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When cars die, they don’t go to some magical car heaven (except for hybrids, maybe). But the best, luckiest ones just might become Transformer replicas. Standing at 87 inches tall and weighing a respectable 485 pounds, this Optimus Prime statue is a probably the most compelling argument for recycling we’ve ever seen. And its leg…
Robert Maddox is a builder and seller of real pulse jet engines with powers up to 1000 pounds… and if that’s not a cool enough hobby, he’s also bolted one to a bicycle. The 50-ish pounds of thrust developed by the engine could push the bike up to 75 MPH, which would be a real…
OK, last LEGO post of the day unless someone builds a crazy ten million-piece model of the Death Star with a working planet-obliterating laser. Tom Williamson—Giz reader and winner of our gadget PSA contest—is one of the 15 finalists of the Lipton YouTube talent contest. His entry: build a LEGO model inside the bag, without…
Seagate is taking their first crack at external DVR storage with the Showcase line of HDDs. The Showcase drives range in size from 250GB to 1TB, work with both eSATA and USB connections, and can record a whopping 12 HD streams simultaneously. For now, Motorola cable boxes are the only ones compatible with the Showcase,…
One Mega-Dynamizer robot, one lawnmower, one lawn. Result: “nice try: bring on Version 2.0.” The video is from Sugiura-san, creator of the Mega Dynamizer and ROBO-ONE champion roboticist. And while the robot doesn’t whizz about confidently like a Roomba for grass, probably doing a pretty patchy mow and taking that unfortunate tumble, it’s pretty impressive…
Hi there. I’m in Brazil, so you won’t see a lot of me this week. Not at the normal hours, that is. You know what’s annoying? There’s no way to turn on iPhone international data plans from the iPhone, once you’re in the foreign country. Also, the rules for international dialing need to be standardized.…
This lightweight furniture by Meritalia is so light you can pick it up with one hand, and so light that you can probably read by it. Designed by Mario Bellini, and made of plastic “ravioli,” the stuff often found in packaging, LEDs and inox wire, Stardust furniture can be used by the pool, in the…
Ah LEGO, how much do we love you? Let me count the ways: five million. The same amount of million multicolored pieces needed to create this solid boulder, as big as the one in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then get a fake Professor Henry Jones (You call this archaeology?), fake Sallah (Asps. Very dangerous.…
Cameron, a student at Cornell University, built an analog amp/feedback system, and then wired his muscles up to the thing via electrodes. It’s kind of like a Theramin, but more weird. A doctor in the comments suggests fitting different voltages to each of the 12 muscles in the arm to vary the sound. I suggest…
We’ve shown you lots of weird and wonderful gizmos that DIY electronics fans have made using the powerful Arduino board, and now there’s a new option: the Nano. It’s not very much bigger than a stick of gum, and comes with full USB support and almost the same functionality as the bigger Diecimila board: immediately…
It seems as if we are being bombarded with ingenious applications for the iPhone, and iDial is no different. Basically a rotary dial on the touchscreen, it’s probably more time-consuming than useful, but chapeau for coolness. Shame the video is so blurred, though. [Just Another Mobile Phone Blog]
These spanky Olon speakers from Mythos Audio were launched at the Munich High-End Audio show last month. Standing over five feet high, they’re made of two-tone stacked birch plywood and have all sorts of meaty tweety goodness inside. Find out what, and see another pic, below. There’s a Mundorf Air motion transformer tweeter, a pair…
These scaled-down replicas of walking coke dispensers found on the streets of Japan would be cute additions to anyone’s desk. As well as the black Coke Zero model above, there’s a regular version, and they come in the most fabulous of retro boxes. They were available on eBay, but it looks like they’re currently sold…
Kazuya Koike’s Sensor Tray Lamp, an ABS resin and polycarbonate tray which uses four LED lamps to light up when you put something on top, is one of those ideas that would be perfect if you were organized enough to always put your personal stuff on the same place. Knowing me, its cool design—available in…
Six months after Pentax released the Optio V10, the japanese company has upped the stakes with the V20. The slimline point-and-shoot has upped the zoom from 3x to 5x, as well as increasing Digital SR mode to ISO 3200 and ISO 6400. With a nice, big 3-inch LCD screen on the back, smile recognition and…
A few months back we looked at a clip from the February 26, 1967 episode of CBS’s 21st Century. The episode includes an interview with James Bonner, who advocated for human eugenics in the future. Today, we have a clip of the retort by Harrison Brown, who raises questions about whether eugenics is as "common…
The guys over at Apartment Therapy Unplugged spotted a pretty sweet media center that’ll be coming soon to a living room near you. Made by Geneva Lab, a company known for its high-end iPod speaker docks, the new cabinet system includes four midrange 5.5-inch speakers, two tweeters, a 12-inch subwoofer, a cabinet to hold A/V…
The tragedy of the recent earthquake in central China, which has claimed over 20,000 lives at last count, has just the smallest bit of silver lining. The Chinese government has been uncharacteristically loose with information, and millions of Chinese netizens are, for the first time, almost completely uncensored. China now boasts the world’s largest mobile…
We’ve been following the off-again, on-again news about Sony Ericsson’s upcoming Xperia X1 smartphone for a while: Blam even managed to get his mits on one. But now there’s this video doing the intertube rounds that may be showing the next phones that’ll carry the Xperia brand. Look past the CGI and notice that the…
At their Team Summit Retailer Conference over the weekend, Dish Network pulled back the curtain on a new flavor their latest HD DVR, the 722s. It’s got a built-in Slingbox, plus Clip + Sling and Slingcatcher functionality to boot. The pile of whip cream on that box of synergy awesomeness is a brand new HD…
