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NYPD officers are fed up! Their typewriters are broken down relics from a previous age, making police work more difficult, stressful and demoralizing. To remedy this, the city is spending close to a million dollars. On new typewriters. It’s easy to see what happened here: faced with a failing fleet of typewriters—used for property and…
In a recent interview with CNET, Bill Gates let spill the true scope of Microsoft’s ambitions for the technology behind the Xbox’s Project Natal. Basically, it isn’t just a gaming gimmick—they want to try it everywhere. Here’s how everyone’s still-favorite Microsoft figurehead (sorry Ballmer!) sees camera-based motion tech playing out: [The concept also works] for…
I was born in 1972. Yes, I’m old. But that means I lived the Golden Age of Lego in 1979, and got to play with the coolest sets in history. I wasn’t as cute as the Lego Alice-in-wonderland girl, though. https://gizmodo.com/best-lego-sets-in-history-349929 Those were the times, when I spent hours playing with my two brothers—my sister…
These little 4×4-inch Cablox pads are sticky on one side and loaded with tiny little nodules on the other, so you can wind your cables through and line them up just the way you like them. They actually seem pretty useful if, like me, you have a really nasty tendency to kick loose cables by…
Pittsburgh, PA’s 33-story Grant Building famously spells out the name of the city in Morse Code so brightly it can be seen for over 100 miles. Except it doesn’t actually spell Pittsburgh, but “Pitetsbkrrh.” Eep. A former HAM radio enthusiast and Pittsburgh local, Tom Stapleton, decoded the message and posted the gaffe on YouTube, and…
Run. Run! Run for your life, but don’t step over giant green pipe on your way out, or the zombie Super Nintendo will catch you to suck your blood and soul. The damn thing even glows in the dark: Why would anyone do this to a perfectly functional console—which is still fully operational after this…
Back in 1979, the German Prime Minister announced that coal was the “fuel of the future,” and the energy industry was all abuzz about the possibilities, including coal-powered cars. Ha! Gasoline doesn’t look so bad now, eh? German scientists were actually trying to create synthesized gasoline from brown coal, also called lignite, which is the…
Machined out of aluminum, brass or titanium, Exovault cases are about as masculine as iPhone accessories get. I’m struggling with to find a catchy name for style of product, but I think I’ll settle on “postapocalyptipunk.” Or possibly “Zunepunk.” I can see a few potential problems here, like poor heat dissipation, iPhone scratching, excessive weight…
We always feature amazing architecture here in Gizmodo. Sometimes truly spectacular. Sometimes intriguing. Sometimes minimalist and perfect. Sometimes simply beautiful. This hotel from China doesn’t fall into any of these categories. https://gizmodo.com/tallest-skyscraper-in-the-world-almost-completed-defie-5038788 It’s the Tianzi Hotel, in the Chinese provice of Hebei. Apparently, the 10-story building holds the world record for the “biggest image building”.…
Acer said they’d churn out one Android phone by the end of the year; that was all the way back in April, and they’ve since taken their relationship with Google’s OS to the next level. (But not too far!) It’d be far from crazy, then, for the company to hit a September release date, as…
We’re usually excited to get clued in on new product launches, but this vague tease from Sony Ericsson doesn’t help us out much. Is it the Rachael? The Kiki? Release dates for some boring old feature phones? Something else entirely? https://gizmodo.com/sony-ericssons-android-rachael-ui-makes-me-want-to-ditc-5310236 All we’ve got to go on is this teeny tweet from Sony Ericsson North…
Google Voice, the sweet service that lets you redirect calls, transcribes your voicemails and way more, is finally coming to smartphones—but only Android and BlackBerry, for now. iPhone users, you can go have some coffee while you wait. Vincent Paquet, a senior product manager for Google and cofounder of GrandCentral (Google Voice before its name…
Presumably aimed at tweens who want one of those cool all-touch devices without paining their parents with a data plan, the Samsung Highlight features an admittedly cute design and a teeny touchscreen. The touchscreen is an oddly-sized 1.61- x 2.64-inch capacitive display, though the handset does have a few hardware buttons on the bottom and…
The “New” Democratic Leadership Council in Washington has proposed that the government buy a Kindle or other “eTextbook” for each of the 56 million K-12 schoolchildren in America. It’s a nice sentiment, but as a plan, it’s holey. I am certain this gave Amazon honcho Jeff Bezos one hell of a tingle when he saw…
Everybody Loves a Corpse-Eating Robot…Nobody Loves 1.8″ Hard Drives…Everex Is Dead (Wait, Who?)…Guns N’ Roses N’ Piracy Don’t Mix… Leave it to Fox News to read a website saying a robot can fuel itself on “biomass…and other organically-based energy sources…as well as use conventional and alternative fuels”—in other words, switchgrass, diesel fuel and vegetable oil—and…
I think I and quite a few others have had this idea before, but some crazy Russians have actually built a 10-foot, stationary hamster ball for humans that translates movement to on-screen action. Given the oft-hilarious Russian inventors, their equally staid and awkward American partner and the fact that this is on Vice Magazine’s video…
I’d never been envious of Tom Perkins’ giant sailboat, the Maltese Falcon, until it received a deployable submarine in its belly. The sub, called the Deep Flight Super Falcon, is a 21-foot electric vehicle, bringing aerodynamic principles to the sea. John Markoff got a ride recently, and reported the craft as being interesting, even in…
DeviantArt user Liz Lukens posted this papercraft cubic Billy Mays template so you can fold him up and bring him everywhere. Highly visible arm hair is thoughtfully included. [DeviantArt]
This typewriter is modified to play a different note with every key pressed. It’s a neat idea, but if you’re actually typing words the music it produces is similar to the music produced by a cat walking on a piano. [Yanko Design via PopSci]
There are few things that make handheld video look more polished and professional than the use of a Steadicam. And this homemade version is seriously cheap to put together. This contraption is actually a gimbal mount, using a skate bearing, three sections of PVC piping, some wood and some nuts and bolts. Compared to a…
