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Vanity website purveyor About.me is offering up @about.me email addresses, where your website username becomes your handle. Supporting both IMAP and POP, you can redirect your mail to your own email client, or view mail in your about.me account. [About.me via TNW]
The big G’s photo-sharing app has left the private beta mode it’s been in the last few weeks, and is now available to download by any iPhone owner who likes the idea of “growing vines” based on their photographic adventures. https://gizmodo.com/google-photovine-lets-you-create-social-photo-collectio-5820265 Like the Google Catalogs app yesterday, Photovine seems to only be available on the…
Of course, Microsoft would be churning out more sculptures each day than new copies of Windows 7, but who wouldn’t want a physical trophy of their proudest-ever achievement? And if you’ve never seen this Solitaire waterfall before—shame on you. Created from over 1,000 printed and cut-out cards that were arranged together in the sculpture, the…
Sammy just took the lid off of a set of new solid state drives that promise a significant speed boost from their already peppy previous line of SSDs. They look good enough to eat. The new 830 series will utilize SATA Revision 3.0 technology, which will give it potential speeds a face-melting 6 gigabits per…
This interesting project, borne from MIT’s Media Labs, juxtaposes two images from Google Streetview, and asks subjective questions such as “which place looks safer?” and “which place looks more upper-class?” But why does MIT want to know? In their own words, “Place Pulse is a website that allows anybody to quickly run a perception study…
Here’s a report that’ll raise the hackles of some Motorola employees. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google employees are better fed at work, make more money and are smarter than their Motorola colleagues. The report claims the average Google software engineer makes $35,000 more than a Motorola engineer and has a higher IQ, 20…
A study in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research suggests a before-bed nightcap may be a bad idea if you want to get a good night’s sleep. The participants in the study drank varying amounts of strong, weak or alcohol-free drinks about an hour and a half before going to bed. Those that consumed…
Researchers at Southampton University have devised a way to bend light passing through a glass wafer so it can store and read 50GB of data in the same way that fiber optic cable does. The process uses minuscule dots called voxels etched in the molecular structure of pure silica glass that bend light to store…
Like many bikers, Kent Frankovich pedaled at night and wondered if cars around him saw his dimly-lit tail light. He also bemoaned his headlamp that barely lighted his way. Instead of abandoning his night-time bike rides, he used his mechanical engineering know-how to develop Revolights, an LED lighting system for bicycle wheels. He attached a…
A 25-year-old Oklahoma man climbed a Clear Channel radio tower to avoid being captured by security guards who spotted him in a restricted area. Not the brightest move, but he did evade his pursuers for six days. The man rested on a small lattice in the tower and yelled at onlookers below. He rebuffed offers…
According to AllThingsD, Best Buy may be sitting on a pile of over 200,000 unsold webOS TouchPads. And the retailer wants to send them back to HP. Best Buy supposedly stocked their warehouses with about 270,000 TouchPad tablets, but the retailer can’t get its customers to buy them even with a $100 discount. Best Buy…
There’s usually little to remark about a place’s carpet. Unless it’s a brain-frying casino pattern, carpet is… carpet. It sits there. It soaks up dirt, dander, and urine. Sometimes it’s beige. But not this carpet, which bends the space-time continuum. One woozy Redditor spotted this wireframe carpet job at a local game store, and was…
All a terrorist needs to hijack a plane is three seconds. As soon as the pilot opens the cockpit door, one could potentially just rush through to the controls. But it could just take a secondary barrier to add precious seconds and save lives. Installed Physical Secondary Barriers, or IPSBs, have been touted by many…
George Devol (above right) died last week at his home in Connecticut. He invented the Unimate, the first programmable Industrial Robot. But his creative genius did not stop there. Check out these five little-known inventions developed during his long career. 1. Phantom Doorman Photoelectric Door Devol formed United Cinephone and, using photoelectric switches, created the…
Seriously, you’re not the master multitasker you might imagine. No matter how smart you think you are, your brain is not built for doing lots of things at the same time. But don’t worry, most humans are in the same boat. The latest in a series of studies that show humans are crap at multitasking…
Originally designed as tool to help network administrators troubleshoot problems like spotty reception and interference, Fluke Networks’ AirCheck Wi-Fi Tester is helping police in at least one California city track down cyber-criminals—specifically, people trafficking child pornography. According to the press release from last week’s Crimes Against Children Conference, Sergeant Dave Mathers couldn’t be happier with…
So much news passes before our collective eyes every day that we couldn’t possibly cover it all. Mostly because much of it isn’t worth covering! But here are a some borderline tidbits we passed on, just in case. Annoying BART Protester Oh hey, look at me! I have assertive facial hair and a bowtie and…
The lightbulb Thomas Edison debuted in 1879 is pretty different from the standard lightbulb we use today. But the Edison—or Ferrowatt—inspired bulbs still look amazing over a century later, and you can still get your hands on replicas today. Instead of an intense white or yellow glow, Edison bulbs emit an amber hue that gives…
Last week, we shared the news that Google’s Android App Inventor was being shelved, despite its popularity as an educational tool. Last week’s bad news is this week’s good news as App Inventor has found a new home at MIT. https://gizmodo.com/google-could-make-app-inventor-open-source-5829382 Using a gift from Google, MIT will be opening a new Center for Mobile…
I will die happy once I own this shark ‘Air Swimmer’, a remote controlled, flying shark balloon. Seriously. I can’t think of anything I want more in life right now. Just watch the video and you’ll see. $40 [Air Swimmers via Geekosystem] You can keep up with Casey Chan, the author of this post, on…
