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The problem with massive online games is that they’re full of other people. In order to bypass the need for interaction and reliance on outsiders, one gamer (and, get this, his girlfriend) decided to take on the responsibilities of an entire World of Warcraft guild himself. Gaze upon the 47 PC setup that allows two…
As I’ve argued before 1997 can be seen as the year that postmodern paleo-futurism went mainstream. Disney’s self-aware redesign of Tomorrowland meant that mainstream American culture was out of ideas for the future. It was as though the people at Disney were throwing up their hands and saying, “The year 2000 is just around the…
This Closer Than We Think! strip ran in the September 13, 1959 Chicago Tribune. Unlike Rosie the Robot, this robotic housemaid floats on a cushion of air. The last paragraph describing, “a device to take food automatically from storage and cook it on a preset schedule,” sounds very similar to the food preparation system in…
Samsung commissioned a boring cellphone survey for single women that asked them whether they had “text shame”, which is sending a message and realizing that they shouldn’t have sent it, whether women use it as an address book, whether they pretended to have reception trouble, and whether they had their friends call them on a…
Found in the depths of some German forum, a DPreview member says these pictures are for the yet-to-be-announced Canon EOS 5D Mark II. No real details to this camera other than the fact that it’s going to replace the 5D (obviously). See the back after the jump, but don’t expect a “make me a professional…
It’s Friday, so why shouldn’t you enjoy 70 seconds of flying, crashing robotic calamity? For the curious, this is what some have called a true-to-life transformer, an iRobot PackBot outfitted with a gas-powered propeller engine and a steerable parafoil. The concept, dubbed the Griffon man-portable hybrid, was conceived and built by iRobot’s Brian Yamauchi and…
Plug Beatmix Bumblebee into your MP3 player and he’ll dance to his own mix of your music library, adding beats and sound clips from the movie, for as long as his four AA batteries last. Since he plugs into portables, you’ll be able to take him everywhere. Transformers get-togethers. Work. Put an upside down hat…
You saw the unboxing video of the Toshiba G900 yesterday, but Matt from Tracy and Matt have a video of the screen up today. It’s hard to tell from the video (screens are here), but that 800×480 is really huge. And in a device only slightly bigger than other slide-out-keyboard Windows Mobile smartphones, this seems…
Got an anniversary coming up? Get your lady this Ghetto Blaster bag and watch as her nostrils flare, her eyes get really really big, and then beady—then duck as she makes a swing at you, and dodge as that knee comes flying up. After the festivities are over, you can explain to her that this…
The Beurer GmbH heart rate monitoring glove ditches the traditional belt system used by other companies, like Polar, in favor of a new method called plethysmography. Instead of wearing an obtrusive belt across your chest to pick up your EKG signal, this little glove measures the reflected light from an artery found in the index…
For 10x the price of a George Foreman grill, this $200 grill/hot plate set better cook 10x the amount of stuff. It does. From the horrible Japanese translation, this Zojirushi grill looks like it can roast meat, grill vegetables, make fried rice, smoke meat, cook vegetables, make chow mein and a bunch of other things.…
Gearlive figured out how to get IRC working on the iPhone. Awesome news for time travelers who are planning a trip back to 1999. [Gearlive]
OK, so it isn’t the finest week for free-energy machines, but perhaps the boys at Steorn are just giving this category a bad name. Some seemingly free-energy concepts make sense, because they are powered not by mystical cosmic vibrations, but actual earthly ones. Scientists at the University of Southampton have created a generator that is…
Some of you iPhone users have been complaining about the period key being banished to the numbers and symbols keyboard layout. Well quit your whining, here’s a quick and easy way to get around that. All you have to do is press and hold the numbers key, and without lifting your finger slide it over…
LiveJournalist Blayne has an interesting analysis of why we may long for yesterday’s future. His take on paleo-futurism seems to be rooted in the comfort of the nostalgic. After the romantic innocence of retro-futurism is stripped away, you can see what drives our contemporary longing for imagined past-futures: Nostalgia, and a sincere desire for a…
If you’re anything like us, your major complaint about pajamas is that they’re just too hard to take off. That, and how urine stains never seem to wash out completely. These magnetic pajama buttons don’t do much about problem #2, but they totally take the clothing-removal equation to the next level. Of course, these magnetic…
Click to viewWhile all of you iPhone owners are busily pushing the envelope with your new gadget, taking calls, pinching images and locating sushi bars, some people are actually coming up with useful, critical applications. No, not hacking it. I mean making it the perfect friend for the Peeping Tom in you. At least according…
This Fiat 500 plays ball with Microsoft, building in Windows Mobile to give you GPS, USB connectivity and Bluetooth goodness all in the same car. Jointly developed by Fiat, Microsoft and component company Magneti Marelli, the car’s voice-activated system lets you connect any Bluetooth device to its stereo system, giving speakerphone capabilities as well as…
Someone wants to fuck you in the ass for your iPhone. Females only. Ugly assholes need not apply. [Fleshbot (NSFW)]
If the official iPhone Bluetooth headset is $129, what would you expect it to have? More than just auto-pairing via the dock, right? Well, a reader just told us he called up Apple support and asked them whether the headset supports noise cancellation. They said no. Not only that, they recommended that he buy a…