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Latest in the lineup of unusual Nooka watches from designer Mark Waldman comes Creatures-of-the-Night, in camouflage patterns that make reading the time off the Zen-H style face even more befuddling. The watch was originally only going to come in boring old urban gray. But Mark couldn’t contain himself, and also went for jungle green and…
Oh boy oh boy oh boy, here’s the vrooomtabolous and akiratastic ARTA Super GT 300, the nemesis of Mach 5, our favorite car this side of the Batmobile. In fact, if the Joker liked race cars instead of trucks and school buses, I’m sure he’ll grab this one and beat the crap out of Mr.…
Somehow slipping under our toilet-obsessed butts at CES, the iTouchless Auto-Flusher saves you the effort of pressing down on that flush handle once you’ve gone. Using IR to sense you, it does make using the toilet a little more hygienic and its 4 “C” batteries will last for 23,000 flushes, which seems incredibly reasonable (3…
This Gorenje kitchen by French designer Ora-Ïto is one of the five best domestic appliances in the 2008 Wallpaper Design awards. We absolutely dig it, not because it looks like the iPhone of kitchens, but because of its clean black glass and brushed aluminum surfaces combined with the last cookery tech. As Wallpaper puts it:…
In an age of e-books and e-paper, it’s nice to find someone going back to flesh-and-blood traditions. Like Bob Partington, who has designed a beautiful fountain pen with a Buffy-ish twist: it uses a syringe full of your latest victim’s blood for ink. Seeing it in action goes from “eeek” to “I think I’m going…
As part of the ongoing investigation on the accident that has nearly one third of the US F-15 Eagle fleet grounded, Boeing Phantom Works has released this simulation reconstructing the “structural failure of a US Air National Guard F-15C, caused by fatigue cracking of a forward fuselage longeron, slowed down to one-fifth the actual speed…
Latest in the line of humble gadgets to get the shiny Swarovski treatment is this toaster: a limited-edition Russell Hobbs number, with over 200 of those tiny crystals decorating its skin. While it won’t do anything clever like turbo-toast your morning snack, or burn a message into it, if you like gazing at a little…
We had a wail of a time at CES 2008, but we were not the only ones. The various robots on display were also going nuts at the convention. We have rounded them all up in this excellent video, showing you the neat robotics that we thought were worthy of a video shout out. Hit…
Alpha, the Mullard robot appeared as a publicity stunt at the London Radio Exhibition of 1932. Alpha is seen holding two of the company’s thermionic valves, the forerunners of the transistor. This image appears in the book, The World of Robots. See also: Our Dread of Robots (1932) “I Can Whip Any Mechanical Robot” by…
We had heard that unlimited online viewing had been granted to select Netflix subscribers last month, and suspected it’d get a full rollout soon. Well, soon is tomorrow—as the AP notes, a day before MacWorld, where Apple is expected to unveil its video rental-killer rendition of iTunes. https://gizmodo.com/breaking-netflix-internet-tv-film-delivery-starts-this-228894 The only people who aren’t getting cut…
The latest edition of Nature magazine details a new method scientists have derived for converting heat energy into electricity, using silicon to instigate the conversion. Researchers have more investigations to carry out, but if preliminary findings are indicative of what is to come, appliances that charge using your own body heat may be on the…
A Boeing 777 jet and an A1 Grand Prix racer clashed at the Auckland International Airport in New Zealand to see which was the faster machine. The Boeing got a headstart down the runway for the first race, and defeated the A1 handily. When the starting points were equal, however, the A1 emerged as the…
Those fellows over at Destructoid have uncovered the Rock Band Stage Kit, bringing you even closer to your rock star dreams. The yet-to-be-launched peripheral kit was spotted on GameStop’s website, retailing for $99.99, all we know is it will include an interactive light and smoke show. Sure, you may think such a kit is totally…
The OLPC is all set to launch an American branch, called OLPC America, which aims to help kids from low-income families in the US. The new arm of OLPC has already acquired a director and chairman, and their head office is likely to be situated in Washington D.C. Negroponte hopes that this will increase the…
The reception bars on your cellphone represent EC/I0 values, which is the scientific measurement that signifies how much of a cellphone’s available reception is actually usable. Well, according to the chaps at Ask Metafilter, the bars that are actually present on your cellphone are a watered down representation of the true values. Why so? Apparently,…
The Xbox 360 has, quite fairly, earned the reputation of being an unreliable console. Microsoft has acknowledged these reliability issues by extending warranties but, as Bill Gates has recently gone on the record to say, warranty support isn’t enough and Microsoft is aiming to make the Xbox 360 more reliable than its competitors’ products. We’ve…
As CES 2008 comes to an end and we wipe the gadget drool from our collective chins, the NYT published this interesting shot from Umicore’s cellphone recycling plant in Hilliard, Ohio. And damn it’s depressing to see that pile of electronic carcasses, our fetish of choice piled high in phallus-shriveling obsoleteness. The article also points…
Our motor head siblings over at Jalopnik are going to be covering the crap out of the Detroit Auto Show, but in the pre show warm-up they have come across a little gem; the Mazda Furai concept on video. The clip shows the vehicle screaming around the track at Leguna Seca, which made us excited…
We did not spot this ebook concept from iriver at CES, but their website is showing it off nonetheless. To say details are light would be true. So, details are light, but what the concept ebook does promise is a color display and the ability to accept handwritten notes. Other than that we have nothing…
We hate running corrections, but when we’re wrong, we’re willing to swallow our pride and let our readers know. While we’d thought that we’d run the proper Bill Gates retirement video, according to David Letterman, that was the wrong clip. Luckily, The Late Show got their hands on the real footage from Microsoft and shared…