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The original Kill-a-Watt was a barebones, if efficient, way of monitoring how much energy an appliance used. But what if you want more features? Like a timer or programming. Here it is. https://gizmodo.com/tweet-a-watt-because-its-ok-to-brag-about-energy-effic-5136651 Kill-A-Watt’s latest version lets you see three stats at once: the current voltage, elapsed time, and cumulative use (which has an unfortunate…
You know I need breakfast asap when I read maple and cherry and the only thing I can think about is syrup, pancakes, and pie. And a giant coffee, please. Unfortunately, these wooden speakers for all iPods are not edible. Fortunately, I’ve a nice diner near my house. For those of you interested in these…
Electricpig got word that a second gen Xperia Pureness is in the works. But believe it or not, the designers actually want to cut down on the phone’s functionality, even referencing “removing the keys.” [Electricpig] https://gizmodo.com/the-xperia-pureness-is-just-several-steps-from-invisibl-5351981
We asked Maximum PC editor-in-chief Will Smith to name the best gaming PCs in four categories: monster laptop, value laptop, over-the-top desktop and “cheap” desktop. Though that last one is still a bankbuster, his picks are hot as hell: Desktop Replacement Notebook: iBuypower M865TU You want a speedy desktop replacement notebook wrapped in an unassuming,…
Razer’s Imperator is pretty standard right-handed Razer gaming mouse (5600dpi tracking, etc.), but it has sliding thumb buttons, so you can adjust exactly where they sit on the mouse. Could be gimmicky, but I’m definitely intrigued. [Razer]
Somewhere on the App Store spectrum, between the travel phrasebooks and those apps that replace your mouth with a slightly weirder mouth, you’ll find iLingual, an app that steals your lips, and uses them to speak three different languages. Here’s how it works: you snap a picture of a mouth—yours, your girlfriend’s, or just a…
Chrome OS dev code only just went public, but Phoronix has already thrown it on a Samsung NC10 netbook to test its performance and battery-life against Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10, Moblin 2.1, Fedora 12, and openSUSE 11.2. Interesting results ahead. https://gizmodo.com/get-google-chrome-os-now-5408931 Ultimately, Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 did the best, and openSUSE 11.2 also did well.…
Bloodhound is a car being designed to run at a swooshing one thousand miles-per-hour. That’s 1,609 km/h, which is way faster than the speed of sound. As the video shows, it’ll have more thrust than the Eurofighter combat jet: https://gizmodo.com/inside-the-typhoon-eurofighter-cockpit-verdict-oh-boy-323183 Of course, the car has yet to be built, let alone break that record. But…
For the first time ever, every major carrier in the US actually has smartphones worth buying, meaning you don’t have to break up to get a good phone. Here’s the best phones on each one, along with the best deals. If you hate the gallery format, click here. https://gizmodo.com/the-best-smartphones-on-every-carrier-5411351 All pricing shown is with a…
QWERTY is pretty much the king of smartphone text input. But there’s a new challenger on the horizon. It’s called Swype, it works with one-hand input and, yeah, it is pretty fast. Yes, the first thing you may notice is that Swype technically uses a QWERTY layout. But instead of pushing each key individually, you…
I don’t know about you, but I like a President who can throw a funny, geeky sci-fi reference once in a while. Clearly, el Comandante en Jefe has watched his Terminators and scary Big Dogs a few times. https://gizmodo.com/new-video-of-bigdog-quadruped-robot-is-so-stunning-its-368651 Obama said those words while presenting his “Educate to Innovate” campaign, which aims to promote the…
So you’ve scored an invite and watched the videos, but still confused about Google Wave? Google’s latest explanatory tactic: recreate famous documents to showcase Wave’s features. Here’s the declaration of independence, complete with edits from the founding fathers. https://gizmodo.com/try-out-google-wave-with-fellow-readers-5372293 If you’ve got a Wave account, you can check out the reconstruction here. Google Wave team…
BassJump is, quite simply, a dedicated subwoofer to complement your MacBook—in both aesthetics and sound. Rather than merely plugging in through USB, the BassJump uses proprietary software to remix all audio coming out of your laptop, essentially treating those tinny integrated speakers as tweeters while the BassJump handles the lows. I can’t believe that this…
Sadly, obsolete gadgets have to be replaced. Happily, change is good. This is what happened to Jerry Seinfeld’s ever-present classic Macintosh which, after all these years, has been replaced by a new iMac. https://gizmodo.com/what-to-do-with-an-original-1984-macintosh-5269088 It happened in the “Seinfeld reunion” episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. The iMac seems to be from the previous generation, not…
As expected, the DriveStation HD-HXU3 is the first external USB 3.0 drive in the U.S. It promises transfers up to 4.8Gbps (compared to USB 2.0’s 480Mbps) and Buffalo has a two-port USB 3.0 PCI Express card to get you started. https://gizmodo.com/buffalos-hd-hu3-poised-to-be-the-first-usb-3-0-hard-dri-5376409 There’s no price yet on the USB 3.0 PCI Express card (IFC-PCIE2U3), but it’s…
If you’re going to buy a travel mouse, it might as well, in some small way (possibly entirely induced by marketing), resemble a spoon. Right? The Elecom “Like a Spoon!” mouse wraps stainless steel around plastic like a little, electronic amuse-bouche. Of course, given its $90 price and necessity to import (it’s Japan-only), the satisfaction…
That’s right, 480 x 320-pixel video recording at 30fps is now go. The homebrew software is only an alpha (so there’s bugs like not being able to preview what you’re recording), but the app works, and is free to download. When WebOS 1.3.1 skipped updating the camera app, the developers of Precorder decided not to…
Yesterday we saw how the DSi LL (or XL, as it will be known in the US) compares to the Sony PSP-3000. Yeah that 4.2-inch screen is freakin’ huge. Now here’s a look under the hood. Controller board porn! https://kotaku.com/dsi-xl-coming-to-america-in-early-2010-5392865 PC Watch are the ones who sacrificed their unit in the name of science, and…
Wow, this is great. The “Educate to Innovate” campaign will aim to improve U.S students’ grounding in science, technology, engineering, and math education through $260 million in public-private partnerships, plus the first “National Lab Day” to update school science labs. The president also said he’s introducing an annual White House Science fair with the winners…
Giz reader, Jake Kirshner, needs your help. He’s one of the final five semi-finalists in a Microsoft-sponsored competition to find a U.S student blogger/athlete to report from next year’s Consumer Electronics Show (where we’ll be ourselves), in addition to the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Jake’s a Computer Science major at the University of Utah, a competitive…
