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In case you’ve got a niece or nephew that’s hankering for an Elmo Live, but you personally can’t stand the strangely frightening little muppet, why not get them animatronic wild animals from Japan that are, in my opinion, much cuter. Made by Bandai Namco, these cuddly robots react to petting and hugging, make cute baby…
If you’re a tablet-lover like me, you’ve probably bemoaned the lack of Apple tablets at some point in time. Though Axiotron’s Modbook looked pretty great, the nearly $2500 it costs put it way out of my price range. But the Gods of Technology must’ve heard my prayers, because Axiotron’s now offering a sweet deal to…
If you’re planning on a long distance ski trip or a mountain climb this winter, check out Ardica’s new power and heat platform for outerwear. Not only will Ardica-enabled jackets charge your gadgets (up to 11 full charges on your cellphone and 20 on your iPod), it’ll also keep you nice and warm for either…
HP’s Mini 1000 is a 10.2-inch netbook that comes in at under 2.5 pounds and packs a 1.6 Ghz Atom processor, 16 GB SSD and up to 2 GB RAM under its highly portable shell. For now, it also comes complete with Windows XP, Bluetooth, VGA webcam, a removable USB drive molded into the fit…
You know that anger management technique where you punch a pillow? Imagine if instead of a pillow, you were punching shadows of a giant mattress on the wall… and instead of just punching, you were elbowing, kicking and headbutting as well. Now imagine that those shadows belong to your friends (or coworkers) and you get…
Leave it to the Japanese to come up with an environmentally friendly solution to drying wet umbrellas. The new “Rain Wipe” from Annon removes rainwater using a squeegee-like device to pull water from the umbrella into a collecting tray. The tray would only need replacement after about 3000 umbrellas have been squeezed through. It generates…
Aviation experts in the U.K. are arguing that the industry should push to convert their planes from using fossil fuel to using nuclear energy, an idea that’s sure to illicit a visceral “holy crap, god no!” reaction from the get go. But while it’s hard to separate the idea from the mental image of flying…
It’s almost Halloween again, and for those of you who have yet to try your hand at carving a badass pumpkin, check out Make Zine’s video of a self-proclaimed “scariest pumpkin ever”—a simple looking pumpkin with not-so-simple insides. Looking at the project, it’s apparent that aesthetics are not what is shocking about this pumpkin. In…
LG’s toning down their “Life’s Good” campaign in light of the fact that life really isn’t so good for a lot of people right now. Instead of focusing on telling people that their existence is peachy, LG’s new ads will harp on what the product can do to make your life easier. That’s some pretty…
Cambridge-based E Ink is turning some heads with it’s AM300 Developer Kit, which promises refresh rates fast enough to support animations (think dynamic ads), interactive touch input, and 16 unadulterated, detailed shades of grey (!). Developed in conjunction with Epson, the kit uses the New York Times as an example, which makes sense, as those…
Caller ID from WhitePages is an add-on for the default Android caller ID that enables location detection. The service tells you two bits of info whenever someone (whether they’re on your contact list or not) calls: the approximate city the number belongs to and whether or not it’s a landline. The app seems to work…
I’ve seen quite a few R/C cars in my day, but I’ve never seen one that actually transforms the way Optimus Prime can. The RCRC (or Remote Controlled Robotic Car) offers four modes for your entertainment: robot, truck, sports car, and “hip-hop dance” robot-tank. And I definitely hope I don’t meet whoever was controlling that…
After making an appearance in a recent Britney Spears video, and showing up again in Christina Aguilera’s video for “Keeps Gettin’ Better” (about 1:07 in), Nokia’s marketing strategy regarding their new 5800 XpressMusic is becoming pretty clear. At least this time the singer can actually, you know…sing. Hit the jump to check out a couple…
The much-criticized BMW iDrive central control dashboard has been updated to its fourth version, and it seems that this time they have got it right. Abandoning the previous compass-based user interface, the new iDrive adopts the hierarchical vertical menu system of the iPod, mixing it with an interface similar to the Xbox 360. Apart from…
Rainer Brockerhoff’s studied dissection of the new MacBook’s design—how certain design choices intersect with the realities of components to produce real notebooks—perfectly explains how they are not simply a wishlist of parts and features that magically come together. There are always compromises. The unibody construction, along with the decision to make the hard drive and…
The “Out of Sight Out of Mind” (OSOM) table concept has everything a neat freak could possibly want in a workspace—plenty of space, tons of modular storage units and ergonomic design touches like an writing/typing space that can be angled for comfort. You can even customize the layout to suit your needs. Again, it is…
Even though Apple and Psystar are currently negotiating behind closed doors, the Mac-cloner is continuing to defy Apple by releasing new products. Psystar announced today that they are ready to ship an Mac clone with built-in Blu-ray and NVIDIA 9800GT graphics cards. For those of you who recall, Jobs recently referred to Blu-ray as a…
Apple’s (truly) massive recall of the iPhone 3G’s compact USB power adapter makes total sense now: It’s a piece of a shit. The “certain conditions” that’ll make its prongs break off are basically breathing too hard, too close, since they only extend about 1/8 of an inch into the adapter and are “held in place…
Google has been scanning somewhere around 3,000 books per day for its Google Book Search program. The only problem was that they never got permission from The Authors Guild or the Association of American Publishers. Today the three organizations reached an agreement that involved Google paying $125 million in licensing fees. But the flip…
When I was a kid, I always loved those shorts on shows like Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers that went to factories to show how things like crayons were made. Seeing how stuff is made is totally fascinating! That’s why I can’t help but post this video on how globes are made. It’s nothing earth…
