Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Click to viewAlthough Google’s Open Handset Platform may be their “gPhone” for now, they’re not denying that they’re currently working on an actual Google Phone, something that they’d take a more hands-on approach on for both hardware and software. An internal design, code-named “Dream,” could be this phone. https://gizmodo.com/gphone-is-official-a-software-platform-for-cellphones-318862 The Dream looks like the iPhone,…
9:52: Call done. Archive below. 9:50: USA Today asks about gPhone name again. Coming? Another way to think about the gPhone, says Andy, is that there will be thousands of Google phones, some you like, some you don’t. 9:46: NYTimes asks what kinds of agreements will be in place between carriers and Google on ads,…
Google is going after our hearts as well as our minds with their Android interface and Open Handset Alliance. Just take a look at this adorable video they just released, featuring kids talking about what they want in a cellphone. I actually agree with a lot of it; I’d love my phone to make me…
Click to viewThe details on Google’s gPhone Open Handset Alliance are coming to light. Here’s what we know: •They’re hoping to make a better phone, ultimately. (And sell a ton of ads and services, of course, along the way.) •Android, an open system for handset dev, is the first joint project and core product of…
Here’s an official video from the Google camp featuring the Android team opining about the whole “gPhone” idea, the Open Handset Alliance, and what they hope to accomplish by taking cell phones into the open source world. It’s a good intro to what the whole thing is about, and as a bonus it has shots…
Click to viewThe Google Phone has been announced, and instead of a phone that’s manufactured by just one company, it’s an open software platform that’s going to be loaded on phones made by HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung. Those phones are going to be available in the US on Sprint and T-Mobile by the second…
If you were dabbling your toes in the ocean and missed Gizmodo on the weekend, here’s your chance to catch up: •The Donkey Kong game got a huge reconstruction. •NY got its first Jedi school. •Wedgie proof underwear made an appearance. •We found out flat screen TVs are awesomely reliable. •The XO laptop sort of…
Jaws were dropping all around when our own Adam Frucci brought back video of his harrowing 377-foot-high ride in a glass-bottomed car on the Odaiba Ferris Wheel in Tokyo, but now the Chinese are going to top that wheel with the tallest one in the world. Today, construction began on the Great Wheel of China,…
The 10th Vintage Computer Festival took place this past weekend at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, featuring, among other things, “the largest collection of Radio Shack Pocket Computers I’ve ever seen,” says CNet’s Peter Glaskowsky. Highlights in the gallery above include the 1-bit flat-panel Apple IIc—one of just 10,000 ever made—Mac-maker Jef…
Radiohead made waves with their latest album, selling it in digital form for whatever price you wanted to pay for it. Now EMI, their old label, is looking to hop on that bandwagon of goodwill by offering a set of all of the band’s past studio albums and one live album in a number of…
Overpriced makeup purveyor Lancôme decided to actually do something innovative for a change rather than just creating fancy containers. The result is a Le Magnetique, nail polish with different-colored magnetic particles mixed in. Here’s where Lancôme’s specialty, the container, comes into play. While the polish is still wet, hold the container’s sleeve next to that…
Wired Magazine’s hiring Gadget interns for the first half of next year. It’s one of the jobs I’ve had in the past and although it’s a fair amount of work, it’s probably even more fun than you can imagine. Also, you must be in SF. [Craigslist]
Command and Conquer: Red Alert was the first PC strategy game that I really got into, and it’s still one of my all-time favorites. That’s why I can’t help but fall in love with this homemade Tesla coil setup made as an homage to the classic game. The picture above isn’t Photoshopped at all; it’s…
The DeLighTable by Kloss is a slick, 25-mm-thick coffee table that has a touch surface built in. It reacts to finger touches and glasses being rested on it, creating streams of light as you run your fingers across it, as you can see in the above video. It doesn’t house a computer or anything, so…
Europeans get lucky this week, as the Prada successor LG KS20 hits stores in France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy. (What up, UK?) The final specs on this baby are in, and they make us terribly jealous. https://gizmodo.com/lg-ks20-has-touchscreen-is-hsdpa-friendly-and-ifa-boun-294515 It’s got 3.6Mbps HSDPA and Wi-Fi B and G, and what looks like a half-way decent…
Zune Tattoo guy, the Lothario who’s made small, small waves in the blogosphere for getting Zune tattoos on both arms, has a real name: Steven Smith. The issue is, no one cares, and they all just call him Zune Tattoo Guy. Well, he wants to make it easier for us to make fun of him,…
Marvell’s launching a new chip for more efficient power supplies that cuts down energy use by automatically adjusting the amount of juice drawn by a computer depending on what it actually needs, slashing waste—it can chop peak energy use by up to 50 percent, according to Marvell. It also supposedly rolls the functionality of 20…
The Windows boot-time backlash is in full effect. BIOS-builder Phoenix Technologies is introducing a mini operating system called HyperSpace that can boot up in seconds in place of Windows, to run e-mail managers, web browsers and other apps. Such a system could prolong battery life by 50%, and would give laptop makers a chance to…
Carnegie Mellon University’s Tartan Racing Team showed us who’s boss on Saturday with a winning truck named Boss. The Chevy Tahoe robot SUV was bristling with PCs and sensors that steered it safely through a complicated city street course, winning the $2 million Urban Challenge prize from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).…
We had no idea Segways were being modded even more than PCs. Of course, you can put crazy, gigantic wheels on the thing, but you can also add all kinds of containers to carry stuff, pull a trailer with it, gold plate it, turn it into a rickshaw, and of course, it wouldn’t be an…