Tech News

Data Visualization, Visualized

We love nice charts and data visualization. That’s why we like this meta-chart: Data visualization, visualized. Design, user interface, information, data journalism, communication and visual communication, merging. [Ffunction]

Acer’s Tablet Assault: An “Entire Family” of Devices

Acer has announced that they’re taking on its tablet competitors head-on, with an “entire family” of tablets—including a dual-screen concept. And a platform-neutral app and music store of its own. Updating live: Acer’s promising a consistent user experience across all devices, independent of platform—which implies the tablets we’ll see today will be a mix of…

The Ultimate Black Friday Gadget Cheat Sheet Part 2

Continued from Part 1 Gaming ★★ Nintendo Wii Console (Black) w/ Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort and Wii Remote Plus for $169.99 at BestBuy (normally $199.99; $194.88 at Sam’s Club) ★★ PlayStation 3 Slim 160GB for $269.99 with free shipping after coupon at Dell Home (normally $299.99) (available online) New! ★★ Sony PlayStation 3 160GB…

The Ultimate Black Friday 2010 Cheat Sheet Part 3

Continued from Part 2 Personal Portables and Peripherals ★★ iPads from $458 at Apple (normally $499) (available online) New! ★★ 5″ Dell Streak Android Smartphone with activation for $299.99 with free 2-day shipping at Dell Home (normally $299.99 without gift card) (available online) New! ★★ Barnes & Noble NOOK WiFi eReader for $99.99 at BestBuy…

Adam Savage Mythbusting Airport Security: “What the F*ck, TSA?”

Watch Adam Savage showing proof of the ineptitude/inefficacy/idiocy of the TSA’s practices at airport security checkpoints. He’s not the first. Plenty of people have similar stories, even going through body scanners with knives. Clearly, we need other security policies. https://gizmodo.com/why-the-tsa-practices-could-result-in-public-rebellion-5696160 Preferably some that don’t make parents take off the shirt of their kids out of…

EcoModo – The Best of Treehugger

This week on TreeHugger, freaky robots that play with our minds, a solar powered wheelchair makes a 200 mile journey, self-healing concrete thanks to self-destructing bacteria, and more. 5 Freaky Robots Show Us the Future is Now (Videos) From robots controlled by our minds to robots with minds of their own! Man to Travel 200…

Seems Like Black Friday Comes Earlier Every Year

It’s almost the holidays, which means it’s time to start thinking about gifts for your mother, and brother, and wife’s sister’s dog. Good thing it’s also #Dealzmodo Black Friday season, our way of helping you find the best tech presents. Even better: Chase Slate with Blueprint can help you pay for all those goodies. Chase…

Could Stuxnet Infect North Korea’s New Uranium Plant?

The Stuxnet worm may have a new target. The now-infamous malware was possibly built to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, while North Korea has unveiled a new uranium enrichment plant that might share components with Iran’s facilities. Are Pyongyang’s centrifuges vulnerable? While U.S. officials are trying to figure out how to respond to North Korea’s unveiling…

A Century of Popular Science

How has Popular Science changed since it was first published in the late 1800s? It got a whole lot more colorful, for one thing. Here’s 125 years of the magazine’s history captured in one massive 74 million square pixel image. The 11550 x 6480 pixel image, created by William Huber, a student of media theorist…

Apple and News Corp to Announce The Daily Tablet Newspaper at December Event?

It seems like Apple and News Corp are indeed in cahoots on The Daily, a new iPad-only newspaper that would be the first support the iTunes subscription billing, and John Gruber says he’s hearing December 9 as a potential date for its announcement event. The 9th, he notes, is a Thursday, so it’s possible it…

Swarm, Hot Wheels, Swarm!

What’s it like watching 1,200 toy cars zip around an inconceivably tangled kinetic sculpture, charging and whirring all at once? Like choreographed chaos. Like pure unadulterated joy, tinged with inescapable repetition. Like this. What you’re watching is a piece by artist Chris Burden called Metropolis II, in which every hour 100,000 cars pass through the…

Google Looks to Miramax’s 700 Movies for Bulking Up YouTube

They’ve trialled movie-streaming rentals in the past, but unfortunately none of the movies really grabbed anyone. Miramax’s archives of 700 or so films, however, could be just the ticket for YouTube to prove itself as a media destination. https://gizmodo.com/youtube-quietly-adds-movie-and-tv-show-rentals-from-99-5522756 Not to belittle home videos involving cats, otters and kids falling off bicycles, naturally, but No…

The Non-Electronic iPhone Dock

Electricity—who needs it!? The Koostik, an iPhone dock made of wood (and nothing else), has “specially designed sound channels and hemispherical sound chambers” for “rich, dynamic and natural acoustic amplification.” Perfect for the iPhone-user with an Amish streak. The Koostik relies solely on the iPhone’s built-in speaker, amplifying it gently kind of like an acoustic…

Teensy VW Car is 30% the Size of the Original

It looks like you can fit more people in VW’s car than you can in the Guinness Book of World Records’ smallest legal street car, but it’s still 30 per cent the size of an original VW Gol. https://gizmodo.com/motorists-youve-got-a-rodent-of-a-car-to-look-out-for-5686430 The Gol has been sold since the ’80s, and while it’s pretty small itself, the Mini-Gol…

Redsn0w 0.9.6b4 Update Jailbreaks iOS 4.2.1 Devices

Compatible with iOS devices running Cydia, Redsn0w 0.9.6b4 has been released by the iPhone Dev Team, following their 0.9.6b3 release over the weekend. Devices must be tethered to a Mac or PC for the process to work. [iPhoneDevTeam via RedmondPie] https://gizmodo.com/iphone-dev-team-releases-redsn0w-update-for-jailbroken-5695493

E-Paper To Be As Disposable As Normal Paper?

Well, as disposable as RECYCLING that paper is, anyway. (You do recycle, right?) University researchers have found a way to turn paper into e-paper—that is, the same electronic screen in a Kindle. Professor Andrew Steckl, from the University of Cincinnati, successfully showed how electrowetting paper works in a similar manner to electrowetting glass. While e-paper…

Is This Motorola’s Dual-Core Olympus Phone?

A tipster sent us a couple of images of what’s supposedly Motorola’s Olympus Android phone—which we’d previously heard is running on a Tegra 2 platform and bound for AT&T. https://gizmodo.com/rumor-motorolas-olympus-is-a-dual-core-android-phone-5694206 While we’re not 100 per cent sure obviously that these two grainy photos are of the Olympus, it does resemble the Defy—but looks larger than…

Santa claw

Can’t Find the MIDI Instrument Of Your Dreams? Just Make Your Own!

Rasmus Nyåker is something of a music tech freak. Bored with all his synthesizers, and desiring a music machine with pressure-sensitive ribbon controls, he just up and built his own. Create Digital Music says that Nyåker is used sheet of force sensing resistors as his main touch component, which he cut down to size. Then…

Embrace Your Inner Mad Scientist With These Beaker Lamps

It’s hard to hate anything that would make my house look like a 1900s-era laboratory, like these beaker lamps, complete with exposed wiring and Ferrowatt bulbs. But what I do hate is that $230 price tag. Ouch. [Conant via Inhabitat]