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Created by LAVA architects—the people who designed the Beijing Water Cube and the spectacular Michael Schumacher tower—and the work organization branch of the Fraunhofer Institute—who brought you the MP3 standard—this Future Hotel Room belongs to a set of a Kubrick movie full of monoliths and monkeys. It’s not just looks, however: The room has been…
Dominoes, always a favorite elemental for Rube Goldberg-ian device chain reactions, are unsurprisingly the name of the game at last week’s Domino Day in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. That is where Robin Paul Weijers (Mr. Domino!) and his helpers (including Dutch girls suspended on harnesses above the action like Tom Cruise stealing a NOC list) rigged…
Reports from the front lines regarding the Xbox 360’s ‘New Xbox Experience’ update are just coming in, and so far, so good. We’ve heard that updates are taking as little as five minutes (including download and installation), which isn’t bad at all. The only technical glitch we’ve heard about is that Netflix device activation went…
We’ve mentioned ocean power stations a bit recently, and now here’s one with a rather different approach: It can store power for when its needed. Searaser is in prototype form at the moment, and it works by bobbing up and down as waves pass by. An underwater pump uses this motion to push water into…
When I was growing up I thought all faucets were going to be like this—all digital, electronic thermostat and sleekly mysterious. Nope: 99% of faucets I use are still the old twist’n’turn and get the bath-temperature wrong variety. Perhaps it’s because designs like this one from Italian makers Treemme are slightly impractical: it requires its…
In order to get certified by the FAA, every new plane must undergo wing tests to prove that it can withstand 150% of the load that it could ever be expected to encounter in flight. Engineers usually try to pass the test, and continue to stretch the wings to see just how far they can…
A Macforums member who bought an “as-is” Macbook Air from Ebay has ended up with some pretty strange fruit: It’s actually an early Air prototype, bearing marks indicating it was built in May 2007, six months before the Air was introduced. It’s got a few giveaways: the microphone positioning near the webcam is off, there’s…
Mods don’t get much simpler and more useful than this: It’s an alarm clock that whisks open some window blinds when the alarm goes off, so the sun can tempt you out of bed. There’s a microcontroller to handle detecting the alarm signal and to drive a servo wired into the blinds, and some switches…
Apparently it was optimistic to expect Prada to understand the difference between a fashion accessory and a phone accessory, because now look what’s happened: Prada and LG have announced the Prada Link, a Bluetooth watch that pulls text messages and your call information from the Prada II phone. To be honest though, it doesn’t look…
These noise-cancelling headphones from Hitachi Maxell are unlike many previous similar types since they don’t require separate power. Instead they connect to iPods via the dock connector, and can suck on the batteries through there. They do manage about 20dB of noise canceling with an “Active Noise Rejection” system, but the design is curiously crippling:…
Click to viewWe’re not the only ones obsessed with CNN’s over-the-top magic wall, which they use in equal measure to cover elections, entertain babies and just fill time — fake TV news has been milking it for all it’s worth. Now The Daily Show is on the case, and they’ve sent John Oliver to talk…
Snow Leopard, that eagerly awaited rebuild of the Mac OS X, could be coming in the first quarter of 2009, if you are to believe Apple engineering director Jordan Hubbard’s “presentation slides” from the LISA ’08 conference. The next version of OS X won’t come with too many crazy new features, but it does offer…
Maybe it’s because I have the hugest crush on David Pogue of the New York Times, but I find his recently released product finder guide, the Pogue-O-matic, absolutely adorable… and useful too! The Pogue-O-Matic is divided into four parts: cameras, camcorders, smartphones and televisions. If you were planning on getting people any of the above…
Hey! Want junk you never knew you needed just in time for the holiday season? Well, you’re in luck because there’s a Woot Off going on right now. Head over to Woot and bid your little recession-proof heart out! I’m sure there’s someone in your family who could use that random whatchamacallit you spent your…
These French cards, archived at the Library of Congress, were produced sometime between 1890 and 1900. Most of the cards illustrate important feats from ballooning history between 1795-1846, while card number two (pictured above) depicts futuristic visions of flight from the 1800s. It’s striking how similar these imagined flying machines are to those we looked…
In what’s a slightly suspicious coincidence, but Sony’s suddenly pulled a bunch of its movies from the Xbox’s Netflix Watch Instantly streaming service just a few hours before Microsoft’s New Xbox Experience goes live. Previously available titles like Superbad and Bad Boys, which are owned by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment subsidiary Columbia Pictures, have been…
HP’s Touchsmart tx2 is the first consumer-oriented convertible notebook to feature a multitouch technology built into the display. The 12.1-inch screen uses a capacitive touchpanel that can track two points simultaneously, operates with fingers or a stylus, and comes with the Mediasmart 2.0 interface customized for the notebook. While Dell’s oft-mentioned Latitude XT came out…
I’ve been staring at this ad for hours and I still can’t really figure out who Japanese company Wish Room’s Man Bra (or, as Seinfeld fans would probably call it, The Bro) is for. Drag queens unsatisfied with the options at their local Victoria’s Secret? Dudes with a fear of nipple chaffing? Kevin James? Either…
The Peek handheld, recently named the Time’s best gadget of 2008, has now gotten even better with two added features. While we knew unlimited text messaging was already coming to the device, it’s a pleasant surprise to find out it can now view images too. Peek will show .JPG, .GIF, .PNG and .BMP file formats…
Psystar, whose quasi-legit Mac clones brought the legal wrath of El Jobso down upon them, just had their antitrust countersuit against Apple thrown out. Apparently Psystar was trying to claim that Apple’s OS X is its own market separate from the other PC operating systems and suffer from a lack of hardware competition—thus the need…
