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We’ve finally gotten to the good stuff in Blu-ray: BD-Live 2.0 players all over the place, Transformers, Firefly, cheaper prices, almost everything we wanted. That’s too bad, because Samsung says this party will be over in just five years. https://gizmodo.com/this-week-in-blu-ray-every-which-way-but-loose-bolts-e-5044541 Andy Griffiths, Samsung UK’s director of consumer electronics, says that “I think it [Blu-ray] has…
To be fair, Microsoft hasn’t come out and said that their goal is to have Windows 7 boot in 15 seconds. But they have said this: For Windows 7, a top goal is to significantly increase the number of systems that experience very good boot times. In the lab, a very good system is one…
So, are you enjoying the snappy, clean performance of Google Chrome since downloading yesterday? If so, you might want to take a closer peek at the end user license agreement you didn’t pay any attention to when downloading and installing it. Because according to what you agreed to, Google owns everything you publish and create…
iRobot is expanding their Roomba line with three new models intended for more industrial of use. The Roomba 532 and 562 Pet Series Robots ($350 and $400) are meant for animal owners—or anyone sucking up massive amounts of floor hair—and equipped with larger sweeping bins to accommodate copious amounts of fur. The Roomba 610 Professional…
These bloody hand and foot wrist rests aren’t meant to taunt your co-workers with adolescent slasher film humor. Their intention is to honor the many who’ve fallen, organizing spreadsheets and returning company emails and remind you that, at any time, you could be a mouse click away from clicking no more. Just make sure to…
Why God, why? Just as Man was on the cusp of a real-life invisibility cloak—otherwise known as the gateway to the secrets of international government and the girl’s locker room—some stupid-head Chinese scientists have already learned to thwart it. The theoretical “anti-cloak” would be a piece of material with identical optical bending properties to the…
“The lightbulb is dead. Long live CFL!” may be the chant sounding around the world as we switch to the energy-efficient fluorescent lighting, but this has its own problems—something the LED bulb from Frog Design is intended to fix. It’s arguable the CFLs are bad for the environment, with plastic parts, electronics and mercury inside,…
Sanyo is finally gracing the US with the second generation of their respected waterproof Xacti line, the Xacti E2. Capturing either 8MP stills or 640×480 AVC/H.264 video, the 9.1-ounce Xacti E2 can fit up to 8 hours of footage on an 8GB SD/SDHC card (so that’s 1GB/hr). Unfortunately, the Xacti E2 is only waterproof to…
This Yalos LCD HDTV from Keymats is studded (I can’t make myself use the word “encrusted”) with 160 diamonds (plus rubys?) totaling at least 20 carats, is plated with white gold, has an ornate decorated rear face, and is clearly aimed at a niche market of punters with too much money and no sense of…
First the Lego Galactic Empire invaded Earth thanks to the stormtroopers cloning machine, and now they are running their own edition of the Olympic Games. This gallery of Imperial Sportstroopers by the incredibly talented Alan Chia is both beautiful and hilarious. https://gizmodo.com/35-310-lego-star-wars-clone-trooper-army-invades-earth-5020703 But more importantly, Alan’s skills and imagination show one of the countless possible…
TiVo and DirecTV have a chaotic history, but now that it’s all straightened out, the two companies can move forward to release new hardware. Now they’re planning a follow up to the HD DirecTiVo, the aging, discontinued HD TiVo platform for DirecTV that used inefficient MPEG2 encoding. Expected in the second half of 2009, the…
Last week, we all breathed a sigh of relief that the adorable iPhone factory girl wasn’t fired for popping up on a brand new iPhone 3G, and proooobably wasn’t killed. But she is scared. All of the media attention (yes, like this post, sorry) has made the girl, who came “to the city from her…
Click to viewOver at Instructables is this DIY project that will let you make your own slender electronic business cards with built-in LED display. They’re pretty cool, displaying a number of different scrolling data messages at the push of a button, and apparently cost just about $5 per card. The “slender” description means you’ll have…
Apple/AT&T customer William Gillis was unhappy with the performance of his iPhone 3G. So he filed a lawsuit. But what’s unique in this case is that the lawsuit isn’t complaining just that the iPhone 3G is underperforming, but that the iPhone 3G is underperforming because it’s been consciously oversold in a plot by AT&T and…
Jason Hawkes has a very difficult, expensive, and spectacular kind of work: he takes pictures from the sky. And while it may not sound very difficult, obtaining these crystal-clear shots while hanging out of the door of a twin-engine helicopter, everything vibrating like in an earthquake because of the rotor blades, and shouting orders at…
If you’re in the northeastern US and having troubles hitting up the internets or email from your phone, don’t chuck it at the wall—a whole bunch of users are reporting that AT&T’s data network is down and out this morning, which has been confirmed to many by AT&T tech support. If you’re having problems (or…
There’s really nothing great that can be done with Styrofoam other than not produce it in the first place, but in lieu of recycling it or throwing it away, one man and his son, inspired by this artwork, took 5 years worth of Styrofoam packaging and did the next most logical thing—built a giant robot.…
I mean, come on. Look at these two. Dr. Who Sonic vs Laser Screwdrivers? Dr. Who? When was the last time you travelled back in time? Hello? How hard is to actually go to an online sex-shop and anonymously order the real thing? They come in the same brown cardboard UPS package, do we really…
Sikorsky, makers of the Blackhawk and other sleek helicopters, have successfully tested their X2 Technology Demonstrator, a prototype designed to showcase new propulsion systems that will allow their helicopters to fly at twice the speed of conventional ones. And it looks sci-fi pretty too, even more so from the front: Sikorsky Chief Test Pilot Kevin…
Navigon recently popped up with a high-end GPS with free-for-life live traffic info, followed by some similar models from Garmin, and now it’s got a new entry-level model with the same feature. The 2200T is in fact the first “genuine entry-level GPS navigator” with free lifetime traffic, according to Navigon. It’s also got the same…
