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Despite the skepticism that justly confronts any mention of a “flying car,” what with the disaster that expecting people who can barely drive a car to learn to fly a personal plane would be, NASA seems pretty optimistic about the idea. In fact, they’re holding a $2 million contest to entice people to design flying…
Toshiba has officially announced their rumored new HD DVD players today. They unveiled new cool features too: the HD-A35 above gets 1080p playback at 24 frames per second, plus Deep Color support, CE-Link for device interconnection and HDMI 1.3 support with up High Rate Audio up to 7.1. Jump for details, pics and prices on…
It looks like internet radio’s favorite fee-collection organization, SoundExchange, might be playing hard and fast with legal limits on how it can spend collected money. Not on the list of three kosher uses (full legal mumbo-jumbo post-jump) is lobbying and PR. But Listening Post’s Eliot Van Buskirk noticed that it appears to be engaged in…
Lenovo will start selling its notebooks preloaded with Linux from Novell in Q4 of this year. [Reuters]
Betting that someday soon there will be computers in home theaters, Avago Technologies created an input device module that works like a mouse, scroll wheel or joystick depending on your situation and preference. Keep in mind, we’re not talking about the picture of the remote here, just that little black circular input device. But this…
The Shadow SS watch is a two-faced little son-of-a-product from a very clever design house indeed. That is because, as your mother told you, appearances can be deceiving. The Shadow SS proves your mother was right, again. The watch on first inspection may appear to be your average run-of-the-mill, square- faced, metal bracelet, snazzy timekeeper,…
The Google/Earthlink project for San Francisco Wi-Fi has been put on hold due to contract negotiations. [cnn]
Sony’s showing off their Cell processor (“Cell Broadband Engine and RSX graphics processor) at SIGGRAPH this week. The +230 GFLOP setup will be demoed processing 4K images. [Sony]
A pistol from the late ’70s TV show Buck Rogers just fetched $2,750 on eBay. Twelve inches in length, the gun features a microswitch to light up the clear tip. My initial impression: Damn, this thing is cheap-looking. And then I remembered a trip to the Star Trek museum in Vegas, and how cheap phasers…
AT&T is adding 9,000 Wi-Fi hotspots around Europe, a roughly 30% increase. [prnewswire]
Take any grotesque alien form, add large, ETesque eyes, and we’re in love. It’s a genetic weakness sure to be exploited by hostile androids that’s already being exploited by Korean radio manufacturers. The BooRu-BooRu speakers not only have adorable sound coming out of their plush bodies, but radio controls on their eyes, ears and…so cute…can’t…
Look out, because here come cops with flashlights that will make you hurl. Intelligent Optical Systems has created this weird flashlight that’s so bright it temporarily blinds you, and then it gets you all disoriented and dizzy. Using special types of really bright LEDs, the flashlight’s beam pulses and flashes while quickly changing its color,…
HP fights back against printer health risks, researchers answer by calling BS [Sydney Morning Herald] https://gizmodo.com/laser-printers-may-be-as-harmful-as-cigarettes-284481
Click to viewNobody knows for sure, but looking at sites, analysts and newspapers everywhere, the consensus is that tomorrow we will see new iMacs coming from Apple. And with the Intel transition more than done, it’s time for new eye candy, like this iPhone-styled model. Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you’re viewing this in…
Click to viewWhile the wizards are still working on a software-only complete unlock for the iPhone, hackers in Europe claim that they have completely unlocked the JesusPhone, allegedly using a SIM reader/writer and a blank SIM card to obtain full calling and SMS capabilities. Total cost: $96. Read on for the details. https://gizmodo.com/hackers-extract-main-key-to-iphone-unlocking-freedom-c-286102 While we…
Nokia will begin using Microsoft DRM for mobile entertainment. [reuters]
This Gibson Explorer-modeled, fully functional LEGO Guitar Hero controller is definitely one of the better DIY video game peripherals we’ve seen—it’s exponentially more attractive than the last homemade GH controller we saw, anyway. How does it work? https://gizmodo.com/how-to-make-an-ugly-guitar-hero-guitar-out-of-scratch-283986 The maker loses a bit of DIY cred by dumping the guts from a real GH controller…
Buffalo has figured out a way to speed up its USB hard drives with what it’s calling Turbo USB, making its MiniStation (pictured above left) and DriveStation USB drives 60% faster than any others on the market. The company says this exclusive Turbo USB tech works equally well on Macs and PCs, and accelerates data…
I used to have a Five Star First Gear notebook, way back in first grade, along with every other kid. It was pretty awesome, though the guys at Five Star decided they needed to throw in some speakers and an MP3 player pocket into their latest, Five Star with Sound, in order to appeal to…
When you send an email through Gmail, hundreds of Google engineers leap from their chairs to help deliver the message. It’s like P2P, but with bikes. They are doing a video all about it, and you can contribute to it if you hurry: Google is asking you to add to their video, where people take…