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Verizon will roll out blazing LTE service to 30 “football cities”—major metropolitan areas—by year’s end. According to my less-nerdy friends, there are 32 teams in the NFL, so two cities will be out of luck. Good luck, Bills. [eWeek via Boy Genius Report]
The problem with YouTube is that you can only share stuff you happened to be recording. The Looxcie, a $200 video camera that you wear on your ear, proposes a simple solution: record everything, all the time. Here’s the idea: You wear the Looxcie on your ear and it records everything you see, roughly as…
You might remember Diaspora, that plucky Facebook rival, conceived by four NYU students, that actual prioritizes your privacy. As promised, they’ve released the project code, along with a tantalizing preview of how the site’s going to look: familiar, but not. https://gizmodo.com/diaspora-the-student-made-privacy-respecting-facebook-5537502 Some quick context: the core idea behind Diaspora is that each user will have…
Back in the 19th Century, there was no Photoshop to trick people with retouched images. But that didn’t stop William Hope from taking photographs of ghosts. In the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, most people were new to photography. By itself, it was a magical process. How can glass capture reality on…
Nokia and its mapping division Navteq are developing a rival to Street View, one that offers full three-dimensional computer models of villages, towns and cities, and could one day allow those urban centers to form the backdrop to realistic games. Street View (pictured) was launched in 2007 and has transformed online mapping by providing panoramic…
A few months back Sony demonstrated their ultra-thin flexible OLED panel, which was thinner than a human hair, and could be wrapped around a pencil. While not as visually impressive, their flexible e-paper at least has a chance of launching. https://gizmodo.com/sonys-flexible-oled-is-thinner-than-a-strand-of-hair-5547946 Saying that, I can think of a dozen of uses for the 80μm-thick OLED.…
Interested in getting one of the new HTC phones? Read on for some launch details in Europe and the US. https://gizmodo.com/htc-desire-z-is-a-gorgeous-slide-out-qwerty-android-wit-5638424 Vodafone was first with support of the phones, announcing at the event that they would sell both the Desire HD and Desire Z from mid-October, in Europe. While they haven’t announced tariffs, it’s expected…
At Tokyo Game Show, Microsoft demoed five new titles for Xbox 360’s Kinect. If anyone’s been on the fence about buying into the whole “interpretative dance-gaming thing”, they might just change their minds after hearing of some of these. https://kotaku.com/deep-inside-xbox-360-kinect-and-why-its-the-future-of-m-5604308 Kotaku was at TGS and wrote about Grasshopper Manufacture’s Codename D, a psychotic-sounding game set…
After being delayed, the 3.50 firmware update for 3D Blu-ray playback will be launched on September 21st, Sony announced at the Tokyo Game Show today. [PlayStation via TechRadar] https://gizmodo.com/sony-delays-3d-blu-ray-playback-for-ps3-5628265
Desperate to charge your iPad quickly and willing to shell out $100 for it? Then the Mophie Juice Pack might be for you. It’s an external battery that’s compatible with most gadgets, but advertised particularly for the iPad. [Mophie]
If we all start reading ebooks instead of plain ol’ printed books, then we’ll one day find ourselves wondering what to do with our old non-digital tomes. Not this man though, because he already knows what we’ll do and got a head start. Unlike that guy though, I think I’ll turn some of my books…
The last we checked in with U Penn’s frighteningly maneuverable little quadrotor, we noted that it could probably zip through your window and kill you in your sleep. Well, now it can fly through windows while they’re moving. Guhhh. https://gizmodo.com/the-drone-that-can-get-through-your-window-and-kill-yo-5552281 Yes, today U Penn’s GRASP Lab posted the aptly titled “Aggressive Quadrotor Part II,” showing…
The infamous Shake Weight—a fitness contraption that is supposed to make your arm muscles stronger and make you look ridiculously stupid at the same time—is useless, says Wired UK: https://gizmodo.com/6-legends-of-tv-inventions-5623239 Jerking this 5-pounder only got our max heart rate up to 114, which pales in comparison to a standard weightlifting session, let alone back-to-back sets…
Nokia’s new CEO, former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop, will bring a touch of Silicon Valley to the Finnish cellphone giant. But there’s a lot more Elop is going to have to do to get Nokia back on track. While the company is still the world’s largest cellphone manufacturer, it has lost much of its mindshare…
Tired of sitting on a train, packed in coach class like cattle off to be slaughtered? Design firm SeymourPowell has a solution, with seats that can be reconfigured on the fly. Want privacy? Turn away. Want collaboration? Turn toward. [Wired]
Audyssey’s new iOS-compatible speaker dock squeezes sophisticated software engineering cred—found in the high-end audio equipment you might already own—into one diminutive grilled black slab. With years of university research under its belt, the tiny guy wallops your iPod. The Audyssey dock pounds out a surprising amount of power from a box the size of a…
In this video exchange between Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and state technology official Sergei Chemezov, the country’s first ever domestically-developed 4G phone is showed off with pride. And the kicker? Two screens! According to our crack team of Russian translators, the device will be made by Russian telecom firm Yota, and although that rear screen…
There’s not an easy way to say this, so here it goes: This remote controlled poop is exactly what it is, a radio-controlled turd on wheels. But this poopmobile is not gratuitous. It has a noble purpose. It’s being used in the streets of London by WaterAid to promote their message: 2.6 billion people in…
With 260,000 phones being sold daily, someone out there is still buying Nokia phones. But who? And more importantly, why? Is it familiarity? Affordability? A belief that nothing else available is as good—or as suitable—for them? I was elected to write this post because I live in the UK—the land-mass on the periphery of Nokia’s…
If you positively insist on putting a skin on your iPad, might I recommend cloaking them in old VHS tapes? And if you like the underlying concept of Hollis Brown Thornton’s VHS Heroes, you’re going to lurve the detail. I’m starting to suspect Thornton raided my family’s living room circa 1988 for inspiration: Indiana Jones…