand. If you want to understand something, drawing it is a good place to start. Macoto Murayama, a 29-year-old botanist and designer, goes even further: he carefully dissects and models flowers using 3D drafting software. Murayama, who has a degree in spatial design, started buying flowers and…

Windows “Blue” Is Officially Called Windows 8.1 and Free

Microsoft just announced on a call with shareholders that the Windows Blue update will officially be called Windows 8.1, which will be a free update. It’ll be available for both Windows 8 and Windows RT. A preview will be available to the public after the Microsoft Build conference. Windows 8.1 is expected to fix a…

How the Nokia Lumia 925 Stacks Up to the Competition

Confirming yesterday’s gorgeous leaked images, Nokia’s finally unveiled its newest flagship Windows Phone, the Lumia 925. And just as the photos promised, this latest Lumia incarnation comes to us in a sleek, aluminum-cased beauty of a body. Now that’s all good and dandy, but the real test comes with what it’s packing under the hood.…

The Construction Lamp: An Oil Derrick Look, Inspired by Tinker Toys

The Construction Lamp looks like oil derricks you see dotting the landscape in parts of Texas. Their industrial aesthetic is the result of the designer Joost van Bleiswijk playing with the nuts, bolts, and tools in his workshop as though he was still a kid. In fact, van Bleiswijk says the lamp was inspired by…

Of Course a Cheese Store Has a Tiny Grater Business Card

Since printing its address and contact details on a slice of muenster cheese would probably do more harm than good for Bon Vivant, the Brazilian-based cheese shop hired ad agency JWT to come up with something better. And in every way possible, this miniature cheese grater business card is a much better idea. So as…

Hell Yes! You Can Gchat in Outlook Soon

Here’s some good, good news. Microsoft is adding Google Talk (which all of you just call Gchat) support to Outlook.com. Meaning, you can use Google’s chat service right through Microsoft’s beautiful new(ish) webmail page. Awesome. https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-did-the-impossible-the-new-hotmail-is-fantas-5930358 The addition of Google Talk chat (no video or voice) to Outlook is welcome news, since until now, Microsoft…

This Clever Bug Spray Billboard Is Actually a Giant Insect Trap

What better way is there to advertise the effectiveness of your insecticide spray than with a billboard that also happens to double as a gigantic bug trap? Created by Italian ad agency Publicis for a bug spray brand called Orphea, the billboard is partially covered in an invisible non-drying glue so that over time thousands…

You Can Pre-Order NVIDIA’s Project Shield on May 20 for $350

NVIDIA says Project Shield will be available for pre-order starting May 20 for $350. The open platform portable gaming console will begin shipping in June. https://gizmodo.com/nvidia-project-shield-hands-on-a-little-less-weird-tha-5974239 The device is a little bit of everything at once—phone, tablet, and console. Shield runs Android Jelly Bean and has high-fidelity audio, 2GB RAM, 16GB flash storage, and 720p…

When Will Computers Be as Powerful as the Human Brain?

We all know that computing power roughly doubles every 18 months—but at that rate, how long will it take for computers to be as powerful as the human brain? As this animation from Mother Jones shows, not long. It might have been slow going at first, but we’re soon about to witness a growth spurt…

The BlackBerry Live gala keynote jamboree is about to start; you can watch the livestream here, and we’ll be updating with news as it breaks.

10 Japanese Micro Homes That Redefine Living Small

If you listen to the architect Kengo Kuma, the craze for kyosho jutaku, that distinctly Japanese variant of the micro home, started in the thirteenth century, when the poet Kamo no Chomei penned an essay about the joys of living in a shack called An Account of My Hut. Contemporaneously speaking, though, micro homes became…

Your Philips Hue Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smarter

The luminescent chameleon that is the Philips Hue lighting system is pretty sweet as it is but, starting today, it’s going to gain a swath of new functions demanded by its users. Here’s what’s in store for version 1.1. https://gizmodo.com/philips-hue-lightning-review-your-lamps-not-worthy-up-5994183 First off, the timer feature is finally being ported to Android devices. This previously iOS-exclusive…

Can a Number Be Illegal?

You might not think too much about numbers as you sit and use your computer, but the underpinnings of software and images are based on them—and that means, in theory, a string of numerical characters can in fact be illegal. Imagine a piece of dodgy software or an illegal image: they’re all characterized, at their…

Nokia Lumia 925 Hands-On: The Windows Phone You’ll Want (Updated)

Nokia’s just unveiled the Lumia 925—and it’s the Windows phone that you’ll want. Gone is the all-plastic traditional Lumia, subsumed by a much more refined feeling metal-polycarbonate mix. This thing looks and feels great. So, what’s it like? Well, if you take the Lumia 920, remove about 20 to 30 per cent of the weight,…