Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Nokia’s awesome new map service, Here, has finally landed for iOS. It’s free, now, in the App Store. [iTunes]
With its little brother having already spilled its guts, it was always going to be interesting to see how the new 9-inch Fire compared. Turns out it owes an awful lot to Samsung. https://gizmodo.com/kindle-fire-hd-the-pretty-little-tablet-spills-its-gor-5943814 Powerbook Medic has torn the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 apart for the world to peer inside. It seems Samsung has done…
Earlier this month it was announced that Apple and HTC reached a patent settlement which would see the Taiwanese phone manufacturer enter into a 10-year licensing agreement. Now, HTC has firmly rumored figures which suggested they’d pony up $8 to Cook and co for every Android handset it sold. https://gizmodo.com/apple-and-htc-end-patent-dispute-and-agree-to-play-nice-5959533 Peter Chou, CEO of HTC,…
The world’s oldest working digital computer, often referred to as “The Witch”, has been given a new lease of life. A team of computer scientists has restored it to its former glory—and now it’s on display for all to see. The computer was originally designed and developed all the way back in 1949 at the…
Disney Movies Online, which allowed you to stream films if you owned them on physical media, is being axed. [Deadline]
According to its engineers, this will be the tallest skyscraper in the world by the end of March of 2013. Its name is Sky City, and its 2,749 feet (838 meters) distributed in 220 floors will grow in just 90 days in Changsha city, by the Xiangjiang river. Ninety days! It’s not a joke. According…
Having rolled out an auto-upload function for some Android users in September, Facebook is now testing the same photo syncing system for iOS users too. https://gizmodo.com/facebook-testing-automatic-photo-sync-for-android-5944852 The tool is only in testing—so as a result it’s only available to a limited pool of users at the moment—but the basic premise is simple. Much like Google’s…
The Next A Class Mercedes has taken an adventurous approach to advertising its latest sport wagon with this anime short of an unlikely trio chasing after a mythical bowl of Udon. [The Next A Class – Cartoon Brew] The Legend of Zelda Digital Papercraft Adventure Watch Link battle his most famous foes across the Apple…
Xbox World has a report on the next Xbox, which will likely be called just Xbox and not Xbox 720 or Windows Xbox 8 or something. The next Xbox is expected to have “four hardware cores, each divided into four logical cores” and 8GB of RAM and more goodies. Currently codenamed Durango, the next Xbox…
We’ll forgive you for mistaking Jonathan Trappe for Carl Fredriksen of the Pixar movie UP. Like Fredriksen, Trappe is a “cluster balloonist” who likes to fly around the world with a bunch of balloons. He’s attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean soon. To promote his upcoming trip, Trappe teamed up with Casasyes to make another…
BlackBerry 10 is probably going to come out one day in the future, in the same way that an asteroid the size of Canada will probably hit and destroy Earth one day in the future. But regardless, some way to drum up interest is to… leak pictures of your own CEO using a pre-production BlackBerry…
Remember how Red Bull made that amazingly ridiculous athlete-powered Rube Goldberg machine? This is how they did it. And it includes 11 athletes, 12 different machines, 4 RED cameras, 45 GoPro cameras, a 75 person crew putting in 3,422 man hours and a helluva sawdust. https://gizmodo.com/this-extreme-athlete-powered-rube-goldberg-machine-is-j-5959986 I’m a sucker for behind the scenes footage of…
At long last, you can purchase AC/DC’s complete discography on iTunes. The band is one of the last massive hold outs that have refused until now to sell their rocking jams through Apple’s music megamall—probably because their entire catalog continues to sell extraordinarily well in physical formats. After Michael Jackson’s Thriller, AC/DC’s Back in Black…
The next time you find yourself lost in the woods and need a comfy place to sit while you wait for rescue, remember designer Mary Dickerson’s clever Ash Cushion stool. Built by vertically grouping long pieces of plyable ash wood that have been carefully notched so they compress under pressure, the wooden stool doesn’t have…
The Wii U just went on sale this weekend. It’s not quite finished—its media features aren’t coming until December—and it’s an odd little duckling. But look beyond all that, and you see that it’s actually, well, good. https://gizmodo.com/wii-u-review-the-future-is-in-good-hands-5961513 But did you buy one, or do you plan to? How high—or low—is it on your holiday…
What does Apple have in common with your stay-at-home aunt who loves cats and knits you sweaters in her spare time? They both sell their goods on eBay now. Apple has sneakily opened up a Refurbished Outlet on eBay to test out the online auction waters. eBay told 9to5Mac that the online storefront is “a…
Catalogs might work well for Ikea, but as a way to advertise a modern upscale furniture store they’re a little low-brow. But a brilliantly designed business card that transforms into a miniature version of the furniture you sell? That’s pure genius. This card was designed for a London-based shop called Bentply known for its curvy…
Back before smartphones came along and made our lives easier, when we hit the open road we had to—hahahahaha—print out directions. Sometimes, if you can believe it, we used physical maps made of paper. Now that epic road trip you take is even easier to plan and execute with Roadtripper’s iPhone app. What does it…
Friends, Americans, geeks, lend me your ears. The U.S. government is trying to ban Bucky Balls, Zen Magnets, and all sets of amazing and wonderful magnetic spheres, and we only have a few hours left to stop them! https://gizmodo.com/buckyballs-magnets-have-been-banned-by-the-feds-update-5929064 Since this summer, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has been threatening to sue Zen Magnets…
What if you could give Christmas gifts to yourself but actually be surprised when you open them up? That’s exactly what Darius Kazemi did when he wrote a bot that buys him random crap off of Amazon. And he never has any idea what he’s going to get. He explains how it works on Random…