Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Twitter just overhauled the look and feel of its Android app from what felt like a clunky afterthought into something slick and lovely. Move the slider in the image above back and forth to see a before and after comparison of the design. When the slider is on the right side, you’re looking at the…
Transitioning back to normal life after WWII had its fair share of challenges for soldiers, one of which was a housing shortage. Lustron houses—prefabricated enamel steel homes—were a direct response to the dearth. This is a 1949 picture of all of the components of one of the cookie cutter abodes laid out like puzzle pieces.…
You know a chess piece when you see one. They might be the most recognizable objects in gaming. But they didn’t always look that way. In fact, for the longest time they didn’t even look a way. The Smithsonian Magazine dug into the roots of that iconic design and it’s not as old as you…
If you can easily blast your way through hundreds of lines in Tetris and stack a perfectly balanced Jenga tower to the ceiling, maybe you need a new challenge. And maybe designer Marko Pavlović has just what you’re looking for with his Logiq Tower that puts a unique spin on 3D puzzles. The $25 game…
Although the technology behind wireless headphones is still improving, that’s no reason to skip the current options if you know you want Bluetooth headphones. Some of them are pretty good. Last year Giz alum Adrian Covert tried a bunch of major Bluetooth headphones and liked the Phillipe Starck-designed Parrot Zik the best. From the review:…
Airports are a weird contradiction; labyrinthine roadways and arteries between terminals, surrounded by an expanse of seemingly limitless straightaways. Put both together and you get wonderfully calculated mayhem, and a few killer photos. As a kid, New York photographer Jeffrey Milstein loved to film planes at LAX with his 8-millimeter camera, and he brought the…
While watching sports, have you ever stopped (midway through a bowl of Cheetos) to wonder, “How far are those guys actually running?” It’s a common question, one that’s historically been subject mostly to guesswork, Thanks to some recent technological developments, though, we can now actually apply some data to it. So which of your heroes…
Remember that utterly depressing abandoned factory island that Javier Bardem’s character used as his headquarters in Skyfall? It’s actually a real place known as Hashima—or Battleship island—that was built and used as a coal mining facility until it was abandoned in 1974. It’s kind of a sad tale, so it’s a little confusing as to…
Disney just murdered video game titan LucasArts. All staff laid off. No Star Wars 1313. What a bummer.
Separating the recyclable trash from the rest of your garbage is made slightly easier, and more pleasing to the eye, with these stackable Qualy bins featuring a strategically placed indent for easy access. They can be stacked all the way to the ceiling without their footprint increasing, and each bin features a lid and an…
So Jawbone’s BIG JAMBOX is getting itself a firmware update today that promises 2 (!) more hours of battery life.
We’re all grown up, but magnifying glasses are still pretty cool. It’s not just that they can create miniature fires; it’s that seeing things really big or really small is always amusing. And for this week’s Shooting Challenge… The Challenge Use a magnifying glass (or other lens) in your frame to shrink or enlarge an…
It’s widely believed that Facebook will announce a new Android phone UI, called Home, along with accompanying HTC hardware at an event tomorrow. I know, we’re all thinking, “Ugg, Facebook phone.” But everything we’ve heard is really exciting. 9To5Google claims to have some shots of the new UI, and if they’re real, it’s going to…
Russia has its share of concrete monstrosities and majestic spires, but the new Moscow Polytechnic Museum and Educational Centre in Moscow manages to be neither. Instead, it’s like a big, beautiful, sculpted iceberg, with a parking lot. Designed by Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas—who won an international competition with their design—the museum is due to be…
Future AT&T Galaxy S4 owners will shell out $250 or $200 for their respective models—with two-year contract, of course.
It is almost unbelievable: it took 16 years to built the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) experiment. This partially time-lapse vid above shows us the whole outstanding work progress in less than three and a half minutes. The antimatter hunter AMS-02 on the International Space Station is searching for the missing pieces of our Universe. The…
Lego artist Mike Doyle spent over 600 painstaking hours (and 200,000 bricks) constructing this insanely well-detailed sci-fi magnum opus. It’s like a galactic fantasy mash-up of Flash Gordon’s planet Mongo and Minas Tirith from Lord of the Rings. The build measures 5 feet high by 6 feet wide. This epic metropolis, named Odan, is described…
Today, Rdio streaming music subscribers with Unlimited accounts will get access to new video service from the company called, appropriately, Vdio. (It had previously been in a closed beta.) It’s a rental and purchasing platform—not a subscription service—but it incorporates the social and content discovery features you’ve been missing for eons from basically every other…
What with today’s fancy Doppler radars and forecast graphics and fear mongering, it’s refreshing to get a glimpse of the relative simplicity in man’s very first attempt at remotely monitoring the shifts in Earth’s climate. After capturing the above images on April 1, 1960, TIROS-1 (Television Infrared Observation Satellite) only stayed in operation for 78…
It’s hard to innovate on a design as iconic as a classic analog watch face. But Ressence has done just that with its new Type 3 that replaces moving hands with a collection of flush mounted dials that all spin in perfect synchronization to display the time. It’s almost like having a three ring circus…
