Tech News

You can now “create and edit drawings” and even access Docs, Sheets and Slides offline. [Google Drive]

The team behind Glass has a very special Easter Egg for Glass owners: A creepy panorama team photo! [Valleywag]

This Infinitely Configurable Pegboard Makes Storage Artful

Remember that pegboard you hung your baseball caps from in your bedroom when you were a kid? Pin-press is a vast improvement on the same idea. It’s a big board with giant wooden pegs you can push in and out to use as shelves, hooks, and all-around creative storage. The boards can be customized in…

Step Inside the Mechanized Fun-House Wasteland of Artist Jon Kessler

Jon Kessler is an artist known for his kinetic sculptures formed out of ragged machinery and surveillance cameras. His latest installation, The Web, at the Swiss Institute in New York, is a sensory rabbit-hole into to our hyper-connected world. Walking into Kessler’s installation is like entering a kid’s fort made out of circuit boards, TV…

This Laser Shutter Photography Rig Freezes Insects In Flight

Lacking the technical skills needed to build his own sophisticated shutter trigger system from scratch, photographer Linden Gledhill hacked together a rig of his own using an off-the-shelf system called StopShot so he could snap macro shots of insects in flight. The results were stunning, so much so that Cognysis, the company behind the StopShot…

Being Trapped In a Building Seems Less Scary Than This Robot Snake Rescuing You

We’ve been pretty harsh on Carnegie Mellon University’s artificial snake, which, admittedly, is an impressive piece of robotic engineering. But seeing it randomly writhe around while it tries to make its way across the floor and over obstacles will never not be unsettling. https://gizmodo.com/no-no-no-that-creepy-robot-snake-strangles-on-contact-5991709 In its latest stunt the robot snake is used to explore…

Everything You Need to Know After Buying the HTC One

It’s here! It’s finally here! It’s – all right, settle down. Sure you’re excited. You’ve read the reviews. You might even be a seasoned Android connoisseur. But it always helps to be extra prepared for enjoying a truly awesome new phone. So whether you own it already or don’t, here are the five steps for…

T-Mobile Has To Stop Its “Deceptive” No-Contract Ad Push

T-Mobile’s big no-contract, Uncarrier campaign just hit a bit of a snag; Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has ordered the company to correct the deceptive campaign, which promised no contracts and no commitment without saying anything about hardware subsidies. T-Mobile has agreed to update the ads nationwide. https://gizmodo.com/t-mobile-is-ending-subsidies-in-2013-that-means-expensi-5966363 The issue stems from T-Mobile’s proclivity…

The Ultimate (Free) Virus Protection Guide

So you got caught with your pants down on the Internet (figuratively, folks) and contracted a virus. That sucks. Or maybe you were wearing protection but still fell victim to some nasty bit of code that managed to slip by your antivirus software undetected. That sucks even more. Either way, it’s nothing to feel ashamed…

This USB DAC Is Your Make-Music-Sing Deal of the Day

Even if you’ve got a sweet pair of cans, listening to music through the on-board jack on your phone or laptop can be underwhelming. That’s why you need a little gadget called a DAC, or a digital-analog-converter. They take the flat, quiet sound that your crappy on-board audio produces and make it clearer and louder.…

Watch How Retweets Ripple Out Through the Internet

A quick tweet can blast through Twitter like wildfire. All it takes is a click of a button and anyone can help push that 140 character shout just a little further through cyberspace, until everybody knows. This is what it looks like when that happens. “Where Does My Tweet Go” is a neat little Twitter…

Anonymous Just Took Down NAMBLA’s Homepage to Protest Pedophilia Pride Day

As you may, hopefully, be unaware, today is Alice Day, a day inspired by Lewis Carroll’s debated sexual attraction to Alice In Wonderland’s very underage and very real counterpart, when proud pedophiles come together in celebration of their disorder. So it’s a beautiful day for a NAMBLA takedown, and Anonymous was happy to answer the…

Hated Learning Piano As a Kid? At Least It Wasn’t the Wheelharp

The Wheelharp looks like a musical creation dating back to the time of Beethoven and Mozart, but believe it or not it’s not an antique. It’s a modern instrument co-invented by Jon Jones and Mitchell Manger, based on an instrument created just over ten years ago by Jones as a way to let a single…

Twitter for Mac Is Finally Updated for the First Time in Over a Year

After an absurdly long silence, Twitter has finally announced an admittedly small set of updates to its OS X client. And at this point, we’ll take what we can get. Among the improvements, the Tweet compose box now includes a convenient button for easier photo-sharing—photos that are finally getting the full Retina support they so…

Unconfirmed blood tests suggest Syria has attacked opposition groups with chemical weapons. Uh oh, let’s hope not.

Mathematical Proof That Growing Old Means Getting Boring

What happens when you crunch a heap of Facebook data with one of the most sophisticated computational tools in the world? Mathematical proof of the myriad ways your life gets boring as you get older. As you shed your youth, you can look forward to spending even more time whining about the weather and fretting…

The Beautiful, Precise Images of Buildings That 3D Scanning Enables

3D scanning—though it’s been around since the 1960s—has been in the news of late, with Harvard using the technology to recreate ancient statues and MakerBot announcing a desktop scanner last month. But cheaper, faster, and more accessible 3D scanners aren’t just revolutionizing how we print terrifying models of our own faces. They’re also changing how…

How Many Rubik’s Cubes Would You Need To Build a House?

Looking for an easier way to change the color of your home without breaking out the paint brushes and rollers? Build it from Rubik’s Cubes, instead of traditional materials like wood, steel, or drywall. According to this calculator, you’ll need about 430,000 Rubik’s Cubes for a typical 2,000 square foot, two-story abode. And to solve…

Rumored First Picture of Olympus E-P5 Continues Vintage Design Trend

The very first picture of what is purported to be Olympus’s upcoming E-P5 mirrorless camera has surfaced, and has more of the retro touches we have come to expect know and love. Move the arrows on the slider above from left to right to see a P5 / PEN-F comparison. When the slider is on…

Galaxy S IV Display Shoot-Out: How Does It Compare?

The Samsung Galaxy S smartphones are by far the most popular Android smartphones, and are flagship products for Samsung to show off its latest and greatest OLED display technology. The display on the Galaxy S4 is a major enhancement and improvement over the Galaxy S III—it has a full HD 1920×1080 resolution display with 441…