Dell, honey, you shrunk the iPad! - Streak !?

Leaks from an internal Dell announcement reveal the company is getting ready to unleash its Streak line of tablets (probably not the best name — smudge much?) in two different flavors. There will be the larger 10-inch Streak that'll go toe-to-toe with the iPad, and then a smaller, 7-inch version for folks who like their tablets a little more portable. Other than that, all that's known is that the smaller Streak could land as early as later this year, with its larger cousin dropping at the beginning of 2011.

That's it for details so far. So, do you already have an iPad, or have you been waiting for one of the many, many other tablets set to come out? Or are tablets just not your bag?

Israel bans the iPad for being too powerful

Americans are no doubt used to having a bottle of shampoo or sharp grooming tools confiscated at the airport, but what if you had your $500+ iPad taken away from you with a dubious promise to get it back later? That's exactly what Israeli authorities are doing after a new regulation passed in the country this week, and nearly a dozen passengers have had to surrender their shiny new toys.

The reason, according to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, is that American Wi-Fi gadgetry is allowed to broadcast at a higher signal than is allowed in Israel and Europe. The iPad, then, could interfere with the wireless operation of other devices in the country.

Travelers aren't the only ones feeling the pain, either. Israeli software developers eager to make the move to the iPad have had to practically smuggle the unit in, according to the Huffington Post:

Amnon, a software developer who legally brought an iPad into Israel but asked that his last name be withheld to avoid potential government repercussions, said he and other high-tech businessmen need the iPad to develop new applications for the device.

"There are several hundred people in Israel who make their livelihood developing apps... and there are going to be companies that suffer, because they can't deliver the services they're supposed to be delivering," he said.

It's thought the the European version of the iPad will meet Israel's standard and therefore be allowed into the country.

Chariot Skates want to be the future of rollerblades

Chariot Skates, a form of "wheel-skates," promise to make quite a few improvements over your average set of inline or roller skates. According to creator Michael Jenkins, Chariot Skates are faster, handle rough terrain better, retain momentum longer and offer a more fluid and comfortable experience. We'll believe faster right off the bat, as these odd-looking skates boast a top speed of 24 miles an hour.

It may look like Jenkins was inspired by a wheelchair (you can even stop by grabbing the wheels with your hands), but the creator was instead looking to combine a few of his favorite sports: cycling, skiing and skating. "The wheel-skates allow riders to commute like a bicycle but give a freedom which can only be experienced without a seat or handlebars," Jenkins told Courier Mail, "and greater aerobic exercise value because you're not sitting."

There's one area where pretty much any ol' set of skates has the Chariots beat, though — the price. A pair of Chariot Skates will set you back a whopping $11,000 when they come rolling out in August. Check out how they work in the video below.

Mercedes SLS AMG Revving

A brand new Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG was present at the Heaven and Rides meeting in the Netherlands. The supercar was showing all the goodies it has and revving against a Ferrari Testarossa and a BMW M5 with Eisenmann exhaust. It may have been showing off just a little bit considering the horsepower that the Mercedes has (571hp) in comparison to the Ferrari Testarossa and the BMW M5 which only bring 390hp and 220hp, respectively. That was a race the Mercedes was sure to win.

Smart Prepares New Forfour

With BMW preparing its new Project i city car, we would expect Smart to react and provide us with a new model of their own. Enter the new Forfour model for 2014. The new model will be built along with Smart’s new partners,Renault and Nissan. Fortunately, we wo n;t have to wait that long for a new Smart ,model. The third-generation Fortwo will be revealed in 2012.

The 2014 Forfour will be built on a lengthened version of the Fortwo platform, the same one used for the next Twingo. The Fourfour will be a rear-wheel-drive model, measuring 3500mm in length and 1550mm in height.

Under the hood there will be a new range of four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines, ranging from 1.2 to 1.8 liters. This new direct-injection petrol and common-rail diesel units will be used into a wide range of compactMercedes, Nissan, Renault and Smart models. In both Smarts, the engines will be mated to a dual-clutch gearbox and will be offered in hybrid and plug-in electric drivetrain options.

These cars look kind of cool , but seem completely irrelevant in the car world. It seems that people should just start walking to places instead of taking these itty bitty cars out. We are not even convinced that these cars can be at all comnfortable

Google in Unique Position to Deliver "iPad Killer"

Rumors are flying and speculation is intensifying that Google will join the tablet fray with some sort of Android or Chrome OS-based tablet device to compete with Apple's iPad. The rumors have existed since the official unveiling of the iPad, however the actual launch of the iPad has started them swirling again. [Read more...]

NASA sending GM co-developed robot to space

General Motors has announced NASA will be sending one of its jointly-developed Robonaut 2 robots to the International Space Station later this year. Robonaut 2, or R2 as it is commonly called, was jointly developed by GM and NASA through the Space Act Agreement at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. [Read more...]

In five years, we'll all be using iPads instead of TVs

The iPad has only been out for 11 days now, and yet during those 264 hours, iPad users have managed to watch some 650,000 TV episodes using ABC's free app for the device. Mind you, a good number of those could be only partial viewings, but it all adds up to "several million" ad impressions, according to The Wall Street Journal. Translation: ABC is happy. [Read more...]

