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At OLPC’s Global Country workshop today, founder Nick Negroponte unveiled the next-gen XO Laptop, and it totally blows the original away. About half the XO 1.0’s size and more like a foldable book, it does away with the keyboard and trackpad to go totally touchscreen—that’s right, dual touchscreens, straight out of the future, like a…
You may think someone over in Israel’s Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies had been watching one too many episodes of The Jetsons, but no… this is a real project. It looks like an Israeli consortium, led by the Fisher Institute, is attempting to put together the world’s first unpiloted battlefield resupply and…
Most of you probably know Jonathan Ive even if you don’t recognize the name—he’s Apple’s head of design (otherwise known as the company’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design). And he’s chiefly credited for designs of the iMac, iPod and iPhone. In an interview with The Independent, he shared some of his philosophies on designing…
Here’s a simple, compelling argument we read in Wired that shows a used car may be a more ecologically sound choice than a new Prius: Energy It Takes To Build Prius 113,000 BTUs 113,000 BTUs In Gasoline 1,000 gallons Distance Driven to Break Even For Build Cost 46,000 miles Time Needed For Average Driver to…
You might already know that performing a restore on your iPhone does not, in fact, completely wipe out your personal data. But it’s cool if you take it to Apple, because if your broke-ass iPhone does become a refurb for some discount-seeking soul, Apple scrubs it to the bone, right? Nope. Using a standard forensic…
I thought silver-surfers were one of the fastest rising ‘netted sectors of society, but designer Ben Arent thinks there are technophobic grandparents who could do with a helping hand. His Jive system integrates hardware-based social networking gizmos with a simple router to make everything a bit simpler. The idea is that instead of using a…
When you do the math on it, sending a text message requires such a tiny amount of bandwidth that, based on data transfer rates, they should round down to free. Clearly, that’s not the case, with every single carrier using text messaging as a fun excuse to gouge their customers with insane prices for such…
The next time you are baking a cake, be sure to note that your 380 ml of oil are enough to power a biodiesel car for 3 miles and that your 2 1/2 cups of flour has as many grains as there are people on the planet (6.8 billion). Because when using the Equal Measure…
Seriously, what is going on in England? Isn’t this the country that produced 1984? Has anyone read it lately? Because between the insane number of closed circuit cameras placed around Britain and now the governments desire to have an active database of every single phone call and email sent in the country, it’s beginning to…
Logitech’s Pure-Fi Mobile will apparently “transform your low-fidelity mobile-phone audio into high-fidelity, stereophonic sound.” You leave your cellphone in your pocket while streaming music over Bluetooth to the speaker module, using A2DP protocol for higher-fidelity sound. With four speakers it should be able to pump out an appreciable volume, and it also has dual mics…
With the Sony Rolly now available in Sony Style stores nationwide, things will change. The television? Dead. The internet? Deader. The fireplace? Surprisingly, effective competition if the Rolly gets too close. Americans will take to staring at this little dancing 2GB MP3 player for hours on end, sacrificing heat, food and clothing to make due…
Napster announced the transition to all DRM-free MP3s several months back, but now their 6 million song catalog is fully up and running. Now compatible with iPods/iPhones, Napster even claims that their inventory is “50% larger than any other MP3 store,” though we’re a little confused on the math since iTunes offers “more than 6…
In January we brought you some info on the SPOT GPS tracker that broadcasts live info on your whereabouts, and now just four months later there’s this new wrist-mounted gizmo that does almost the same. The Wrist Tracker is actually a multifunction device that has a GSM unit built-in, alongside the GPS tracker and data-logger,…
UPDATE: See the Gizmodo iPhone 3G Review, FAQ, iPhone Firmware 2.0 Review. https://gizmodo.com/iphone-3g-review-5024412 We all suspected it, but now it is confirmed: someone very, very close to the 3G iPhone launch has told me that Apple will announce their new model at the WWDC Keynote on June 9th. The second-generation iPhone will be available worldwide…
The majority of the comments have been great on Giz lately, but there has also been a surge in bad ones. Maybe it’s spring fever. Just wanted to give those of you on the fence the heads-up that all eds have been instructed to clean house a bit. Keep it on track, people, while I’m…
Scientists at MIT have been tackling the efficiency of next-gen power source fuel cells, and have discovered how to significantly improve it. Most current direct-methanol fuel cells use a membrane called Nafion sandwiched between their electrodes, and apparently it’s got a flaw. As well as letting hydrogen nucleii through to drive the power-generating process, it…
Tea is the fuel that keeps many an editor’s brain ticking over here in the Giz office: I make mine with teabags, Blam loves the new Sorapot. So this new design is of more than passing interest: student Paul Sukphisit has reinvented the tea infuser. And it actually looks like he’s really “built a better…
Elliott-wannabe Mike Kay has wired his mountain bike to Google Earth’s flight simulator mode to travel all around the world while he exercises. He used a Sun Microsystem SunSPOT, a Java-programmable wireless sensor equipped with an accelerometer and a bank of pins to connect it to the other controls. The system is simple, and it…
An amazing coffee table, a mouse… now an Apple remote? Is there nothing the classic NES controller can’t be modded into? Well, probably many things. But this one is at least simple to do and rather neat, involving a minimum of fiddling with solder and wires inside the NES. And you end up with a…
The guy in the leopard-skin fez is Mike Edison, a former editor of High Times. The guitar that he’s strumming on not-so-convincingly is the ChroniCaster, a bulletproof plexiglass little number, complete with bong add-on for those whose motto is Fumo, Ergo Sum. I think this is all a ploy to publicize Edison’s new book, entitled…
