Tech News

The 22 Best Product Designs of the Year

The Design Museum has just announced the contenders for the sixth annual Designs of the Year. And their products shortlist highlights objects whose forms transcend their everyday functions. Bang & Olufsen ‘Beolit 12’ This handy, portable music system plays music wirelessly from your iPod, iPhone, iPad or Mac, or wired from any other smart phone…

Seiki 50-Inch 4K TV Eyes-On: How the Hell Is a TV This Beautiful So Cheap?

Yesterday, Chinese OEM Seiki officially priced its 50-inch Ultra HD TV at $1500, making it the cheapest 4K television in the history of absurd resolution. It’s cheaper even than the last round of super-cheap Chinese 4Ks we saw. The price is so low, in fact, and the brand name is so unfamiliar, that you have…

This Bobbing Display Lets You Read While Running On a Treadmill

There’s a recent fitness trend that sees people switching from a traditional desk to working on a treadmill to maximize their physical activity. The problem is that at anything more vigorous than a casual stride, it’s difficult to read a static display while on a treadmill. At least until researchers at Purdue University commercialize their…

LG’s New Robo Vacs Come When They’re Called

One of the biggest joys of owning a dog is that if you spill food on the floor, you can call them over and have it taken care of in no time. And that has to be what inspired the latest version of LG’s RoboKing voice-activated vacuum cleaners. Besides getting a promised 10 percent boost…

Snapchat is now handling almost four times Instagram’s load at over 150 million photos a day—that’s a lot of dick pics.

How Tall Can a Human Get?

Humans come in all shapes and sizes, but when it comes to height there seems to be an unofficial limit on how tall someone can be. On average, the tallest of humans measure in at around seven feet six inches, with a few Guinness-worthy cases breaking the eight foot barrier. But why is that? It…

The 12 Best Furniture Designs of the Year

The Design Museum has just announced the contenders for the sixth annual Designs of the Year. And what their furniture shortlist lacks in comfort, it makes up in raw ingenuity. 100 Chairs. Marni designers have reworked the patterns and color palettes of traditional Colombian chairs woven from PVC threads to create a desirable, one-off range,…

Why Your Twitter Friends Are More Interesting Than You

Ever felt you can’t quite match up to the people you follow on Twitter? While you’re tweeting about that lunchtime cheese sandwich, their feeds are full of elegant witticisms, important-sounding conferences and bungee jumps. Don’t worry, it’s not your fault – your Twitter friends are just more interesting than you. Sociologists have long known that…

Declutter Your Lounge and Control Your Lights With These Smart Remotes

Logitech’s announced two new universal remote controls to try and tidy up your cluttered coffee table. Not just that, but they can control your lights and even make use of Wi-Fi. Take that, poor range. The new devices, the Harmony Ultimate and the Harmony Smart Control, are able to connect to another new device called…

Hidden away in Google Glass documentation: developers are prohibited from serving ads or charging for access to its API.

Google Experimenting With Ditching the Black Bar for a New Launcher

There’s a new, cleaner Google web interface being tested out there right now, which does away with the black bar in favour of nicking the Chrome OS and Android grid icon and using it to to populate a nice little white dropdown. If you want to give the alternate Google launcher a shot, there’s a…

The 2013 Pulitzer Prize-Winning Images of the Syrian Civil War

Columbia University yesterday announced the winners of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes—and those for Breaking News and Feature Photography were all awarded for heartrending images capturing the civil war in Syria. In fact, the Breaking News prize was awarded jointly to five different AP photographers who have all been capturing events in Syria. Above is the…

These Wooden Kitchen Knives Look Amazing, But Would You Use Them?

This pair of knives are a concept by FDRL, an Ottawa-based design consultancy. There is absolutely no denying that, resplendent in sleek Maple, they’re beautiful objects—but who the hell would use them? The guys at FDRL explains that the “knife gives the appearance of being lightweight; however their weight is balanced to ensure that they…

YouTube for iOS has been updated to support live streams. Just after Coachella’s first weekend—huh, thanks Apple.

AT&T’s Galaxy S4 page claims that the 16GB phone will ship from April 30th—for $640, or $200 on a 2-year contract.

Some Apple TVs Have Wi-Fi Issues, But You Can Get a Replacement

Apple has admitted that some of its third-generation Apple TVs have Wi-Fi issues—but owners with affected hardware are now able to exchange it for a fully functional replacement. The affected units struggle to locate a Wi-Fi network, are sometimes unable to join a network, and experience dropped or intermittent connections, reports 9to5mac. As Apple explains:…

Twitter Is Working with TV Networks to Add Video to Twitter

Twitter, which is quickly trying to become more than just 140 character tweets, is supposedly working with television networks to bring “high quality video content” to Twitter. The idea is to stream video and advertising content on Twitter’s site. Twitter TV, y’all. https://gizmodo.com/vine-is-twitters-new-gif-like-video-sharing-service-5978676 Right now, according to Bloomberg, Twitter is in talks with Viacom and…

Google’s MyGlass Companion App for Google Glass Is Now Available in Google Play

Though this is completely useless for pretty much every single one of us (since we don’t have Google Glass), Google just released the companion Android app for Google Glass called MyGlass in Google Play. Even Google so cheekily reminds us that the app does nothing (without Glass, that is) saying: “If you don’t have Glass,…

The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: Spacebound

This heart-wrenching short by Kyle Moy and Ellen Su, follows a young astronaut and his space dog as they desperately try to avoid a horrific and painful death. It serves as a gorgeously animated gut-check that while we can’t choose when we go out, we can choose how we do so. https://gizmodo.com/what-really-happens-when-you-get-blown-out-of-an-airloc-5924522

Here Are Google Glass’ Tech Specs

Google just released the official specs for Google Glass (after releasing the API too) and the futuristic frames come with 16GB (only 12GB will be usable) Flash memory, 5 megapixel camera for stills, 720p video recording, Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth and a battery that can handle “one full day of typical use”. Of course with a…