Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
The picture above is of a crazy helicopter concept by Billy Baldwin Technology. Designed to lift heavy object, it can bust out wings, tilt its prop forward, and turn from a helicopter into a pseudo-plane for faster travel. Will it ever get made? Beats be, but it sure looks neat. Check the video after the…
It turns out that picture we showed you last week of the Optimus keyboard from Art.Lebedev Studio was not a fake, but was a picture of an actual model of a keyboard that may someday actually ship. The company rolled out its official portraits of the OLED-lit keyboard just before CeBIT opened in Germany, and…
Hi there. I’m at Stanford, and we’re about to see the first demo of the PS3’s Folding at Home app. Folding’s Dr Vijay Pande and SCEA’s Jack Tretton are presenting. More in a bit, as I update this post while I go along. Sony’s setting up the PS3’s monster brain to handle Folding at Home…
Polk Audio, a company known for producing superb speakers, is dabbling into the iPod accessory market (like everyone else). Welcome the Polk MiDock10. This $180 iPod speaker dock pumps out the tunes via two 3.25-inch full-range drivers. It includes an auxiliary port for other players and convenient handles for rocking on all around the block…
An excerpt from the patent abstract: “The combustion engine is also geared to vertically oriented ducted fans (40) and a horizontally oriented ducted fan or propeller (76) for providing the vehicle with the capability of travel through the air. Pressure jets (62), supplied with compressed air from a compressor (66) driven by the combustion engine,…
Google is not easily intimidated. If a gigantic corporation sued me for $1 billion, I would probably drop a load in my pants and offer to do anything — and I mean anything — to get out of it. But Google? They aren’t scared of Viacom or their attention-grabbing lawsuit. “This is an area of…
By Brendan I. Koerner Ordinarily there’d be no good reason to get worked up about the new Motorola VT2542 router, which Vonage is now selling for $59.99. Voice-over-data prioritization? VPN pass-through support? Puh-leez. Wake me when it can make cinnamon toast. But these are by no means ordinary times at Vonage. America’s most visible VoIPer…
Click to view They say balding guys will do anything to keep the hair on their head from falling, but does anything include throwing $400 down on a laser comb? Albeit, an FDA-approved laser comb? Cause that’s the starting price for the HairMax Laser Comb, which claims to stimulate and maintain your mane before it…
Science fiction edges ever closer to reality as researchers at NC State University devise a form of propulsion that can accelerate microbots through the human bloodstream. The challenge: not only finding a way to create this engine on such a tiny scale, but to provide power to it. The solution? Diode propulsion, using current sent…
A 2006 report by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office called “Filesharing Programs and Technological Features to Induce Users to Share” was just released to the general public yesterday, and it contains some interesting governmental observations as to the dangers of digital piracy. It’s 80 pages long and I am far too busy/lazy to read…
Samsung entered the 30-inch LCD monitor derby a while ago, but now at the huge CeBIT show in Germany it’s rolled out a big bertha computer monitor with LED backlighting, all the rage for color freaks. The SyncMaster XL30 packs scary specs if you’re inclined to believe such things, quoting a 3000:1 contrast ratio and…
Google is going to start deleting any data that connects people to their search histories after 18-24 months in a move to increase user privacy. This should make showdowns with the government over releasing user data more cut and dry, as they can’t release anything that they’ve deleted. Of course, one could ask why Google…
I’m not sure what I was expecting from Commodore when we first heard they were jumping back into the gaming biz, but one thing I can tell you, it wasn’t quite this. Their new gaming line will consist of four models ranging from the entry-level Cg to the top-shelf Cxx. The Cxx will have a…
How fast is your reaction time? Schoolkids and their teacher are doing a study for the 2007 Yahara Elementary School Science Fair, measuring how quickly participants can click on an icon as a traffic light graphic turns green. The group is collecting data, trying to determine correlation between reaction time, age, gender, athleticism and whether…
Jory Bell, OQO’s CEO and former Apple designer, has a sense of humor. When the OQO2’s motion sensor detects a drop, it not only parks the drive heads like so many other laptops today, but its power switch glows deep red, and its speakers emit a shrill cry more appropriate for Texas Chainsaw Massacre than…
Brando says that its KingMax USB 2.0 Super Stick is “probably the world’s smallest flash drive.” We know that Sony makes some Micro Vault Tiny drives that are even smaller than this, but still, four gigs fitting into a package that’s less than 3.5 inches centimeters long is remarkable in our book. https://gizmodo.com/sony-shrinks-usb-drives-184260 You’ll pay…
NPR isn’t taking too kindly to the Sound Exchange-drafted royalty rate hike for internet radio stations. The burn? The new rates are “at least 20 times more than what stations have paid in the past” and treats public radio “as if [it] were commercial radio,” though it’s unable to bring in extra revenue to meet…
Some cell phones are so super luxurious that it’s just getting out of hand. Wired magazine searched the world over for the most expensive, most ostentatious, and sometimes just the most downright craziest cellphones, showing us that some shit-for-brains rich people will buy anything, going to any lengths to get rid of their money. It’s…
They won’t say exactly how rugged it is, but Asus’ follow up to the R2H Ultra Mobile PC is being touted as a “semi-ruggedized” UMPC. It’s one of the first we’ve seen with a swiveling 7-inch 800×480 display (so you can use it like a tablet PC) and it also comes with integrated GPS, Wi-Fi,…
Novatel’s offering another option for all you mobile broadband lovers out there. The V740 Rev A ExpressCard will go for $179 when it comes out on March 30th and it’ll be compatible with both Windows and Mac laptops (the latter will require Apple’s WWAN updates). The card will offer between 450 to 800 Kbps download…
