By John Brownlee at 9:03 am Thursday, Feb 12
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Yesterday on
Boing Boing Gadgets:
• Robot faced keytoppers started the
robotification of Brownlee's home at the front portal.
• We were serenaded by the sound of a thousand iPhone App Store
farts.
• Honda claimed they could, like,
totally send a
dude to the moon.
• Secondrun.tv released a neat Media Center Extender to allow better streaming of Hulu on
home theater PCs.
• Brownlee considered gorgeous restored reel-to-reel tape decks as
objects of art.
• Obama may have pushed a bill through to delay the digital television transition, but
40% of all television stations are shutting off their analog transmissions next week anyway.
• Someone finally got the iPhone external juice pack
slim and right.
• lolwut? What the hell is this thing even
supposed to be?
• Steve McQueen's zombie endorsed an absolutely
gorgeous watch.
• Lamborghini entered the
stiletto heel game.
• Palm's Pre continues to
shape up as everything the iPhone is not, except sexy: they're killing off PalmOS, setting up deals with International Carriers, and will allow installation of applications through USB.
• And if you haven't read it yet, Joel's thought piece on why the
PSP failed and what Sony can do to ace the PSP2 is a must-read... or at least skim.
Link
By John Brownlee at 5:33 am Wednesday, Feb 11
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Yesterday on
Boing Boing Gadgets:
• We got the details on an unofficial developer camp for
the Palm Pre.
• Dell released a sweet new multi-touch capable tablet, the
XT2.
• Brownlee discovered luxury speakers that looked like sacrificial alter
from another world.
• HP will be shipping their netbooks with an insane
three versions of Windows 7, including the Starter Edition, which only allows three applications to run simultaneously.
• If you're going to offer an over-expensive service for turning an Apple laptop into a
tablet, do yourself a favor and animate the process in stop-motion like these guys.
• The Sony Vaio P is a sexy little not-netbook, no doubt, but if you really want it to shine, put
XP on it.
• Brownlee thinks everyone should
buy a smartphone, and recommends a pretty excellent seeming one.
• Beschizza spotted a skinny
iPhone clone useable for jugular slicing.
• Stackable Duplo bricks become a swank, extendable
USB hub.
• We scratched our heads over the Isophone, a sensory deprivation system for
teleconferencing.
• Joel sucked himself through a dimensional vortex and took an
ultrsasonic bath, complete with "spurting endometrial nozzles."
• So erotic,
toothpaste squeezing.
• Brownlee discovered an
antifreeze ice cream scoop, although he thinks it'll work on other flavors.
• We discovered that Unix time will be 1234567890 on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at
18:31:30.
• Brownlee toured the
terrifying and beautiful monster factories of Japan.
• Beschizza totally eviscerated an Author Guild's director's absolutely
ridiculous claim that the Kindle 2's text-to-speech ability is illegal and a violation of property theft.
And more besides! Come read us.
Link
By John Brownlee at 6:50 am Tuesday, Feb 10
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Yesterday at
Boing Boing Gadgets:
• We discovered that cheap LCD handheld games have
always been there, and always been bad.
&bull Rob shook his head and clucked his tongue over some
Swarovski encrusted headphones.
• We marveled at a retrofuturistic
electric cannon.
• Humidifying through
solid state technology, aka concrete.
• We looked at some incredible
junk art robots by Mike Rivamonte.
• All nixie tube clocks
look the same, which is to say, awesome.
• We learned how to turn an ordinary flashlight into an
eyeball melting, balloon popping laser pointer.
• Brownlee's favorite netbook, the Samsung NC10, got
even better.
• A soused-up Doctor Who played grab ass with Richard Dawkins' wife in some
retro computer ads.
• A springwound clock ripped from a nuclear submarine equaled
CCCP chic.
• Amazon finally announced the
Kindle 2 ebook reader, which is thinner, has better battery life and will read to you aloud. It is pretty rad...
• ...but a helpful reader mocked up what the Kindle 2
should have been
And, needless to say, much more besides. Please, come read us: booze exchange for page views!
By John Brownlee at 4:02 am Friday, Feb 6
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Yesterday on
Boing Boing Gadgets:
• We considered jamming
wooden ear buds into our cochleas.
• Bill Gates unleashed malaria-stricken
mosquitoes on Silicon Valley.
• Verizon Wireless did not understand the
decimal experience.
• We thought about hard drives on a
planetary scale.
