Tech News

14 People Using Hilariously Giant Old Cell Phones

You think phones are getting huge now? Before smartphones reigned, dumbphones made people look—in retrospect—insanely dumb. It wasn’t their fault, but let’s look back in time and laugh at them. Early in the life of the mobile phone, virtually everyone who owned one looked like this guy: a white dude walking next to an airplane.…

New York City’s Blocks Arranged by Size

French artist Armelle Caron had a very clever idea: take out all the elements from a city grid and line them up, sorted by size. The results are both intriguing and pretty. They also tells a lot about each city. Take New York above and compare it to Istanbul below: Clearly, two entirely different civilizations…

Even Small Businesses Can Afford Job-Stealing Assembly Bots Now

It’s assumed that one day factory line robots will eventually take over all aspects of manufacturing, freeing humans from the monotony of repetitive tasks. But integrating a robot into an assembly line is incredibly expensive and complicated—and Rethink Robotics hopes to eliminate those roadblocks with Baxter. At $22,000 Baxter is still priced like a small…

This Looks Like the First Photo of a Fully Working iPad Mini

Knowing the accuracy of the iPhone 5 leaks and the increased number of photos of the 7.8-inch iPad parts from the same sources, I have almost no doubt that this is a real, fully working Apple iPad mini. That means that the launch must be really close right now. https://gizmodo.com/alleged-photos-of-final-iphone-5-leak-just-before-the-e-5942639 The Chinese site Bolopad claims…

Google Play Finally Starts to Catch Up With 600 New Fox Titles

Google and Fox are teaming up to make the movie selection on Google Play much better. That is to say, better in the way of 600 new titles added to the storefront. In the next few weeks, new shows and movies like Family Guy, New Girl, Black Swan, X-Men, and hundreds of others will arrive…

Hasselblad’s Ridiculously Expensive Mirrorless Camera At Least Looks the Part (UPDATED)

Hasselblad, a company known mostly for making professional medium-format film and digital cameras, announced its plans to release a small mirrorless camera meant to bring the coveted Hasselblad name to a broader market. The project is dubbed “Lunar,” possibly because it costs as much as a moon rock. Though Hasselblad has only released illustrations of…

The Netflix iPhone app now includes way more tiles, which is fine but not as exciting as more actual movies. [TNW]

The Nook Simple Touch Can Play Sonic Better Than a Game Boy

Kind of like the modern equivalent of hiding a comic book inside the textbook you’re supposed to be studying, someone has hacked and loaded a Sega Genesis emulator onto the Nook Simple Touch ebook reader. So instead of reading at the back of the classroom, you can spend your time chasing rings. The hack itself…

This Aston Martin Android Isn’t Up to 007′s Specifications

Bond might be saddled with a Sony, thanks to Sony Pictures producing 007′s recent outings, but he should be glad he’s not stuck with this polished turd-of-a-phone. Meet the Aston Martin Aspire, an Android phone that no one should ever buy for $1,300 – it’s no Vertu that’s for sure. It comes in five colours,…

Your Twitter Profile Looks More Like Facebook Timeline Now

Twitter is now letting you add a header photo to your profile—it’s a lovely new feature that seems like it draws a little inspiration from the large banner photo you get with Facebook Timeline. Twitter has long leaned on Instagram to be its photo muscle, but now that Facebook owns the old filter factory, Twitter…

Man Trapped in Mud Scooped Out By Caterpillar Machine

Ah, Russia, you neverending source of amusement and absurdity you, please never change. Take this man, who somehow sunk himself into the mud up to his waist and then he couldn’t get out—until the man with the caterpillar decides to scoop him out, complete with all the mud around him. [Thanks Karl!]

Tron’s World Exists On Earth

I love the photographic work of CoolbieRe, especially his interpretation of Hong Kong. He makes it look like Tron’s world—perhaps because Hong Kong, with all its mighty electronic manufacturing power, is as close to Tron’s world as you can get on Earth. To quote Flynn: The Grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters…

Jony Ive Teams Up With Leica to Design One-Off M-Series Camera

Everything that Jony Ive touches turns to gold, so it will come as good news to rich photographers everywhere that he’s teaming up with Leica to design a super-limited edition of the M-series camera. https://gizmodo.com/proof-that-apple-could-sell-you-literally-anything-5943859 On the back of last night’s Leica M launch, company owner Dr. Andreas Kaufmann revealed that he is to work…

Motorola’s RAZRi Has a Whopping 2GHz Intel Processor

Calling it their “biggest launch since the original RAZR” (no sniggering in the back row, please), Motorola’s RAZRi is the first phone with a 2GHz Intel processor; however good that may be. Sounds impressive though, non? Intel’s saying it’s the first phone not only with a 1GHz Intel processor, but any 2GHz processor – for…

How to Get Selective Focus on Your DSLR for $80

Lensbaby has a pretty good track record in making lenses which allow you to take photos with all manner of wacky focus effects. Now, it’s targeting the budget end of the market by launching the Spark, an $80 lens that turns your DSLR into a selective-focus shooter. Capable of attaching to a Canon or Nikon,…

Nokia has finally confirmed that Amazon is definitely licensing its Location Platform for maps and geocoding. [TNW]

Create Custom Ebook Encyclopaedias From Wikipedia

Wikimedia has announced that you can now create free, custom encyclopaedias from Wikipedia articles by rolling them all up into a single ebook that you carry with you wherever you go. It’s not a difficult process: click the “Create a book” link located in Wikipedia’s left sidebar, collate the articles you want to include (you…

Asus Windows 8 Tablets to Start at $600?

Steve Ballmer has already suggested that Microsoft’s Surface won’t be trying to compete on price, but rumors suggest that Asus’s tablets likely won’t come cheap either. ZDNet is reporting that the devices will start at $600. https://gizmodo.com/steve-ballmer-suggests-that-surface-isnt-going-to-try-t-5943609 A leaked internal slide from Asus suggests that the cheapest model, the Tegra 3-powered Asus Vivo Tab RT,…

PuppyText Lets You Write in a Font Made Entirely of Puppies

Here is a font made entirely of chocolate labrador puppies because awwwww. PuppyText lets you “Say it with Puppies,” with both an iPhone app and its very own puppy-writing website. [OhGizmo]

Fox News (Falsely) Reports iPhone 5 Will Have Laser Keyboard and Holographic Images

Loyal viewers of Fox 5 news will be pretty disappointed come September 21, when they discover their shiny new iPhone 5s have exactly none of the sweet features the NYC Fox affiliate has reported the phone to have. The news channel, rather embarrassingly, played a year-old iPhone 5 concept video during a package about the…