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This year’s CES TV competition wasn’t about how big TVs could be, but how thin they could get. Samsung, JVC, Hitachi, Panasonic, Sharp, Pioneer and developer LG.Philips were all showing off their rendition of belt-tightening in the flat-panel age. Some of you perceptively noted that up against a wall, inside a cabinet or on a…
A series of demo runs were held with the Robovie robot in the Universal Citywalk Osaka shopping center earlier this week in Japan trying to see how good the droid is at helping out lost shoppers. Here’s how it works. A series of cameras, laser range finders and RFID tag readers are scattered around the…
You may not have heard of Google’s Innovate or Die competition, but it was a $5000 contest for coming up with a method to provide rural communities with water—an endeavor that doesn’t sound glorious, but is quite important to thirsty people. Aquaduct, the winning team, created a bicycle that can both help transport water quickly…
Can you guess what this is? It’s a PC mod made out of a 20-case of Coca Cola cans. It even includes the carrying case. On a scale of 1 to 10 we’d have to rate it a “pretty fucking lousy”. Can you do better? Or worse? Send in pictures of the lousiest casemods you…
As rumored, the Japanese version Asus’s Eee PC comes with Windows XP—by default. Smart move, since the Linux flavor would have about as much traction as mayo-doused pizza stateside. Speaking of, we’ll see the 4G-X over here in Feb. or March, just in time to compete with the Cloudbook. [CNET] https://gizmodo.com/asus-eee-pc-on-a-plane-to-japan-with-16gb-and-possibly-335112
If you were suiting up to brave the cold and make the long, arduous journey to Wal-Mart (or walmart.com) today to pick up Everex’s $399 potential Eee PC blood-rival, the Cloudbook, just strip back down, plop back into your chair, and make a big mug of cocoa. Like enough to last you until late February,…
The only time we use Bluetooth is to yap about in our cars while we’re driving or for transferring photos to and from our computer, but Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua Bleill is using it to help him walk again. The Iraq veteran has dual prosthesis with Bluetooth transmitters on board that sends signals between each…
A. It makes you a better, politer person, savage. B. Because predictive text was invented by British dudes, at least according to this hilarious clip by (British) comedic duo Armstrong and Miller. Of course, the first thing I do when I get a phone is totally program it to only offer up dirty words. [via…
Have you seen Bono more uncomfortable than this? Caption this picture of him supporting the Dell & Microsoft RED campaign. [Image courtesy Gadgetell] https://gizmodo.com/dell-and-microsoft-see-product-red-for-valentines-day-347916
Adam of Lifehacker showed you how to install OS X on a home-built PC, but now he’s got a walkthrough that lets you do the same thing but with much, much less hacking involved. Convenience for the lazy or the uninspired (like us). [Lifehacker] https://lifehacker.com/build-a-hackintosh-mac-for-under-800-321913
OLPC was supposed to be a beacon of hope and gleaming digital light for children all around the developing world. Lately, it’s been more like a dirty, busted street lamp. Now it’s coming out that they can’t even get laptops to the people actually paying for them—particularly if they used PayPal—due to crappy record-keeping software…
The excellent Disney blog Stuff from the Park has scans of a 1960s brochure for the Monsanto House of the Future. The piece explains that, “The erection of the Monsanto ‘Plastics Home of the Future’ at Disneyland in the summer of 1957 provided a practical demonstration of the almost limitless potential of plastics in structural…
You may recall that last May I told you about Super Hi-Vision, the next-generation in high def that promises an insane resolution of 7680×4320, or 16 times the resolution of HDTV. It turns out that it much be a little too high-def; it’s so realistic it might just make you sick. https://gizmodo.com/super-hi-vision-makes-your-hdtv-obsolete-already-264077 Yes, fast moving…
Remember cute Keepon, the little robot that’s part Muppet, part dancing dynamo? He’s back, teaching Daniel H. Wilson, author of How To Build a Robot Army, how to stop worrying and embrace cybernetics. Now that Wilson and Keepon are friends, we’re imagining the undefeatable army of Keepons that will result: every opponent would compulsively drop…
Driving in the snow is hard. It’s especially hard when you’re driving at 3 in the morning. Luckily, no one was injured, but the pretty car isn’t quite as pretty anymore. Too bad our sponsors weren’t riding with us—they definitely know how to guide us gently around curves to safety. Thanks Apple, Ask.com, Call Wave,…
Apparently money has burned quite the hole in Bill Gates’ philanthropic pocket, as during this week’s World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Gates pledged $306 million in grants to fund farming in in poor/developing countries through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. To the audience he said: If we are serious about ending extreme hunger and…
So you really like turntables, do you? Perhaps you’re a self-styled DJ, or maybe you’re just one of those awkward vinyl aficionados who tut-tuts every time someone talks about MP3s. In any case, I’m sure you’re looking to rub what you consider to be such a sweet hobby/obsession in the faces of others. This turntable…
Despite looking like a freaky PC case-mod for your head, researchers say this helmet may serve as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. It directs low levels of infrared light at the skulls of Alzheimer’s sufferers in order to combat the disease by stimulating brain cell growth. A medical team from Sunderland and Durham Universities in…
Click to viewAfter an NPD report showed Blu-ray had 93% of the market for that week, the Blu-ray coalition had good cause to do (or keep doing) the victory dance. But Toshiba’s teary-eyed rebuttal makes sense, so we thought we’d share it: https://gizmodo.com/blu-ray-domination-pushes-hardware-sales-to-93-after-c-347773 During the week that is being singled out, both Blu-ray disc players…
When most of us think fiber optic lamps, we have visions of black plastic casing emitting rainbow effects through fiber optic tubes sticking out in pony tail fashion. GloFab challenges the ugly fiber optic stereotype by weaving together what is almost a fiber optic fabric around a single light source, and shaping it into spheres…