• We looked at an interesting concept phone, half Blackberry Storm, half
Optimus Maximus.
• Amazon misunderstood the prime purpose of a
fleshlight.
• Steampowered
R2D2!
• Let that modern day Cyrando de Bergerac, Mr. Brando himself, inspire
Tesla-powered love in our hearts.
• We watched Tetris blocks
tumble from the sky.
• Rob clued us in on how to make
all joysticks wireless.
• Brownlee admired a machinist/inventor's pedal-powered submarine, which he hopes to pilot across
the Atlantic.
• Joel admired a
steampunk plasma bell jar.
• We discovered that the Vaio P may not be the netbook
we all were waiting for.
• Rob horded some weapon pens that can be used even more ably to
stab out someone's eyes.
• We pulled out
LEGO minifig visors over our eyes and called it a day.
And much more besides! Come read us!
Link
By John Brownlee at 3:18 am Thursday, Feb 5
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets:
• FujiFilm released a digicam that, for once, didn't try too hard to
pimp its megapixels.
• Brownlee considered the
structural integrity of hamburgers.
• Windows 7 will be coming in the
same editions as Windows Vista, despite the fact that there's only a need for exactly
two.
• Apple may no longer make 160GB iPods, but you can
cram 240GBs in there.
• We looked at a gorgeous photoset of Bell Labs'
1960s data center.
• We heard through the grapefine that Apple will allow
background apps on the iPhone.
• We saw spy pics for the new
Acer smartphone.
• We watched about 15
old commercials for toy robots.
• Joel salivated over
NAMM Oddities: a gallery of wonderfully weird musical instruments.
• We shook our heads and wondered how
GM could kill the electric car.
• One of these gaming mouses is
not like the other.
• We petted and cooed over a
robot bunny with a plasma globe for a head.
• Meet the Tesla of electric motorcycles: the $69,000
Mission One.
• We marveled at an entire African industry of
professional gadget chargers.
• Best Buy refused to honor the prices of a
no longer solvent competitor.
•
Tron and Depeche Mode proved a
chocolate meets peanut butter sort of combo.
• Beschizza reviewed the
iGO everywhereMax juicing station.
• Joel found an incredible
mount to allow microscopic DSLR photos.
And more besides! Come read us.
Link
By John Brownlee at 4:58 am Wednesday, Feb 4
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Yesterday on
Boing Boing Gadgets:
• Brownlee admired a wall-mountable
keyhole orb.
• Nikon announced a couple
Rear Window style
superzoom digicams.
• Google Japan advertised
Chrome with a dash of
Sesame Street.
• We saw exactly how much
Rolex sand equals a human lifetime.
•
Space Invaders invaded our
gin and tonics.
• NVIDIA's Ion platform for Atom processors is looking like a
huge leap forward for netbooks and nettops.
• A shark fin
tea-infuser caused Brownlee to remember a horrible day at the beach.
• Microsoft's recent
layoffs have resulted in thrift stores stuffed to the gills with old Zune t-shirts.
• We discovered that a Hackintosh
compared pretty swankly to the iBook when it comes to running Leopard.
• We learned about the possible existence of a now canceled
Yahoo Phone.
• Joel dove into the futuristic automobile technology of
robot cars and whistle cars.
• A winged Illuminati eye seduced us back into the days of
4,096 color monitors.
• Rob reviewed a set of
iFrogz cans.
• Joel absolutely shreed on the
B.C. Rich double neck guitar.
• We lounged countergravitationally on uncomfortable lounge chairs held aloft by the magic of
magnetism.
And a lot more besides. Come read us!
Link
By John Brownlee at 1:27 am Tuesday, Feb 3
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Yesterday on
Boing Boing Gadgets:
• We learned that we had easy access to
626,369 free songs.
• Implored you to
stop paying attention to megapixels.
• Casio decided to go
head-to-head with the iPhone.
• We lusted after an awesome shirt of a
Helvetica robot.
• An army of creepy mannequins
pimped the Vaio P.
• Professor Rubik announced his successor to the
Rubik's cube.
• We did not consider very seriously the possibility of paying $26,000 for a
glass pool table.
• Joel posted another entry in the Optimist/Pessimist series, this time about T-Mobile offering
loans for new phones.
• We dug a lot of green design gadgets concepts, but especially a
used coffee ground printer.
• Timex's new WS4 series of watches is
plenty swank.