$10 million bunker shields billionaires from nukes, EvilDoers

We might all have to die when crazy rogue nations get their greasy paws on nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. But not the superrich, no sir. They will be hunkered down along with 200 of their closest friends in their $10 million luxury bunker, a complete biosphere with plenty of grub, fresh water and enough power to fire up their 150-inch plasma displays. [Read more...]

DARPA's flying car: half Humvee, half helicopter

DARPA is no stranger to ambitious projects, but a flying car — let alone one that can haul up to a ton into the air and perform every kind of military operation under the sun — sounds kind of crazy. That, and the agency wants to have a working prototype by 2015. [Read more...]

NASA might get the bucks to go to Mars after all

Budget cuts recently spanked NASA's space program, reducing it to a ragtag fleet of space-faring robots, but wait. President Obama somehow found $6 billion for the beleaguered space agency, in the name of creating 2,500 additional jobs at NASA. The president will announce the "bold new coursethe administration is charting for NASA" this afternoon at 4 PM Eastern. [Read more...]

Here's how you can play Flash on the iPad, with a catch

If Steve Jobs has his way, there will never be any way to play Flash videos, games or graphics on the iPad. His Majesty might not get his way with video, though, thanks to RipCode Transact Transcoder V6. It does its magic in the cloud, changing video from Flash to iPod/iPhone/iPad-playable formats such as MP4 or MPEG-TS.

RipCode's CEO says his special on-demand transcoder will work at the source, where a website is hosted. It detects if someone is using one of Apple's non-flash devices, immediately transcoding that video into an iPhone/iPod/iPad-compatible format.

That might take care of Flash video, but still doesn't address all those Flash games and graphics that populate much of the Web. So maybe Adobe will still need to smack Apple with that rumored lawsuit. Meanwhile, we users humbly wish for the day when we can play any content, anytime, anyplace, on any device — and pay for it just once, if at all.

TV switches HDMI sources in 1 second flat

You're constantly hearing braggadocio about how fast this or that computer is, or how much quicker the iPad or Zune processor is than its predecessor, and on and on. But the most annoying pokiness we all encounter every day seems to be passively accepted: the time it takes to switch HDMI inputs on an HDTV. Samsung finally decided to do something about it with InstaPort Technology, cutting that notoriously slow 4- to 7-second delay when you switch from one HDMI device to another down to one second.

Well, hallelujah. Samsung announced today that its flagship line of 3D TVs will have this serious juju inside, using tech from Silicon Image. Usually slowing things down is HDCP authorization, that copy-protection routine where devices check with each other to make sure digital content can't be copied. With InstaPort, all that obsessive checking is done when you plug in an HDMI cable, so when you want to switch from one source to another, the video starts streaming almost immediately.

Great, Samsung. Now maybe the cable TV industry will notice this, and somehow make it so we can switch from one TV station to another in less than 10 seconds.

US Military asserts right to return cyber attacks

The U.S. should counter computer-based attacks swiftly and strongly and act to thwart or disable a threat even when the attacker's identity is unknown, the director of the National Security Agency told Congress.
Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, who is the Obama administration's nominee to take on additional duties as head of the new Cyber Command, also said the U.S. should not be deterred from taking action against countries such as Iran and North Korea just because they might launch cyber attacks. [Read more...]

Last US sardine cans being packed in Maine

For the past 135 years, sardine canneries have been as much a part of Maine's small coastal villages as the thick Down East fog. It's been estimated that more than 400 canneries have come and gone along the state's long, jagged coast.
The lone survivor, the Stinson Seafood plant here in this eastern Maine shoreside town, shuts down this week after a century in operation. It is the last sardine cannery not just in Maine, but in the United States. [Read more...]

Mercedes E63 AMG on the test track

At last, a pico projector that's bright enough

When we first saw a palm-sized pico projector a couple of years ago, we were unimpressed. My, how things have changed! We took the Optoma PK301 Pico Pocket Projector for a spin, and it's vastly improved over its predecessors. While it's not going to show you sparkling HDTV in broad daylight, it does a Herculean job of blasting plenty of light, giving you a sharp and relatively bright DVD-quality (WVGA 854 X 480, 16:9) image.

Projecting a movie from our laptop in a darkened room, a 30-inch image was surprisingly bright, colorful and absolutely watchable. By the time we had enlarged the image to 60 inches, it was getting a little murky looking, and not quite as bright, but its output was still just about as good as the best projectors were capable of about seven years ago. That's remarkable considering that the PK301 is less than a fifth the size and weight.

The 4.7-inch-wide PK301 goes far beyond just displaying whatever your laptop VGA output sends to it. It has a microSD card slot, letting you display up to 8GB of your favorite .jpeg or .bmp photos, MP4 or XVid videos and even PowerPoint presentations without using a computer. You'll need to convert PowerPoint presentations and most video formats with Optoma's included software, though.

