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If you want to get away with something, don’t use Gmail. As David Petraeus and his sexytime lady friend Paula Broadwell learned, thanks to rich data that Google stores from every email, you will be found out. Here’s how it went down in this ironic case: The FBI was investigating Broadwell for some harassing emails…
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is an able champion for his brand, but even he couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm over sales of his Surface RT tablet in a recent interview with a French newspaper. Unless something was seriously lost in translation, sales of Microsoft’s slate have been “modest” so far—but just you wait until its…
Richard Wiseman will probably go down in history as the accomplice to thousands of amateur grifters. He’s back with another collection of science experiments, physics demonstrations, and simple cons to impress your friends—if you have any left by now. https://gizmodo.com/ten-bets-youre-guaranteed-to-always-win-5917314 But some of them can actually be kind of handy. Who would ever want to…
RIM’s BB10 has been a hell of a long time coming. But the company has finally pinned down a launch date for the new OS: it will officially enter into the world on January 30th next year. The new software is pretty much make-or-break for RIM, whose fortunes have been failing of recent time. CEO…
Kim Dotcom’s dream of hosting the follow-up to Megaupload at Me.ga fell through last week when Gabon’s government objected. No worry: instead it will appear at the rather less snappy Mega.co.nz. https://gizmodo.com/megauploads-new-website-me-ga-has-already-been-shut-dow-5958358 While it might not sound quite as good, chances are the new domain will be rather more secure with its New Zealand backing…
Research suggests people start leaving web pages if a video takes longer than 2 seconds to play. How impatient. [GigaOm]
Describing any form of technology in simple English can sometimes be tricky. But try describing a space craft, and suddenly things get much, much harder. Today’s XKCD attempts to describe the construction of Saturn 5 using only the thousand most commonly used words in the English language. Take a read by clicking on the image…
Back in January, YouTube announced that it was launching around 160 channels of fresh, original content, that it would invest in to help it compete with traditional cable and network programming. Less than a year on, it’s axing over half of them. YouTube injected $200 million into the project, which includes channels like The Onion…
A preview version of Skype for Windows Phone 8 is now available. You can download it here. [WPCentral]
According to some angry YouTube comments on this video, it seems that Frightened Rabbit recently got some play on Teen Wolf or something, but let me say I just know them from being good. If you aren’t familiar, this track off The Winter of Mixed Drinks is a great place to start. It’s pretty obvious…
Dominique Vankan wanted to try out some old-school photography, we’re talking really old-school, a early 1900s process called Autochrome Lumière. Appartnely he decided not to find an old camera to do it, and instead build one out of modern wonders including cardboard, Legos, and duct tape. The camera isn’t just for show, of course. It…
James Bond has quite the arsenal of high-tech gadgets, plenty of which would be awesome if they were real. And though slingshot master Joerg Sprave may not make the highest tech weapons, I’m sure Bond could find a way to make use of this silent but deadly slingshot spy-pistol. https://jalopnik.com/five-bond-car-gadgets-that-really-should-have-gone-main-5959520 The slingshot-pistol itself isn’t the…
Though iOS 6’s Passbook burst onto the scene with a bit of a whimper, it’s been getting more useful as time goes on. This weekend, Apple started rolling out Passbook-enabled Apple Store gift cards so you can buy a gift that’s not only last-minute, but not even a physical object. https://gizmodo.com/heres-the-full-line-up-of-apple-passbook-supported-apps-5944863 The cards can be…
Need to push your product on the masses? What better way to do it than with a vertable army of celebrity spokespeople? This seems to be Microsoft’s line of thinking when it comes to Windows Phone 8. They’ve lined up not just one or two celebrity endorsements, but closer to a half dozen, and those…
A brain-computer interface is a nice thing to dream about, but it’s not exactly around the corner. We are always getting closer, however. Newly developed carbon microthreads could serve as the long-lasting kind of brain implants you’d need to be able to mind-control computers. The new microthread electrodes, designed at the University of Michigan, are…
No matter what’s going on in your life today, there’s always something else around the bend, something to anticipate or dread. This countdown clock helps you keep your hopeful sights on the former. Or the latter if you’re a masochist. The Mr. Jones countdown clock, aside from being a rather spiffy looking analogue clock on…
I don’t really like Android’s SMS at all. (I’m on HTC’s Sense-flavored Jellybean, btw.) In particular, the lock-screen notifications really bug me—there’s no way to see if you’ve gotten more than one message. And group messages don’t really work right. Got one you like?
The faster the Internet gets, the less patience we all have with even the most insignificant of waits. A new study shows that a mere two second delay is enough for many people to give up and move on. According to the recent study, based on 2.3 million views by 6.7 million unique users, users…
Not long after the launch of iOS 6, it came to the Internet’s attention that Apple’s clock design was rather familiar. In fact, it had been lifted straight from the Swiss National Railway. Apple agreed to pay up, but it wasn’t clear how much at the time. Now we know it was $21 million. https://gizmodo.com/apples-going-to-pay-up-for-the-ios-6-clock-design-it-st-5951212…
If you thought the Nexus 7 was a hot commodity, you’d be right. In one case in China, it was apparently so hot as to actually fry itself up. The story originates on a Chinese forum, where the user claims the tablet was charging with its original charger when suddenly it began to smoke. Then,…