• Asus announced a new netbook with a
ten hour battery life.
• GoDaddy's SuperBowl advertising featured a lot of T&A, and that's
causing a surprising amount of controversy.
• Speed Dating came to the iPhone, and
Joel was the first in line.
• Rob reviewed a host of gadgets: the
Pharos smartphone, a
Mickey Mouse speaker and the
Pyramat speaker.
• We promised to post more about
awesome medical equipment with lasers.
Come read us!
Link
By John Brownlee at 8:02 am Saturday, Jan 31
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Yesterday on
Boing Boing Gadgets:
• Samsung shoved 32GBs into a single
stick of RAM.
• We examined some multi-chromatic electromagnetic
chart porn.
• Pixel art makes good (if illegible)
book jackets.
• Brownlee was nostalgic for the days of
Prodigy and the <s> emoticon.
• Swaying in the wind, sixteen
fabric inflatable robots.
• Steve Jobs and Bill Gates made out in
the Macintosh Dating Game.
• We tried to formulate a question to ask sci-fi writers that would, fifty years from now,
juxtapose the actual path of future technology with our own subconscious expectations of which way that path will wind. That won't make a lot of sense, so just read the post.
• Beschizza
broke rocks with a hammer made of engine parts.
• The BBC got
punked into believing in a magical cell phone created by Oompa Loompas.
• We looked at some cool wallets made from
cassette tapes.
• We argued bitterly about the merits of a
Space Invaders watch that doesn't actually play
Space Invaders.
• Kittens rode a
Roomba around the room.
• A
clockwork trilobyte crawled out of the wreckage of the post-apocalypse.
• We jumped to our feet and applauded the world's first
vertical backflip on a Big Wheel.
And more besides. Come read us!
Link
By John Brownlee at 9:31 am Thursday, Jan 29
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Yesterday on
Boing Boing Gadgets, we...
• Looked at a neat
MacBook netbook concept with shades of the Vaio P.
• Found a limited edition speaker even
Godzilla would love.
• Discovered that iPhoto 2009
knows LOLCats.
• Watched someone
faceplant on a Segway.
• Wildly pointed around a vintage,
Vietnam-era camera gun.
• Allowed
SEGA to tell us how to make love. "At the beat, make love harder!" I'm trying!
• Found out that the Dell Mini Inspiron 9 has a
better screen than a $2500 MacBook Pro.
• Learned how to
staplessly staple.
• Looked at some of our readers'
bitching laptop art.
• Discovered a
strange netbook with a removable OS drive.
• Put Adobe Photoshop CS4 on
6,400 floppies.
• Arranged four magnets on our desk in just such a way that they
floated in thin air.
• Looked at a 15th century
steam-driven iPhone prototype.
• Wore some awesomely cyberpunk
Apple concept devices from the early 90s.
And more besides. Come read us!
Link
By John Brownlee at 1:42 am Wednesday, Jan 28
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Yesterday on
Boing Boing Gadgets:
• We hung Jeeves and Wooster top hats from the ceiling and called them
lampshades.
• Rob slathered the walls of his house with
anti-WIFI paint.
• Panasonic's new Lumix digicams went both waterproof and
metallically chromatic.
• We discovered an acceleration pedal that does nothing but make
vroom vroom noises. Finally! I can stop using my mouth!
•
Beer tab corsets sparked commentary debate about whether it was possible to get good beer in a can. Answer: yes, duh.
• This new Korean MP3 player has a really cool
pixelart UI.
• Kim Jong Il intends on launching five rockets to
drag the moon back to North Korea.
• Joel saw a plot to sneak product ads into
Windows 7 context menus.
• We waxed eloquently for a
recumbent Big Wheel for adults.
• We hung out in the cockpit of NASA's space shuttle in
high-def.
• Brownlee secretly photographed an avatar of breathtaking physical violence
using a netbook, and wondered who Asus' Marlboro Man would be.
• Rob started a PhotoShop contest:
what will this liquidated Circuit City become?
And more besides! Come read!
Link
By John Brownlee at 9:05 am Saturday, Jan 24
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Yesterday on
Boing Boing Gadgets:
• A woman with uncanny valley fingers showed off the
phone watch of tomorrow.
• A speedboat in the shape of a guitar
went on sale.
• The Phantom of the Opera advertised a
chess set.
• Knight Rider could not afford an
iPhone.
