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Jason Fry has a very interesting piece in today’s Wall Street Journal about those who long for the Jetsons’ version of the future. The November 15, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone also has an article about paleo-futurism, although I haven’t read that one yet. An excerpt from the Wall Street Journal piece appears below but…
Click to viewZune 2 and its batch of new features are finally upon us, bringing new players and an entirely new experience. On the device side, there’s 4/8GB flash-based and 80GB hard drive-based Zune with fancy form factors and increased storage, as well as new firmware for your old first-gen 30GB players. On the software…
If you are the type that enjoys listening to some quiet music when drifting off to sleep, keep in mind that your partner may not share that characteristic. Perhaps it is time to stop being selfish and pick up one of these Sound Asleep Pillows. By hooking an iPod or other MP3 player into the…
Gene Munster predicts that the iPhone’s next major update will come in February 2008, and along with the long-awaited SDK the iPhone will get Spotlight-like search functionality. That would make searching mail a lot better than it is now*. [AppleInsider] *can’t do it
Delta 7’s Arantix bike frame is see-through and weighs just 2.75lbs but is so strong there’s no rider weight limit. It’s made of Isotruss, a material consisting of carbon fiber strands bent into a wide mesh to emulate the sturdy geometry of steel truss structures. That tech ain’t cheap: Expect to pay $7,000 when it…
According to an email shared by a source with our friends at the Consumerist, starting today T-Mobile will begin charging existing customers an $18 fee when they buy a new phone. Apparently the new fee will help underwrite the cost of selling subsidized phones to new customers. Now here’s the confusing part — if an…
At times it may seem like the Optimus Maximus Keyboard is some sort of mythical creature that is only seen in photographs, but this video illustrating layout changes proves that it does exist, somewhere. Whether or not we will actually see it in the wild one of these days (in the arms of Bigfoot no…
Never mind that the color scheme looks like it was designed by Ronald McDonald—this Gravity Zero bed is packing some serious features, like a 150-watt sound system, 2 sleep system motors, 2 powerful massage systems with 12 programs, four-joint adjustability, flexible shoulder comfort zone, pneumatic hand control, and a ventilated Talalay latex mattress for added…
Definite props for the hydraulic pump legs, but we’re taking points off for the plunging neckline. We just wanna see the faux robot stompage, not your lily white chest, dude. Check out how to build your own "steampunk chicken-walker mech" here. [via MAKE via BoingBoing]
Rolling along in 2009, this Russian robot suitcase, oddly named Tony, will follow its owner’s footsteps, tracking a card you slip into your pocket like a dog following a stick of jerky. It’s loaded up with a gyroscope, light detectors, sound and infared sensors so it doesn’t bump into old ladies or tumble down stairs…
Imagine being able to download a movie or album to your media player by simply touching a promotional poster or exchanging contact information with a potential client via a handshake. KDDI’s new Intra-Body Communication technology could make this a reality by using the human body as a conduit to transmit high-volume data. In the image…
A friend just sent me a link to Early Aviator, which has some great images of flight from the early 20th century. Some are serious photographs while others are fanciful illustrations of what aviation was to be. Some of the sheet music imagery and titles feel like they could be part of a Mr. Show…
We’ve seen and tested a few streamers before, including ones that play DivX and XviD, but this Pinnacle solution looks like it’s going to hit the sweet spot for price/performance. The thing can handle 1080i playback of Windows Media Video 9, WMV-DRM, MPEG1, MPEG2, MEPG4 AVI, DivX, XviD, as well as high definition files like…
The new Zune firmware is bringing new functionality to even old Zunes (which we covered in detail here), but is the new hardware special enough to be worth your purchase? Here’s a rundown of our tests on how easy it is to fit a Zune in your pocket (video above), the paint job, and the…
The iPhone 1.1.2 firmware update was previously available via manual download, but it is now available to all US customers through iTunes. The update includes a TIFF Exploit patch (meaning jailbroken iPhones will not work), foreign language support, and a custom ringtone section. As always, there are a few things you should know before you…
Panasonic’s newest Toughbook Y7, T7 and W7 are designed to combat the Homer in you: that is, they’re for people who work with sensitive data yet are prone to dropping laptops, spilling drinks and generally messing stuff up. Forget accelerometers, the hard drives in this can take a serious hit at 2.5 feet and on…
This dude, for some unholy reason, owns every Super Soaker ever. I can’t imagine anyone being insane enough to hunt down some 1988 special edition Super Soaker, but evidently, this guy is. Sure, this ventures into the world of strange, but we all have our own unhealthy obsessions, right?[Electro^Plankton via Geekologie]
Need to kill the data on a hard drive you have lying around but don’t wanna bother hooking it up to a PC? Wiebetech’s pocket-sized eRazer plugs directly into lonely hard drives and genocides whatever naughtiness you have have etched into it at a rate of 35MB/s, leaving a 250GB hard drive scorched earth in…
The folks over at the Blu-ray.com forums found a great Kmart coupon that gives you 20% off on any one item. Being Blu-ray fans, they naturally threw their cash at the PS3, which will be $319 after said 20% discount. Not interested in the PS3? You can print out the coupon and try your hand…
We posted a video of the Robot Guitar in action early last month, but now we have some sexy pics and some release date info for guitarists the world over to get excited about. In case you haven’t heard, the Robot Guitar can tune itself with a simple push of a button. Servos in the…