There's a rechargeable battery on board that makes this little hotshot truly portable, and if you want to save power, there's also "standard" mode that dims the LED enough to let that battery last "up to" an hour. We got a big kick out of holding this mini 8-ounce projector in our hand as it played DVD-quality movies. It's designed to look like a regular-sized model, making it so cute it reminded us of dollhouse furniture.

It's $400 price tag makes it a bit extravagant for a mere toy, but it's tons of fun to shine this baby on a white wall wherever you may be. While it's not quite bright enough to look good in a well-lit room, draw the shades and you have yourself a pocket theater. Optoma calls it the "gold standard of pico projectors." It's by far the best one we've seen yet.

Worst-Made Cars on the Road

Unfortunately just because GM's cars are selling well now doesn't mean they're the best bet for durability or value -- yet. It'll take awhile before GM's new direction shows up in tangible new products at the dealership.

Four of the seven vehicles on our list of the worst-made cars on the road come from GM brands. And all of the cars on the list -- including Chrysler's Dodge Nitro and Jeep Wrangler -- are made by Detroit's Big Three. Only one car on the list is made by Ford Motor [Read more...]

Manga Farming grows plants from twisted comic books

Manga Farming, an art project by Tokyo-based Koshi Kawachi, takes old manga (Japanese comic books, for the uninitiated) and turns them into potted plants. Apparently, old, wet paper is a fine place for radish sprouts to grow. Who knew?

He's got a whole bunch of the book-plants on display at the Matsuzakaya department store in Nagoya, if you happen to be in the area. Although if you're a manga fan, it might give you a few pangs of sadness in their hearts to see books that no one will ever read again. But hey, it's all for the sake of art.

Adobe Premiere CS5 cuts through 4K files like pixelated butter

You've probably heard about Adobe's big rollout of its latest monster content creation suite, CS5. I just spent three months closely evaluating Premiere Pro CS5, and I can tell you first hand, its blistering speed is downright astonishing. I've tested it, and it works.

This $799 video-editing software ($299 upgrade, and the entire Master Collection is $2599) just made it a whole lot easier to edit super-high-rez clips such as those enormous 4K files coming out of the RED camcorder. You can thank Adobe's new Mercury Playback Engine for that. If you have one of NVIDIA's high-end Quadro FX graphics cards, the Mercury Playback Engine software does its magic using the graphics processing unit (GPU) inside those cards.

Just how much better is it? This 64-bit beast rendered my ultra-high-resolution RED camera test project in 3:42 (that's three minutes, 42 seconds), compared to the 12:25 it took without Mercury. Good lord. This changes everything for video editors, who've been frustrated by cumbersome playback and rendering of high-resolution video, even on the most powerful Macs and PCs in the world. There's a lot more to know about Adobe CS5 — take a look at the numerous new features on the Adobe site.

Adobe needs rebound with latest Creative Suite

Bad timing hurt sales of the previous version, Creative Suite 4, which went on sale in the fall of 2008 just as the financial crisis hit. As a result, many customers — which range from small design shops and Web developers to large ad agencies — held back on buying upgrades. [Read more...] 

German tablet PC sets out to rival Apple's iPad

The German maker of a new tablet PC is setting out to rival Apple's iPad with the promise of even more technology such as a bigger screen, a webcam and USB ports.

It is not, however, an "iPad killer" as it has been dubbed by some blogs but an alternative to its bigger rival, Neofonie GmbH's founder and managing director Helmut Hoffer von Ankershoffen told reporters on Monday in Berlin. [Read more...]

Mantys golf scooter replaces both caddy and cart

While it'd probably ruin the majesty of something like the Masters golf tournament, the Mantys is perfect for solo golfers who don't want to mess around with either a cart or a caddy.

It's an electric scooter that's good for 36 holes (or around 13 miles) on a single charge, and tops out at 12 miles per hour, which should be more than enough for the green. The Mantys has space for your golf bag up front, storage area for your scorecard, balls and tees, and — of course — a cupholder. The only thing it doesn't have is a price, as it's call-to-order.

The perfect watch for werewolves

The Emotion Lab's Moonwatch doesn't bother with pesky sun-related information a watch normally feeds you. Instead, it's only got one thing on its mind: the phases of the moon. It's not just supposed to turn the watch world on its head, either, as apparently there are folks out there who feel tied to our lunar companion.

From The Emotion Lab:

Moonwatch has been designed to establish a relationship between the moon cycle and a person's emotional states. It's a new concept of time based on nature which invites people to reflect upon and gain a closer understanding of their mood and daily life on earth.

The Moonwatch is just a concept at this time. No word on if the company is planning a future variant of the timepiece that shoots silver bullets, either.

What If Japan had invented Legos? Asoblocks robot modules

Imagine if Lego had been created by robot-obsessed Japanese tinkerers and you might come up with something very similar to Asoblocks. Based in Aichi, Japan, Merzen's Asoblocks offer kits that allow anyone to create a number of robot toys using simple to connect plastic modules.

The robot seen above (the Gun Robot) comes from their Basic 251 kit which contains 164 pieces. If you're tired of buying electronics for while and prefer something futuristic that nevertheless harkens back to a simpler time that required more creativity, Asoblocks is probably for you. Currently the AsoBlock 251W is available for just $36.99 here.