• John loved the look of Jolicloud, a Linux distro for
netbooks.
• Pastel colors came back to rack-mounted
synthesizers.
• Spectacles went
USB.
• We discovered that laser-etching a
Moleskine can kill you.
• Someone invented the
better ice tray.
• We discovered the most adorable
C-3P0 ever.
• Palm responds to Apple's
veiled lawsuit threats: "Bring it."
• Roadside LED signs were easily hacked to warn about
upcoming zombie outbreak zones.
• We all revealed our hearts and souls by starting a gallery of our
laptop sticker art.
And much more besides!
Link
By John Brownlee at 12:22 pm Thursday, Jan 22
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets we looked at an inexplicable, gravitationally-defiant
watch and discovered that
Malia Obama uses a cute little Kodak digicam.
An
inflatable gladiator set gives co-workers the option of non-lethally beating each other's brains out, and Brownlee pined for a
button-cute proto-Roomba from 1985.
Apple threatened to sue
Palm, kinda. A neato lamp was both a
bookmark and a lighting source. Robot
Insects, spark plug
bugs and butterfly
ornithopters.
We also discovered the
history of the Mac boot-up beep and the surprising fact that
Darth Vader likes to drag race. Joel pined to be a
little girl on Sesame Street eating Maraschino cherries and
Dr. Manhattan kicked the crap out of the Viet Cong.
Rob revisited a
1984 Mac review while Xeni linked a Casio Watch with the
closing of Gitmo. And, as always, there were a couple of fun little
iPhone projects.
Link
By John Brownlee at 3:06 pm Wednesday, Jan 21
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets we flung
ninja star tacks at the walls and listened to the buzz of
clockwork bees. A
wooden hand lifted an iPhone aloft in defiance. A turtle danced to our
music collections and a LOLcat became a
subwoofer.
Sanyo announced their newest lineup of
Xacti camcorders, while 4Chan invented
an incredible scientific device. Coverflow became a useless
shelf and Dr. Manhattan filmed the
Apollo Moon Landings.
Joel discovered why neatsfoot oil remains
liquid at room temperature unlike other animal fats. Brownlee fantasized about riding on a mech robot's
junk. We looked at a
Golden Throat box from the good old days, and Rob thought the
new Robocop should be carbon fire.
There was a thrust-counting
cock ring. Cut and paste
came to the iPhone. A cute robot danced in a
tuxedo. A guy demonstrated his
awesome bionic arm while
T-Mobile danced in Liverpool. LEGO went
crackwhore and druggie. We discovered what a sink of packing peanuts
dissolves into.
And these are some
bitching robot tattoos.
Link
By John Brownlee at 1:30 pm Thursday, Jan 8
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Recently at
Boing Boing Gadgets, we hit CES 2009!
We commenced "reporting" (re: boozing) at
CES Unleashed, where it became clear — even early into the conference — that the recession had hit
CES hard. Never the less, Beschizza found a touching reason to be
optimistic, and so, galvanized, we went into CES Day Two with high spirits.
Live blogging was the order of the day on Day Two. Joel covered
Ludacris and Monster Cable while Brownlee watched LG announce a Dick Tracy camera watch and
declare life to be grim. Beschizza was there to write up Netgear's announcement of a deck-of-card-sized
video streaming device. Then came
Casio,
Sharp and
Toshiba, and
Samsung... although all of the day's announcements had their thunder stolen by Sony's announcement of the sexy not-netbook, the
Vaio P. Rob even got a chance to get a
hands on. To finish off the day, Joel
harassed some people in line at the Ballmer keynote.
Today is Day 3, and the first day the CES showfloor is actually open. Beschizza rushed off early to cover
Sir Howard Stringer's Sony keynote, and applauded the CEO for noting that the future is in open source. Meanwhile, Brownlee feasted upon
omelettes courtesy of Dell. Joel puttered around the Las Vegas Convention Center, snapping shots of
blinged out iPod boomboxes and
television mounting kits for idiots. And Rob really wants
this car.
We're at CES for another couple of days, so make sure to keep up with our coverage over at
Boing Boing Gadgets. It can only get even more random and profane as exhaustion sets in!
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:59 pm Tuesday, Dec 2
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, a graffiti artist left a
curious message for Brownlee on his front doorstep, and Joel did not pay six dollars to
dink around on an iPhone Stylophone.
