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• Joining the other boffins we’ve discussed today is this Indian boffin, who invented a flying carpet by attaching a powerful motor to a thin sheet of fabric. By the way, we have not used the word “boffin” on this site since 2004. Boffin! [Wired] • The FCC announced the participants in the 700MHz spectrum…
Nokia is thinking about making its charging and headset ports magnetic, just like Apple’s MagSafe ports on its laptops. Nokia users are well aware that the headset and charging ports on their phones are quite similar. The beauty of this idea is that there is a negative magnetic polarity on one of the ports and…
The Gadget: The Drive GPS 250 from Pharos offers text-to-speech functionality, a SiRFStarIII GPS receiver, a 4.3″ touchscreen display, 32-bit CPU, NAVTEQ map and automatic night view-switching. Not bad when compared to other mid-range devices released by more mainstream companies. The Price: $299 The Verdict: The bottom line is that the Pharos Drive GPS 250…
Here’s an enormously entertaining little video that took thousands of times longer to make than it does to watch. Created by an animator who calls himself "sketch (537CH)", he says it took six weeks to create this Paper Mario Animation. We like the way he moved the paper cutouts over the crayon-colored backgrounds, resulting in…
This leaked spy shot of an upcoming 5-megapixel Motorola/Kodak cameraphone seems to confirm the rumor that MotoZINE was the name for Motorola’s upcoming multimedia phone series. According to IT168.com, the Z12 is going to be announced in Q1 2008 under the ZiNE brand, and will have either a candybar or a slider form factor and…
A week after Vista SP1 RC hit, Windows XP SP3 Release Candidate is up on the download block. Release candidates are usually pretty close to the final version, though nervous Nellies might wanna hold back cause it’s technically still trial software. Rewarding your balls of stainless steel is a 10 percent performance boost, Network Access…
According to market research by the NPD Group—who give out monthly console sales figures and other fun statistical fodder for flamewars—50 percent of all Mac users paid to download music during the last quarter, while a seemingly laughable 16 percent of PC users did. Mac drones are also more likely to buy real live CDs…
Buyers of new Sharp 1080p HDTVs over 42 inches will get a bonus with their purchase: a free Vudu set-top box. If you were thinking about checking out the on-demand box for yourself and are looking to buy a new big-screen TV, this could be a solid deal for you, as the Vudu’s run $400…
Want to make bread into toast in under a minute? This Turbo Toaster prototype by Oliver Newberry of London can do just that, provided you’re okay with the noise that two huge jet engine-like fans blowing hot air onto the toast will make. The inspiration for this invention? The fact that his beans became cold…
While we’re not sure logos are the solutions to all the world’s problems (you’ve seen that video of a Microsoft-designed iPod box), we kinda like the idea of an anti-DRM logo to make it easy for consumers to quickly pick up on content that’ll give ’em more bang for their buck, since they’re not restricted…
There’s little to no official detail available on this Creative Wi-Fi Video phone, called the inPerson, but the FCC has both pictures and the manual available for just anyone to peep through. The specs look beefy: VGA video at 2Mbps, “excellent low light performance,” a wide-angle lens, dual microphones, Wi-Fi, rechargeable battery, h.264 video, SIP…
Oh, Wal-Mart. You are so easy to hate. What with your union-busting, mom-and-pop-killing, big box awfulness, who wouldn’t hate you? It would be all to easy for me to come in here and just give you an F and everyone would agree with me and we could all walk hand-in-hand into the sunset, hating Wal-Mart.…
In Madrid, Spain, a unique, hulking structure is currently being built. An “Air Tree,” it’s designed to both affect the surrounding environment and act as a social center. It’s loaded up with solar panels that create electricity that’s sold to the local electric company. It’s completely self-sufficient, powering itself and using the money it makes…
When we last played the Duke Nukem series, it ran exclusively on German Enigma machines, which means that unless this teaser trailer showed graphics so far ahead of its league that it makes Crysis look like stick figure drawings, there’s no way that anybody will be impressed. It’s not that the graphics are horrible, but…
We’ve shown you a digital clapperboard alarm clock before, but it was lame compared with this one. The Digital Clapperboard Alarm Clock reminds me of the real digital slates we use in professional show business. We’re not sure how distracting its display would be if you wanted to use it as an alarm clock on…
We’ve shown you some of Branko Lukic’s “Nonobjects” before, including the touchless cellphone and those unique pebbles of electronic awesomeness. The latest concept from this man’s fertile mind is the Behind The Scenes camera, with lenses and displays on both sides for simultaneously recording what you’re aiming at, and what you’re not. Why? The stuff…
If you feel like you’re going commando when you’re not in the presence of Wi-Fi, strap on this Wi-Fi wristwatch that detects signal strength from 0 to 8, letting you sniff out that broadband connectivity wherever you go. Simply push the Wi-Fi button and it shows you the signal strength right there on its LCD…
If you’ve been playing Rock Band as much as we have, you’ve tried to sing and play guitar/drums at the same time at least once. Unless you’ve got a mic stand lying around, you had to use either a human mic stand (I tried that; she got tired and started choking me with a Wiimote)…
Doing backflips is a mainstay of the extreme sports scene, with people who ride skis, snowboards, dirt bikes and snowmobiles all able to pull off a flip with a big enough jump. But what about a truck? Sounds insane, doesn’t it? That’s because it is, it’s completely insane. That’s not gonna stop Rhys Millen from…
If the first time you saw all those bags you thought the LEGO Millennium Falcon was big, it’s not big. It’s HUGE. Like some of you asked for, I spent four hours and nine minutes sorting all the pieces out to make the construction easier. The condensed video shows the complexity and giganormous size of…