Nomadic cyborg plants suck up our filthy water to live

Most of us grow up thinking that clean water is good, while polluted water is bad, but that's only because we approach these things from a human perspective. Just as plants rely on the carbon dioxide that we breathe out, each living thing exists in a biosystem where plants and animals need each other to survive. Mexican artist Gilberto Espaza has used this thinking to create his Nomadic Plants, and in the process, he teaches us something about the world we all live in. [Read more...]

simple DIY soft stylus works with the iPad or iPhone

Why would you ever want to use a stylus on the iPad or iPhone, you ask? Well, maybe you're tired of all those fingerprints, or maybe you want to take advantage of one of the many illustration and art apps the App Store offers, but you don't like finger painting. Either way, you'll be happy to know that creating a soft stylus is easy, and only takes a pencil, an anti-static sock and some patience, according to Adam Kumpf. [Read more...]

Galatea Spa chair becomes your own personal sanctuary

I'm all for chillin' out at the end of the day, so something like this Galatea Spa chair would be great. According to designer Verenice Macedo, it will combine a massage function, with a visor type 'laser screen' that wraps around your head. The screen can be used as an E reader or computer monitor, while for even more privacy, there's a big dome that you can lower over your head.

That would all be great if it actually worked, but just like that Sensation lounge chair we checked out a few days ago, the Galatea seems to exist only in some designer's conceptual world, where things like massage chair motors have been shrunken to the point of disappearing.

Activision countersues 'Modern Warfare' execs

Two former studio heads overseeing last year's blockbuster video game "Modern Warfare 2" were fired for insubordination and trying to poach key employees from Activision, the gaming giant alleged in court filings.

Activision on Thursday countersued former Infinity Ward executives Jason West and Vince Zampella, who sued Activision for more than $36 million in March. West and Zampella's lawsuit claimed they were fired so Activision could avoid paying them hefty royalties for their work on the popular "Call of Duty" franchise. [Read more...]

60 mirrors, one laser: Reflectius is the coolest clock ever

Hats off to Russian designer and crazy keyboard creator Art Lebedev: He's created a clock unlike any other. Reflectius is an ingenious design concept that uses one laser and 60 rotating mirrors, all reflecting from a single laser beam into the shapes of numbers. Brilliant.

The clock's case, which Lebedev calls "a complex triangulated surface that reminds of the complicated trajectory the beam of light travels in no time," is just as inventive as the laser paraphernalia within.

Will there be a tiny bit of smoke wafting among these mirrors, making those laser beams show up as well as we see in this illustration? If this really works, it'll be even cooler than a nixie clock.

Check out this 3D pic of the moon, no glasses required

Toss those crappy, uncomfortable and expensive 3D glasses! All you have to do is get yourself halfway cross-eyed and these heavenly bodies will suddenly appear to pop out at you with a surprising amount of depth. Straight out of the Magic Eye stereogram craze of the '90s, now the phenomenon skips over all that tiresome modern 3D paraphernalia and takes you far, far away into deep space.

Go ahead, try it. To see these pics in 3D, let your eyes slightly cross, and then move your head closer to or away from the screen. You'll get a cheap thrill when the image suddenly locks on, appearing in all its 3D glory. Check out the gallery, with even larger and more thrilling images. Careful, though — stare too long, and those crossed eyes might just stay that way (not really).

GM's crash test dummies are so smart, they're frickin' GENIUSES

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GM's crash test dummies are so smart, they're frickin' GENIUSES

Step into the Anthropomorphic Test Device Laboratory at General Motors and meet the company's family of crash test dummies. This group of plastic people is getting into a lot of accidents lately, testing the crashworthiness of the Chevy Volt.

But wait a second. Who you callin' a dummy, anyway? These geniuses have 50 data channels, and some of the smartest ones have 100 — recording all those traumatic experiences in great numerical detail onto devices built inside them that are the size of a pack of cards.

Why are they always wearing pink? You'll have to watch the video to find out.

Cordless motion-activated light goes anywhere, scares crooks

That dark front door of yours is so gloomy at night, you never know what's going to jump out and grab you. Here's an easy way to fix that: Let there be light. This six-inch fixture is easy to place just about anywhere, and has a rotating head that lets you point its light wherever you need it. Just use the included mounting plate to attach it, and make sure it's secure because it's so cool, those bad guys might want to pluck it off the wall and take it with them.

When it detects motion, its light stays on for 30 seconds, so unless this thing turns itself on at the drop of a rustling leaf, it might be able to curse the darkness for years. It shows yet another benefit of highly efficient LEDs, using so little power they can provide about 150 hours of illumination on four C batteries. Try that with an incandescent bulb.

Get an iPad for $24! Um, but there's a catch

Now even we poor people can get in on the iPad fun! At first we thought this was an April Fool's joke, but no, these PixelPads are designed to give prospective App Store billionaires a realistic mockup of the iPad. It's a design aid that precisely matches the iPad's actual size, and includes a precision-printed grid with each square equaling 10 pixels on the iPad. That makes it easy to sketch out and simulate that chart-topping app they've been kicking around for a while now.