Beschizza was outraged that
breaking a web site's terms of service has been made a crime. Elecom finally made a
waterproof SD card. Joel lusted after a
Poulsen kit that will turn any car into a hybrid. Meanwhile, Beschizza spent all morning as a paranoiac, obsessing over the spy messages in
number signals.
Circuit City's bankruptcy fire sale is
not extending to their fire extinguishers. Nokia finally unveiled their flip-up QWERTY touchscreen, the
N97.
Brownlee was surprised by how nice
gadgetry looks in the aesthetic of oriental pottery and
looked like an idiot wondering about when Apple was going to sell their premium in-ear headphones when they had just that moment gone on sale. The FCC leaked the
Sony's new netbook,
There was a
strange halved keyboard from Japan. Fujitsu offered a
free laptop replacement every three years to their customers. Some cool
junkbots were on display, and
Palm blames the economy for their plummeting revenue when the truth is more obvious.
Finally, the game of
Operation finally meets
lockpicking. And John slathers his face in moist gobs of
MomSpit.
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:59 pm Tuesday, Nov 18
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, we took Google's new
iPhone voice search app for a spin, and reflected on the nostalgic smell of old
NES cart sleeves, as well as the
analog fluttering of old clocks.
Brownlee wrote a post in
morse code about a morse code watch, and admired an ad-hoc
iPhone number pad for MacBooks. Meanwhile, Joel
flustered about Apple's crappy hardware DRM and made an
Arrested Development connection in regards to a busted philanderer's dirty iPhone pics, which he swears are a firmware "glitch."
Guest blogger Tony Hightower gave us the scoop on
organic motion: motion capture without the suit. A carbon-fiber acoustic guitar was attractively
lute-like. Covert gamers cram
old GameBoys into their graphing calculators. Joel deeply inhaled the
miasmic retch of a Stitch himidifier.
Also in the day, Joel invited readers to goatse
his new picture frame (email 2062270093 DERP tmomail.net if you'd like to get in on the fun). Brownlee wanted to play his complete Tiny Tim collection on a horrifyingly surreal
SpongeBob SquarePants dock. We took a
Tesla for a spin by proxy, and made a call on our
banana phones.
Otherwise, Beschizza ripped apart a
Boeing 788 in a stress test. and discovered a surprisingly cheap
MacBook Air prototype that may not be all it seems. And Dan Lyons, aka "The Real Steve Jobs", is now being
censored by Newsweek for doing exactly what he was hired for.
Oh, also. The Zune?
Prepare for its imminent release.
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:50 am Monday, Nov 17
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, we started the day with an arboricultural look at a genuine
power plant, then mocked CNet's
inability to indentify a blue screen of death. A
matrioshka-like nesting bowl captured Brownlee's fancy, then railed against
the aesthetics of bacon.
There were
iPhone cases that glittered like Christmas lights and a Lilluputioan
Mac Pro. Eyes rolled back, Joel
spent himself lusting after a 1970 Nissan 270X Concept Car.
We spotted a
watch made of old spaceship parts that had a dash of
Le Voyage Dans La Lune to it. Joel looked at a strange
wireless peripheral that tickles the O-ring during gaming or movie sessions and a
wind powered Times Square sign.
Neat:
pictures with their own moving shadows. Neater: an
African incerator that turns slum garbage into heat. Beschizza spotted a
watch that gloats at your gastropoidal lack of inertia, and a
stick-of-gum sized set of speakers that are dismal, but less dismal than most of their ilk. And he openly pined to
strap a boombox to his wrist.
Otherwise, Joel had
no idea that Jodorowsky, Giger and Floyd (Pink) conspired to make an adaptation of
Dune. Jury's still out on how this is about gadgets. An awesome
clavitar one-upped the ageless keytar, and Joel inadvertently revealed some bedroom awkwardness as he admired some
easy apply prophylactics.
Finally, there was a
giant rubber band perfect for Road Runner style pranking, an
electronic chewing sensor, a
sci-fi novel delivered by mobile phone and a
horribly racist Christmas ornament. It was a fun day.
Link
By John Brownlee at 1:57 pm Thursday, Nov 13
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, we inspected the geometric beauty of a
Linux boot sequence, prefered to pay $50 than
deal with an Apple genius and contemplated the creepy uses of a
realistic mask of our own face.
