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Remember that time in Star Wars when R2-D2 shot out the lightsaber to Luke Skywalker? Yeah, well the only problem with that scene was that lightsabers don’t freaking exist. And until they do, robots of the future must be retrofitted with the next best thing—copious amounts of booze. (Which, as we see in this picture,…
A giant gun that fires bullets containing chilled bottles of Bollinger…sounds like a psychedelic James Bond-theme dream. But at least the bullet bit is nearly a reality. Bollinger has come up with this 007-themed champagne bottle cooler in time for Quantum of Solace that actually is bullet-shaped, though there’s no giant Walther PPK to fire…
The casual office employee stalks his coworker with the intensity of a lion hunting a wildebeest on the African savanna. Never rushed, always contemplated, the average office prank is executed with all the precision found in a well-pressed shirt. In part one of our examination of the office prank, we study the first of many…
Toshiba’s Super Charge Ion Batteries (SCiBs) have been floating around in various industrial applications for a while now, prompting some serious envy in the consumer space with their ridiculously fast charge time and remarkable lifespan (5000-6000 charge cycles to a normal lithium ion’s 500). A year and about one worn-out laptop battery later, Toshiba is…
Combining the tradition of building towers in clusters with the coldly rational American skyscraper, apparently you wind up with a tower that has been cut, twirled and splayed apart, resulting in a giant undulating W that’s a single, continuous building masquerading as four wavy towers. That’s the theory behind Danish architects Bjarke Ingels Group‘s latest…
If you’ve got an Xbox 360 and have been toying with the idea of trying out Rock Band or Guitar Hero, this Guitar Hero III bundle runs just $50 for the game and one wired guitar. Plus, this guitar will work for Rock Band, should you want to pick up a standalone copy on the…
The humble USB socket has provided power for some weird gizmos, but I think this might just take the biscuit: it’s a USB-powered volcano. A fake one (duh!) in fact, with plastic lava beads that erupt out of the volcano in a water-filled desktop toy. Awesome—the mega-destructive and impressive power of nature reduced to one…
Not the most practical DSLR bag, but Acme Made’s Bowler is definitely the awesomest, if only for the strong odor of The Big Lebowski. You won’t be able to cram a million lenses into its satin-lined polyurethane shell, but if The Jesus carried around a DSLR, you know it would be in this bag. And…
I like the 1940s Disney animation shorts. They may not get to the hilarity level of Chuck Jones and Tex Avery’s work at Warner, but some of them are really good. This How to Hook Up Your Home Theater short is new, but it feels like one of them and summarizes perfectly the dangers and…
Giz pick of the week: Iron Man There’s no doubt Iron Man was a guilty pleasure, but when executed with a very decent script, a superb cast of actors and unbelievable art design and special effects, we’re suddenly proud to put the popcorn flick on our shelf. And the Blu-ray comes with plenty of extras,…
This strangely sexy (for a networked storage device) Toshiba wireless media server concept on show at CEATEC takes a novel approach to design; as wires disappear, the necessity for an unimaginative stack of home theater equipment is diminished. The device is loaded with wireless capabilities, including Wi-Fi, wireless HDMI (presumably the WirelessHD protocol) and for…
Targus has been making peripherals since before sliced bread was invented, but as part of its first line of notebook accessories specifically designed for Macs it’s come up with two mice that are the only ones to have four-way touch scroll controls for Macs. They’re ergonomic, and both have 1200 dpi sensitivity: the wireless version…
Generally I think “laptop coolers… meh” when I come across them, but the new Chill Mat from Targus—part of the new range for Macs—is actually a fairly sweet device. Mainly because it’s just a simple mesh-top gizmo, that tilts your Mac to a more wrist-friendly position and it looks like it’d sit quite well, stylistically…
A Nikon Coolpix camera belonging to the MI6-the British equivalent of the CIA-was sold on eBay for $30 with images of al Qaeda suspects, fingerprints, names, rocket launchers, and missiles inside. That’s bad enough, but it gets worse: the camera also contained top secret information that may compromise the security of James Bonds in the…
Toshiba’s Satellite E105 is almost run-of-the-mill as far as new notebooks go—Centrino 2, latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors, 4GB of RAM, integrated graphics (boo), HDMI out—but a couple of things make it stand out. What instantly struck me is that the silhouette—which you can see more of below—is obviously inspired by the MacBook Pro.…
Following the apparent success of SeaGen, a small deployment of tidal turbines of the coast of Northern Ireland, Scottish Power is seeking approval for plans to build two farms of 20 100-foot, err, watermills promising a steady power supply for up to 40,000 homes. As with the previous example of tidal power generation, the most obvious…
This week saw the commencement of the first annual Handcar Regatta race, in which over a dozen teams took to the rails in a ridiculous variety of human-powered steampunk machinery. The event wasn’t so much a race as it was a showcase of overwrought vehicle design, taking inspiration from everything from hamster wheels to animals…
Last we heard from Fujitsu it was updating its iMac-alike desktop PC, but the company has also just snuck out the ST6012 tablet PC very quietly. Running an Intel Core2 Duo beneath a 12.1-inch 1280 × 800-pixel touchscreen, the machine also packs 2GB of RAM, Intel GS45 integrated graphics, up to a 320GB HDD or…
Proving that Japan always has the coolest concept phones, this Fujitsu device shown at CEATEC lets you separate your screen and touchscreen keypad in whatever configuration you like. Both parts can be used separately or stuck together by magnets, and where you stick the screen on the keypad determines what the touchscreen shows. The screen…
LG is claiming that its upcoming slider, the KC780, will be the world’s thinnest 8 megapixel camera phone, according to GSM Arena. If that’s true, the phone will wrestle the title from the Samsung Pixon, which measures in at a super slim 13.8mm. Besides the 8MP camera, the KC780 is also expected to have a…