We're getting a kick out of the PixelPad's tech specs page, gently making fun of Apple while promoting its own product's utility. For example, the "display" is a "9.7-inch (diagonal) PAD-ambientlit matte widescreen Multi-Sketch display with integrated 10 PixelGrid." And hey, it includes a variety of "input devices," including a Sharpie marker, a roller ball pen, a mechanical pencil and a dozen crayons!

You're probably not an iPad designer, but if a shapely iPad replica including two 64-page legal pads for $24 (three 64-page refills are $21) isn't too expensive for you, it might be cool to carry a FakePad around, all done up in paper. It's a great conversation piece for contrarians. Meanwhile, the company says there are more pads on the way, covering a variety of cellphones and web formats.

Lost? Rescue Balloon is literally a big arrow pointing right at you

Do you enjoy taking long, meditative strolls in remote, forested areas alone? If you answered yes, you might be a candidate for the Rescue Balloon.

Designer Jaeseok Han wasn't fooling around when he created this compact kit — intended for hikers who get lost or injured in the wilderness and need to signal aerial search teams. It comes complete with a small, lightweight helium gas cylinder and a long, inflatable red balloon that can peer out from the tree canopy and flag down appreciative rescue workers.

Since it doesn't bet your life on flare guns, cellphones and fancy GPS devices that can run out of ammo or batteries, we love the simplicity of this concept. For the sake of seasoned adventurers and the navigationally challenged among us, we hope the Rescue Balloon makes it to production someday. [Read more...]

Fastest Ferrari ever: Ferrari unveils 599 GTO

Ferrari has finally taken the wraps of its high-performance 599 GTO. Billed as Ferrari’s fastest ever road car topping even the mighty Ferrari Enzo — the production version of the 599 GTO is largely based on the 599XX concept. [Read more...]

UPS Thinks Out of the Box on Driver Training

Driver training is crucial for Atlanta-based UPS, which employs 99,000 U.S. drivers and says it will need to hire 25,000 over the next five years to replace retiring Baby Boomers.

Candidates vying for a driver's job, which pays an average of $74,000 annually, now spend one week at Integrad, an 11,500-square-foot, low-slung brick UPS training center 10 miles outside of Washington, D.C. There they move from one station to another practicing the company's "340 Methods," prescribed by UPS industrial engineers to save seconds and improve safety in every task from lifting and loading boxes to selecting a package from a shelf in the truck. [Read more...]

Apple prepping 7-inch iPad mini for 2011

With all of the tiresome jokes about the iPad being just a big iPod Touch, you've got to wonder about a rumor for a smaller iPad coming in about a year. According to "upstream component sources," a touchscreen device between 5 and 7 inches aimed at people who want to consume content without creating it is coming, and it'll cost less than $400.

Of course, the iPad is a touchscreen device that's great for consuming content and decidedly less great for creating it. And as part prices drop, it should hit below $400 in 2011. And there's no real benefit to a middle-sized tablet between the iPad and the iPod Touch. But hey, stranger things have happened, I guess. But take this rumor with a big ol' grain of salt.

GE has an LED replacement for your 40 bulb

GE is planning for a low power, long lasting replacement for the traditional 40 watt bulb, which is quite the workhorse throughout the homes of America. The new LED consumes only 9 watts of energy and is rated for 17 years of use (if used four hours every day). You won't have to sacrifice anything to help save the planet, either, as the bulb gives out the same amount of light as a 40 watt incandescent at around 450 lumens.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking, though: "What's up with the weird design?" While LED lights tend to look a little crazy besides, the claw-like fingers grasping the light above aren't just for show. LEDs tend to act a bit like spotlights, focusing the majority of the light they give off in one spot. The fingers are part of a design that GE is still refining, which will ultimately help disperse the light given off by the bulb. LEDs also boast the ability to run cooler than other light bulbs, and contain no harmful mercury.

"This is a bulb that can virtually light your kid's bedroom desk lamp from birth through high school graduation," GE general manager John Strainic said in a statement. The only hard thing to swallow here is the price, as each light is expected to cost around $40 or $50 when they land on shelves this fall. Sure, that's a 17-year investment — around $2.50 a year — but what if you drop one?

Rc-cars slow motion compilation

Your TV could be as creepy as Amazon.com by 2012

The TV screen lists programs based on Amazon.com searches, which lists shopping ideas it got from what you were watching.

TiVo knows what you like to watch, and that's nice. Your computer remembers what sites you've visited, and that's convenient. Your cellphone keeps track of who's called you and your calendar, which is handy. But your cable box doesn't know a damn thing. It's truly the idiot box, and your Internet-connected HDTV only knows what widgets you loaded into it. [Read more...]

The Apple Two

In 2006, professor Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School predicted that over the next decade there would be a determined effort to replace the personal computer with a new generation of "information appliances." He was, it turned out, exactly right. But the one thing he couldn't forecast was who would be leading the charge. How, indeed, could anyone have guessed that Apple Inc., the creator of the personal computer, would lead the effort to exterminate it?

