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Starting today, Foursquare Mayors of Starbucks can cash in their hard-earned virtual reputation in the form of a $1 coupon. Frappuccinos may taste awful but slightly cheaper Frappuccinos should be drunk proudly. A dollar off a frapp ain’t much but given the vast empire that is Starbucks, this precedent will likely develop into more partnerships…
By the end of 2011, two thirds of U.S. airline passengers will be asked to step through one of 1,000 new Rapiscan X-ray machines. But some scientists are concerned about the unprecedented radiation exposure coming along with them. Specifically, they’re worried about the half of the machines that are classified as back-scatter scanners, which use…
GQ’s app looks good, but it’s not exactly flying off the iTunes App Store shelves: The December 2009 issue only sold 365 iPad copies. Solution? Slap Victoria’s Secret model Miranda Kerr on the next cover and hope for the best. https://gizmodo.com/gq-looks-great-on-the-ipad-even-if-you-just-read-it-fo-5508599 Of course while we lament about the iPad app’s poor sales, the iPhone version…
As if making money magically disappear from your bank account wasn’t easy enough, DeviceFidelity’s new In2Pay case, which will let iPhone users make contactless transactions on Visa’s payWave system, will turn you into the Dumbledore of mobile payment. The case is being developed by DeviceFidelity and will let your iPhone play nice with the company’s…
These are the first photos of two F-35 Lighting II jet fighters flying in formation, just cleared for distribution by the Pentagon. They are so crispy and detailed you can even see the demon helmets inside the cockpit. https://gizmodo.com/f-35-helmet-display-system-to-scare-the-bejeezus-out-of-260482 Click to viewThis is the first time the F-35A Lightning II stealth fighters have flown together…
Nuts. That’s the most concise way to describe the alleged specs of the next-gen PSP, according to VG247. Nuts! But sadly, these nuts may not show up in time for E3—or even 2010. VG247’s report comes from “multiple sources” which appear to be in game publishing, where a whole bunch of firms have apparently signed…
Not many meeting rooms are as cool as Saatchi & Saatchi‘s meeting room in their Beijing office. Not only the desk is a giant heart surrounded by Eero Saarinen tulip chairs, but the huge half dome covering it rotates: Why does it rotate? Just in case someone wants to use the projector at its axis…
Seagate’s senior product manager Barbara Craig confirmed rumors that the company will be releasing a monster 3TB drive later this year. That’s a lot of disk space! But sorry XP users, the drive will require a 64-bit OS. The 3TB jump isn’t coming without its difficulties—the current LBA (logical block addressing) standard, set in the…
The story may be funny, but this is no joke. Microsoft Taiwan, catapulting off the recent success of the Windows 7 burger, has opened a Windows 7-themed restaurant called Hot Fried 77. https://gizmodo.com/i-ate-the-windows-7-burger-5394184 For the next two months, Microsoft is taking over 100 Seafood—a Taiwanese seafood restaurant—with a special, Windows 7 centric menu. Each dish…
The worst part of any vacation is coming home. Not just because your fleeting glimpse of freedom is finished, but because you’ve got to pay the absurd phone bill you racked up while you were gone. Ugh. Why? If you travel a lot, you know the drill: For every call you make, text you send,…
Dealzmodo welcomes you to another fun filled week. Or at least we hope it’s a fun filled week. If not, you can channel surf with everyone’s favorite universal remote control til your eyes get tired. That’s always fun. Top Deals: • 14″ Toshiba Satellite L515-S4010 Intel Dual-Core T4400 2.2GHz Laptop for $429.99 plus free shipping…
Set to the tune of OK Go’s This Too Shall Pass, this fantastic song/video parodies OK Go’s famed Rube Goldberg video—it’s called Mousetrap Never Works. And it’ll have you fist-pumping in vindication of your misspent childhood. https://gizmodo.com/how-ok-go-built-the-craziest-rube-goldberg-machine-yet-5484736 If you enjoyed the clip, you may also enjoy this highly watchable, 2-minute behind the scenes footage. I’m…
I don’t know if Google’s motives are pure or not, but this is wrong: They are refusing to advertise CougarLife, a dating site for mature women looking for younger men. However, they accept sites for mature men seeking young women. http://gawker.com/5539717/steve-jobs-offers-world-freedom-from-porn According to the New York Times, CougarLife.com was paying Google $100,000 a month since…
For this week’s Shooting Challenge, I asked you to shoot whatever you wanted. As the 116 photos that follow prove, this was a great decision. https://gizmodo.com/shooting-challenge-free-for-all-5537305 Lead Shot A friend gave me a nifty new Nikon 55mm macro f 3.5 with a Nikon bellows focusing attachment a couple of days ago. I slapped a Canon…
Free for All Gallery Part Two This picture is an HDR photo made up of 9 photos combined and tone mapped in Photomatix Pro. It is a shot from the park at Auckland Zoo in New Zealand and had to go off the beaten trail a bit to get this one, sorry native trees. I…
Taken with my 1.3MP Cell Phone Camera , Samsung SGH-D500. i don’t have a big sized version because the camera is not the good. -Daniel Belous This was my first time ever using a DLSR. Taken with a Canon Rebel XTi with stock lens and a 430EX flash. Settings were 1/160th, F/5.0, and ISO 400.…
We jumped inside a Mercedes F800 last week—the car that will offer three flavors of fuel as soon as 2012. Mercedes says that the future is a three-lane highway, with cars running on gas, electricity, and hydrogen. The F800 hybrid will combine a traditional gasoline engine using direct-injection technology with a hybrid module, which can…
As a badge of pride or a piercing insult, “fanboy” is wielded too lightly. We must understand its history, its context, and its gravity! We must know its provenance! We must respect the (word) fanboy. Harry McCracken has done some impressive forensics on every tech comment section’s fallback insult. Evidently, it all started 37 years…
The World Health Organization studied almost 13,000 cellphone users over the course of 10 years to determine whether or not there’s a link between cellphones and cancer. Their results? Inconclusive! Even after all that time and such a large study, they claim that further research is needed to determine if heavy cell users are in…
This is Thomas Salme, a maintenance engineer who became a Boeing 737 pilot by flying a few nights in a flight simulator and printing a fake airliner pilot license. Amazingly enough, he flew passengers for thirteen years without any incidents. Thirteen years of back and forth from Sweden to everywhere else in Europe. Nobody noticed…