Tech News

Make Professional Multimedia PDF Portfolios with Adobe Acrobat 9

Your dreams of dynamic, seamless PDF portfolios can now be realized. With Adobe Acrobat 9, you can combine video, audio, and documents all in a single file. Read: awesome. Get ready to blow them away with your next presentation. With Adobe 9, you can: -Combine videos, movies, simulations and 3D objects into a single compressed…

VESA Officially Adopts Apple’s Mini DisplayPort

It was bound to happen: Apple’s Mini DisplayPort is now officially part of the Video Electronics Standards Association’s DisplayPort 1.1a standard. [VESA] https://gizmodo.com/apples-mini-displayport-will-be-official-part-of-displa-5131032

15 Improbable Bionic Upgrades to the Human Body

For this week’s Photoshop Contest, I asked you to imagine some bionic upgrades for the human body. And it’s safe to say that I am not interested in having any of you perform unnecessary surgery on me. Yikes. First Place—Doc Brown Second Place—Shaun Legacy Third Place— Jon McGrath

Google Maps Shows You the Way to Your Swine Flu Vaccine

The Pandemic That Was Going to Kill Us All But Didn’t is still alive, lurking to take you in a one-way trip across the Styx. Or a two-way trip to Snotland. Google Maps points the way to the nearest vaccine. https://gizmodo.com/follow-the-swine-flu-pandemic-in-real-time-with-google-5229314 The search engine has collaborated with the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services…

Vitruvian Voltron

If only Leonardo da Vinci had 1980s cartoons as his muse, it would be Voltron representing Man’s innate tie to geometry and architecture. Live in that better world by purchasing this $18 t-shirt, or sniffing more Crayola. [ThinkGeek via RedFerret]

World’s Largest Bathtub. Just that: World’s Largest Bathtub

I wanted so badly to have a large, English-style, only-nose-out, soak-like-a-hippo bathtub in my new apartment. I settled for a large shower, but at 72 by 12 feet, maybe I should have rented the world’s largest bathtub instead. This 4-food deep naffness is indeed the world’s largest and tackiest bathtub, needing 6,340 gallons (24,000 liters)…

Google to Murdoch: Whatever, Dude

Rupert Murdoch—owner of some of the finest and fairest news organizations in the world, true beacons of journalism—is thinking about retiring all his content from Google. Well, Señor Ruperto, apparently Google doesn’t give a goddamn about it: https://gizmodo.com/rupert-murdoch-hates-google-5400560 News organizations are in complete control over whether and how much of their content appears in search…

Is Choosing a Prosthesis So Different than Picking a Pair of Glasses?

I think technology has evolved enough to let us be earnest about the fact that a consumer of a prosthetic is the same consumer buying an iPod or glasses or a couch for their house. You want options. Obviously, the role of a prosthetic is one far more intimate than that of a couch, and…

Google Search Is About to Get a Lot Better

For the last couple of months, Google’s been testing a new search architecture called Caffeine—a back-end upgrade, but one that changes the results in virtually any search. Today, Lifehacker gets word that Caffeine is ready to go live in Google proper. https://lifehacker.com/googles-better-search-caffeine-going-primetime-5401305 So what does this mean, exactly? Well, if you believe roughly 75% of…

Hahahaha! Blockbuster Renting Movies on SD Cards! Hahahahaha! From Kiosks!

Oh, I hope whatever exec came up with this idea scores a huge bonus. Blockbuster is piloting a new program that will load a DRM’d movie rentals onto an SD card from a kiosk. The future! So say you’re at the airport. You want to rent, I dunno, some movie that wasn’t good enough to…

Razer’s No-Frills Abyssus Gaming Mouse Needs More Frills

I’m a minimalist when it comes to mouse bling, but for $50, Razer’s Abyssus is a little too lean—there aren’t even any thumb buttons—just raw 3500DPI tracking and a 1ms response time with on-the-fly adjustment. SteelSeries’ Kinzu pulls off the bargain gaming mouse gambit way better, at $35. Or you can get more aggressively armed…

Droid Does Higher Res Video Streaming With New Qik App

Droid records video at an impressive 720×480 resolution—it’s certainly more impressive than its photo prowess anyway—and streaming service Qik’s the first take advantage of that higher resolution, allowing full res streams later tonight with a beta release. [MobileCrunch] https://gizmodo.com/motorola-droid-review-5396168

Why Did Samsung Just Announce Another Mobile OS?

They’re calling it “Bada,” which means ocean in Korean. And it’s got an SDK! After sifting through hundreds of words of deliberately vague press release, this is all we really know about Samsung’s new mobile OS. Well, almost. Samsung is as aware as any company of just how many smartphones OSes there are in the…

The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine is part of a consortium of researchers working to apply the science of regenerative medicine to battlefield injuries. For example, two projects are to engineer a human ear and a finger in the laboratory, with the ultimate goal of being able to engineer an entire limb. Here, scientists…

Ecomodo – The Best of Treehugger

This week on TreeHugger, motorcycles that run on Linux, sneakers only a geek could love, a design project that lets you text fish (and get responses), growing bacteria into packaging, and more. Sneakers for Geeks and Hackers Are Made form Recycled Computer Chips Gabriel Dishaw, junk-metal artist extraordinaire, fashioned these incredible shoes out of pieces…

Droid Opening Weekend: 100,000 Sold

Not a bad opening weekend for Droid, with estimates that Verizon and Moto pushed out 100,000 of ’em. To compare, that’s about how many Pres were sold on opening weekend, give or take. [Bloomberg]

New iControlPad Prototype Controls the iPhone with Dual Analog Nubs

The iPhone gamepad case is back with an overhauled design that brings controls to the front, and adds dual analog nubs (the same as the Pandora gaming handheld). There’s also an internal battery that charges the iPhone while playing. https://gizmodo.com/pandoras-nintendo-ds-on-steroids-will-be-out-for-the-ho-5058535 The previous design was a lot sleeker, and placed the controls on the side. But…

Spy Toothbrush Hopes to Capture Erotic Moments, Will Probably End with Embarrassing Ones

Chinese manufacturers keep working hard to push the world forward into a hole of crappy amateur porn, one spy pinhole camera at a time. But when they add one to an Oral-B electric toothbrush, you know things won’t end well. https://gizmodo.com/shoe-spy-camera-will-probably-get-you-arrested-5351078 I like how they justify it: There is time date stamp for the record,…

Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless N Networking Adaptor Arrives for $100

This may be the millionth unofficial launch of the new 360 Wireless N Adapter, but Newegg has the device listed for $100 and on sale…NOW! And it doesn’t look like they’re frantically pulling it. [Newegg via Kotaku] https://gizmodo.com/xbox-360-wireless-n-adapter-resurfaces-for-a-little-les-5398596

Nikon’s Twitter-Inspired Digital Film Festival Will Feature Ashton Kutcher and Dwight Schrute

Twitter is so hot right now, you guys. It’s so hot it influences things totally unrelated to Twitter, like the Nikon Festival—a digital film fest that challenges micro-auteurs to create 140-seconds-or-less digital videos. Obviously, Ashton Kutcher is involved. The Nikon Festival has the theme “A Day Through Your Lens,” and asks budding filmmakers to upload…