There are many interesting things to be said about the iPad. It might save publishing, television, and journalism. It might overrun Sony and Microsoft in computer gaming. [Read more...]

How the Canon T2i made me excited about photography again

When Canon unveiled its T2i camera earlier this year, amateur photographers like myself got pretty excited. Sure, last year's T1i was an affordable DSLR with video recording, but the T2i looked like it was actually getting it right, promising better video capture in full HD and an all-new image sensor that cranked the megapixels to 18 — all for under $1,000. That puts powerful, pro-level imaging technology within reach of many, and when I finally got to use that tech, I went from excited to inspired. [Read more...]

Guy turns mail truck into street-legal Battlestar Galactica Viper

Can you believe this spectacular Battlestar Galactica Colonial Viper Starfighter was once a humble mail truck? Just like an original Colonial Viper from the TV series, it only seats one, but even though its appearance is rather, uh, unconventional, it's street legal.

It's built by a master mechanic of amusement park rides, who is also a car restoration expert. Now all he needs to do is build an elongated garage that looks like a launch tube. Nestled in a nondescript suburb on Earth, the Cylons will never find it there!

Too bad this road rocket is one of a kind.

Incredible new interface from Intel will actually read your thoughts

You're sitting at a PC, your arms folded across your chest as you ponder an important question: What's the capital of Belize?

As you form the query in your mind, it suddenly appears typed out like magic on screen and, in a flash, the answer appears. (It's Belmopan, in case you were curious.) [Read more...]

Future Lamborghini Murcielago will hit 225mph

As you know Lamborghini is preparing a new supercar to replace the current Murcielago. Internally known as the "New V12", the future supercar will go on sale next year and will be priced at around $450k.

The supercar will be built on a new carbonfibre chassis and will be powered by a new 7.0-liter V12 engine, rumored to deliver between 700-720bhp. With a weight of less than 1500 kilos, the New V12 will have a power-to-weight ratio of around 470bhp per tonne. The sprint from 0 to 60 mph will be made in 3 seconds, while top speed will go at 225 mph.

The engine will be mated to a seven-speed paddle-shift robotized manual transmission as standard, and the option of a sequential seven-speed unit.

But despite all the mechanical changes, the next supercar will still be recognized as a Lamborghini: "We’re not going to throw away our design DNA just to make a statement that we’re 21st-century."

LEGO Bugatti Veyron is radio-controlled

America's biggest battery keeps town humming for eight hours

Residents of the little border town of Presidio, Texas were getting fed up with outages caused by its 62-year-old powerline, a tenuous link to electricity stretching over 60 miles of storm-prone wilderness. The scrappy town decided to solve the problem by doing the thing that Texans do best: go big. Yesiree Bob, they've gone and built themselves what they say is the country's largest battery, and they're calling it "BOB", an acronym for "big-ol' battery."

The $25 million project includes a building the size of a large house, equipped with a sodium sulfur battery that can supply the town with all the power it needs — 4 megawatts — and it'll keep on going for up to eight hours. Not only will this building-sized battery kick in when that single transmission line goes down, it's always standing by as a backup, ready to add a few watts here and there to keep the power balanced, alleviating brownouts and similar problems.

So what we have here is a gigantic uninterruptible power supply (UPS). Come on, Presidians, go all the way and build another one like this. Hook up a few solar panels and maybe a wind turbine or two, and you might be able to go off the grid altogether, right there in the heart of Texas. [Link]

Illuminated rims will make your ride more eye-catching than before : Goddy!

Toe Mouse makes your computer really hands-free

This Toe Mouse is designed for people with upper-limb disabilities who find using a normal computer difficult. To use it, you simply stick your first two toes on it and use it like a normal mouse, clicking and pointing around on a floor-based mousepad.

And you know what? I'll bet this doesn't take all that long to get used to. And even people who are fully capable of using a normal mouse might find it helpful, as you'd never have to take your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse with this thing. Of course, you'd need to be barefoot, which could get awkward at the office. But that's a small price to pay for surprising the hell out of people by scrolling around on your computer without using your hands.

Sony's new Blu-ray discs won't work with your old Blu-ray player

Hey, did you hear? Blu-ray is selling like gangbusters this year, already raking in over $330 million and accounting for 12.3% of sales revenue for packaged media, according to Blu-ray.com. You know a good way to kill said sales? Start a format war — with yourself!

Well, it's not a war yet, but it's going to be something that's hanging over Blu-ray owners' heads: Sony's new Blu-ray XL, or BDXL, doubles the capacity of its predecessor, but will not work with current Blu-ray players. BDXL boasts a capacity of up to 128GB (and 100GB on rewritable XL discs), thanks to the fact that it uses four readable layers per disc. Those added layers mean that current Blu-ray player lasers aren't powerful enough, however, and you'll need new hardware to read them all.

Before you throw your player out the window, take heart in the fact that consumers probably won't see these high-capacity discs for a while. Sony plans for them to be used in the professional sector where high volumes of data need to be pressed onto a single disc, such as in the medical-imaging or broadcast-media industries. That, and 3D movies should fit on current Blu-ray discs.

