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YouTube is the new CSPAN. Well not really, but they just announced they’re giving members of the U.S. Congress access to enhanced features like live streaming. Whether congress members choose to reach out to constituents is their prerogative, but at least they’ve got another tool now.
Warning: this video by filmmaker Will Witte is probably going to break your brain. It’s an MC Escher-esque loop of screengrabs, and amazingly enough, none of the shots were achieved with the help of a computer. Watch it once. Watch it twice. Watch it as many times as you can handle before your mind collapses…
A built-in projector isn’t quite at the top of anyone’s wish list for tablet improvements. But that didn’t stop Promate from putting one into its new LumiTab and declaring it the world’s first tablet projector. The average consumer might not be interested yet, but corporate honchos who live and die by PowerPoint presentations are surely…
Even though this bowl of breakfast cereal meets its demise at the hands of what looks to be a tiny firecracker, through the eye of a high-speed camera the resulting explosion makes it look like a small island being wiped out by an atomic bomb. Whoever first said that you shouldn’t play with your food…
Paint in the face? Powder up the nose? We’re not playing around. This is fine freaking art. https://gizmodo.com/shooting-challenge-color-splash-5995326 WINNER: Bathroom Splash So, I set up the camera in our bathroom on a tripod and used a remote to snap multiple photos while also being the subject. No fancy lighting, just the one light in the…
We couldn’t be happier that Lego master Chris McVeigh—aka Power Pig—is continuing to use his formidable skills to create brick versions of iconic cameras. Following up on his Leica M9-P he brings us this gorgeous Lego version of the Polaroid Land Camera 1000. https://gizmodo.com/build-this-lego-leica-m9-p-hermes-and-save-yourself-49-5990400 And going above and beyond the call of duty, McVeigh even…
Physical and digital space share the same problems (and often, the same solutions). So why don’t designers from both realms talk more? Over on the Atlantic Cities today, we meet Chicago’s Chief Technology Officer, John Tolva, who believes that information architects and IRL architects and urban planners have much to learn from each other. According…
Anyone who has tried to navigate down a busy sidewalk while dodging people who are obliviously looking down at their phones will appreciate this latest prank by ImprovEverywhere. Their latest mission in New York City was to pose as municipal workers, with orange “Department of Transportation” vests, and act as “Seeing Eye People” for texting-obsessed…
Visit any tech-heavy conference and you’re bound to find a sea of MacBooks covered in clever decals playing up the glowing Apple logo on the lid. But a sticker only offers so much customization; if you really want your hardware to stand out you need to take things to the next level with a custom-cut…
You can now use the iPhone’s front-facing camera with Vine. Ready those six-second selfies.
The US and USSR had more than 60,000 nuclear warheads pointed at each other at the height of the Cold War. While the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970 and START in 1994 have shrunk that figure to around 26,000, nobody is really sure how many still exist—because nobody’s ever actually verified the number of warheads, just…
For a long time now, our smartphones have been getting more and more, well, smart. They do more things. You probably haven’t beaten your phone at chess in years. And the race to cram increasingly granular, eventually useless, features into them has defined the past few years of phone making. Except the next big waypoint…
If your daily commute has become mundane and boring, you can easily spice things up with this clever hack that makes it feel like you’ve just jacked someone’s ride. All you need is an old screwdriver—the more worn it is the more convincing the effect will be—and a car key you’re willing to hack to…
Flash drives are so cheap and ubiquitous that you probably have them stashed everywhere, even on your keychain. And to ensure that all the jostling against your keys, coins, and whatever else is in your pockets doesn’t kill the drive, SanDisk has equipped its latest Cruzer with a spinning shield. Available in capacities from four…
It might look like a one-seat sofa capable of traversing almost any terrain on the planet, but this compact electric vehicle is actually designed to be a highly maneuverable and comfortable alternative to a traditional wheelchair. You won’t ever see it cruising down sidewalks, but one day they might be crawling all over hospitals. The…
German photographer Michael Wolf captures the aging high-rise culture of Hong Kong, which has more buildings over five hundred feet tall than any other city in the world. The results are so stunning, you’ll swear they’re somehow faked. The modern face of Hong Kong was formed, like New York and Chicago, by a fire. In…
Samsung has just announced that it’s rolling some pretty exciting new memory into production, which will finally bring computer-like RAM performance to your mobile. Of course, to work that out you have to sift through all the mention of 20nm manufacturing techniques and LPDDR3 naming. What you really need to know is that it’s fast:…
BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins told Bloomberg that “in five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” and that tablets are “not a good business model.” Which is maybe true if you sell PlayBooks and less so if you sell, say, 20 million iPads every three months.
Jawbone is acquiring BodyMedia, makers of health monitoring armbands, for over $100 million. No further details have been made public about the deal. In other news, Jawbone is also opening up its API to third party developers for cross-app pollination. Version 2.5 of the iOS UP app, now includes 10 integrated services from IFTTT, LoseIt!,…
Harry Winston prides itself on thinking outside the box, or the watch case, when it comes to designing new timepieces. Particularly with the company’s Opus series that seems determined to get rid of traditional watch hands once and for all. https://gizmodo.com/this-mechanical-masterpiece-of-a-watch-tells-time-witho-5892157 The Opus XIII—or the Opus Thirteen if your roman numerals are a little rusty—uses…