In the long run, it could mean interesting things for the world of Blu-ray, beyond just making consumers buy new players — not to mention making one of the best players on the market, the PlayStation 3, obsolete in this regard. The higher capacity of the BDXL format will allow for even higher-quality HD, multiple versions of a movie on the same disc, and even allow for simple improvements, such as putting more episodes of a TV show on a single disc, meaning you'll get more out of your Netflix rentals. It'll be interesting to see if the sheer volume of physical media manages to nudge out in front of streaming content once more, the latter of which is limited by bandwidth.

Driving a car like you're playing Grand Theft Auto is HARD

In video games, the easiest way to drive is in a third-person camera that gives you an "over-the-shoulder" view of the action. It's a lot less claustrophobic than a first-person camera — or how we drive out in the real world.

It's part of a new show called Immersion, brought to you by Rooster Teeth, the folks behind the popular Halo-inspired comedy series Red vs. Blue. Immersion takes a page from the MythBusters in that concepts are put to the test on the show, but rather than deal in rumors and what-have-you, the folks in Immersion are testing video game concepts out in the real world.

The crew mounted a camera on a long arm behind the vehicle, and blacked out the windows so that the driver can't rely on sight to navigate an obstacle course full of cones and inflatable civilians. Instead, a monitor behind the steering wheel showing the third-person feed is the only thing the driver sees.

What concept should be tested next? I'm voting for the Rocket jumping.

The launch of McLaren Automotive

Inside the cockpit of the McLaren F1’s record-setting run from 1998

For over ten years, no car on the planet could match the McLaren F1 in terms of sheer speed. And the ironic thing is, unlike its successors to the title of fastest road production car in the world – the Bugatti Veyron and the SSC Ultimate Aero TT, among others – the McLaren F1 was never built entirely for that reason.

As a matter of fact, according to designer Gordon Murray, McLaren created the F1 for the sole purpose of becoming the ‘ultimate’ road car. But in the process of building the F1, McLaren found themselves building something that was more than just the ultimate road car, but also the fastest one out on the streets.

And as is the case with timeless videos, we have a video of the McLaren F1 from March 31, 1998, the exact date when the F1 set the speed record, which it owned, for more than ten years.

Future is almost here: OLED wallpaper coming in 2012

We were hoping OLED wallpaper was on its way, but didn't realize it was going to be as soon as 2012. In just two years, gorgeous wallpaper like this will start to replace light bulbs. Don't like this design? OLED lighting will take on a variety of forms, limited only by the imaginations of its creators.

OLED lighting is tremendously efficient, 2.5 times more so than energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs. That means a wallpaper panel like this can operate at an astonishing 150 lumens per watt, requiring just 3 to 5 Volts to power the OLED film that can function as anything from light-emitting wallpaper to a road sign.

This is all made possible by a breakthrough from British company called LOMOX, saying it's solved the main drawback of OLED lighting up until now: longevity. The company claims its OLED lighting will last longer than a compact fluorescent bulb. Better yet, it emits more lifelike light. The future looks bright.

Apple's next big project: a head-mounted display?

Now that the iPad is almost in stores, Apple's skunk works is certainly hard at work on the company's next "magical and revolutionary" product. We now may have a clue what that is.

A leaked internal memo reveals a head-mounted concept. Curiously, it appears to cover only one eye, kind of like a Vuzix monocle. Design notes reveal it's engineered to allow the user to watch movies and shows from an iPod or iPhone while keeping their player in their pocket

The working name is the "iPatch," most likely because of its resemblance to its swashbucklin' kin. No word on when it will be on shelves — or even officially revealed — or what kind of price we can expect.

How to make a Hummer eco-friendly

How do you make a Hummer, the most aggressively anti-environment vehicle ever made, eco-friendly? Have it pulled by horses!

That's what Jeremy Dead did by converting a Hummer into a stagecoach and having two white horses (named Duke and Diesel, naturally) pull it around Central Park in NYC. Sure, it might not have had the pickup of a traditional Hummer, but it also didn't burn a bigger hole in the ozone layer as it was driving. So overall, I'd say it's an improvement.

Carbon fiber clock makes time fly

As everyone knows, one way to make something classier and more expensive is to add carbon fiber to it. So it only makes sense that you'd want a wall clock made of the stuff. It also promises to be completely silent, which is something I definitely look for in a high-end clock.

Unfortunately, there's no pricing info available for this Sports Carbone clock, so I'm unable to get good and indignant about how overpriced it is. But just go ahead and assume it is ludicrously priced, it's a pretty safe bet.

iPad hacked to run Newton OS

As the iPad rolls out across the United States on Saturday, one developer appears to have gone rogue already. Jonathan E. Vi, one of the few developers to actually get an iPad in advance of the launch, has rigged it to run Apple's old Newton personal data assistant from the '90s. Fire up the Newton emulator app, and the iPad's screen changes to that muted green color with dim gray text and the old Mac fonts.

It was easy enough for Vi to create the app, especially since the Einstein Project has been working on emulating the Newton since 2004. It's already available for OS X, so it was probably a simple matter to create a Newton emulator for the iPhone OS.

Whether or not the App Store will ever carry it is doubtful, so new iPad owners may have to resort to hacking in order to run Newton. But the Newton OS is still alive and well, running on the world's hottest gadget. No failures here.

Razer Venom intravenous bag keeps you gaming for 5 days

No more worrying about such trivialities as "exercise" and "food" with Razer Venom, the scientifically proven elixir that will turn you into a gaming god. The stuff is laced with oxymialterxin and doctixilin, certain to "keep your body nourished and keep you fit as a fiddle."

If you want to really mainline the stuff, there's a painless intravenous solution that includes five gold-plated needles to suit your particular vein size. Squeamish? Go for the nebulizer, the beautifully designed vaporization module that wafts that Venom goodness all over the place. Great for LAN parties where everybody can get in on the supercharged fun.

Razer says this magic tonic can keep you gaming for 120 hours. It's hard to believe you can be morphed from a 90-pound weakling to an uber gamer for only $39.99. If they're still available April 2, we'll take two.

First Chevy Volts roll off the production line

GM's electric car, the Chevrolet Volt, just passed a major milestone, with the first pre-production Volt rolling off the assembly line in Detroit. These first Volts won't be heading to dealerships, but will instead be used to make sure the real-deal Volts are up to snuff.

Soon, the plant will start pumping out Volts for consumers to buy. Then, one assumes, they'll all get snapped up, global warming will reverse and finally life will make sense again. But no pressure, GM!

Fold-out keyboard solves netbooks' cramped hands problem

One of the biggest problems with the small form factor of netbooks is the keyboards. They're just too small to comfortably use with adult-size hands. But the footprint of the computers themselves are great, making them super portable. What's the solution?

This clever concept device features a keyboard that folds out, allowing it to keep that small netbook footprint while also offering a comfortable, full-size keyboard. The only drawback I can see would be the thickness that another folded layer would add to the design. But if done right, it could be a worthwhile tradeoff. We'll have to wait and see if any computer manufacturers choose to turn this concept into reality.

NVIDIA Marketing Slogan Now - Crank That S#!T Up!

Ladies and gentleman, your ThinkGeek April Fool's lineup is right here

Those of you who were woken up by a sibling or roommate screaming bloody murder and following up with "April Fools!" are keenly aware of what today is. For the rest of you? Well, you may be close to tears when you find out that ThinkGeek's "My First Bacon" is, in fact, an awesome gag. [Read more...]

Stop the noise: alarm clock wakes you with simulated sunlight

Sick and tired of that dissonant alarm that scares us out of bed every morning, we're looking for a more natural way to ease into the day. That's the aim of the Verilux Rise and Shine Natural Sleep System, easing you into morning with simulated sunlight.

At bedtime the clock also lets you drift off to sleep as its light progressively dims, and you can choose one of its many soothing sounds to go with it. Aiming to please, the unit lets you plug a lamp into the back of it for even more brightness, and it has an FM radio, an aux port for your MP3 player, and enough memory space for 800 MP3s.

When we saw it at the recent Green Products Expo, the unit's solid build quality and clean design reminded us of a Tivoli radio. Still, we're taken aback by its $249 price.

Dell Precision M4500 mobile workstation delivers Core i5 CPU, Nvidia Quadro FX 880M graphics starting at $1,549

Whether you don’t need the quad-core power of the Dell Precision M6500 mobile workstation (or the competing HP EliteBook 8740w) or just can’t afford it, Dell is offering a far more affordable, if still powerful option in the Precision M4500. [Read more...]

First Japanese game for iPad harnesses your Twitter power

While the first owners of the iPad in the U.S. will begin getting their sweet Apple fix this weekend, early reports indicate that the device won't hit international stores until around April 24th. Nevertheless, Famitsu has announced the first Japanese game for the iPad called Followars.

Developed by Route24's Kenichi Nishi, the multi-player game links with your Twitter account to determine your character's abilities and overall progress throughout the game's environment. Famitsu has yet to announce pricing or the exact release date, but you can stay abreast of developments here.

Nvidia admits GTX480 runs hot

DESIGNER OF HOT GPU CHIPS Nvidia has admitted what most every review has already said - its GTX480 chip uses "a lot of power".

In a blog post, Nvidia's Drew Henry said that the chip designer had "heard [users] concerns" with regard to power and heat. He went on to explain that a "high performance" GPU such as the GTX480 will "consume a lot of power" in order to enable "performance and features". [Read more...]

How should the iPhone integrate multitasking?

One of the main gripes about the iPhone/iPad operating system is that it doesn't support multitasking. You can't run more than one app at once, which is annoying. But rumor has it that that will change when the iPhone 4.0 software is released this summer.

So how would multitasking work? Similar to Expose in OS X. Hit the home button twice and all of your apps will spread out as small icons across your screen. Tap one to go to it. It's a pretty easy.

Would you do it differently? On Android, you can pull a menu down from the top of the window to access things like text messages, so you don't need to leave your app at all. It's an elegant solution. What are you looking for in iPhone 4.0?