Brownlee liked a webcam very similar to a
War of the Worlds Tripod. He laughed at Valve Software's schemes to
arrest a hacker by offering him a job. He found a neat iPhone app to
measure his blood alcohol level, and he found a
141 MPG scooter that he can't ride at any time according to that same iPhone app.
Joel remains defiantly supportive of the
new Enterprise design and applauded the shutdown of a rogue ISP that reduced spam by
seventy five percent. Rob meanwhile sneered at a scamgadget that promises to
increase fuel efficiency up to 30 percent by plugging into your cigarette lighter. We made Beschizza a
Muppet in his own likeness and Joel contemplated on
how little geek grousing changes.
And then there were the reviews: with an arch of an eyebrow, Beschizza reviewed some high-tech
bubble wrap, while Joel reviewed a
toy helicopter and looked
more fabulous than he ever has.
Link
By John Brownlee at 2:23 pm Tuesday, Nov 11
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, we got an eerily prescient look at what
an Apple netbook might look like, and laughed along with the Onion at the
Windows 7 and Snow Leopard rivalry. A cell phone for the elderly was admired, and the delicious
design fubars of the IBM PCjr were applauded after twenty five years.
Target introduced some new gift cards with an
oddly humanizing digicam built-in. Joel admired a
beautifully simple African bottle opener and a
LEGO meets Mega-Man stop motion video; meanwhile, Beschizza liked a
cool transparent Goldbergian coin bank.
There was a
heart shaped box made of gears and a
genuine Pip Boy for the exploration of the nuclear wastes. Rob told us how to build a
wasp sucking machine and the curiously named Mgestyk lets you play videogames with your
thumb and forefinger.
Also:
disabled gamers can play PlayStation with their feet. Also also: the e-waste situation in China is
super disturbing.
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:50 am Friday, Nov 7
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, we looked at a nifty little
traffic loop sensor activator that lets bicyclists get their fair place on the road, and
rounded up the best speakers in every class.
An
anti-static keychain prevents you from turning into a human tesla coil, while a
Darth Vader toaster proves the divinity of Darth Vader.
You may think you can shop at Circuit City's liquidated stores for a good deal on HDTVs:
you can't. But you can soothe a tattered soul with a beautiful
ocarina solo on your iPhone.
We looked at
motorcycles made of watch parts and
what PhotoShop's interface would look like in the real world.
Ericsson has insanely lofty plans for mobile phones, an
electric bullet train will carry 100 million Californian passengers a year by 2030, a
buttonless Xbox 360 controller improves your FPS gaming, and
Windows 7 comes in 2009;
And Nintendo's new DSi handheld?
Comes with a virtual budgie.
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:41 am Friday, Oct 31
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, there was the usual spurting of Halloween themed posts:
a little boy dressed as
Wall-E's Eve, a
spinal cord beer funnel, some cute
Pac-Man pumpkins and the awesomest
little boy mech walker costume.
Otherwise, we started the day by watching two
robots box and
do their best Lou Bega impression. We looked at a
futuristic car straight out of an MGM cartoon, and as agony aunts
cackled over Apple's blunders.
There was a
baby carriage for larval Slim Pickens, and an examination of a modern-day
masturbation table for the treatment of "hysteria" / "stress."
In realer tech news, Brownlee despaired that the
new PSPs are hacker proof, while Rob looked at a
joystick for sweaty gamers. Rob spotted a
fax machine that can send and receive email, and a
keyring that infinitely simulates the fun of popping bubble wrap. There was an
expensive sudoku watch with only one puzzle, and Beschizza got all sweaty when looking at a
tiny wireless router that plugs into any antenna.
Otherwise,
Asus threw a customer in jail for threatening to report their shitty tech support to the press, and we stole a tank as
Barack Obama. And, as always, much more besides.
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:45 am Monday, Oct 27
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, things started as usual: with Napoleon popping
a wheelie on a motorcycle. Apple censored all mentions of
hot teen p***y on the iTunes UK store, a deliriously nerdy gamer
proposed to his girlfriend by hacking the video game
Chrono Trigger and
Dell announced a new netbook that is being favorably compared to the MacBook Air.
Rob looked at a
not-so-humble four track and a new
Casio camera phone with an 800x480 screen, as well as a
silvery steampunk Motorola Aura. Also, did you know that you can buy a stungun for $13?
Rob didn't.
A car engine that
fits on your finger, an
Australian perpetual motion machine. Joel liked an alarm clock called the
Bandai Gun O'Clock and puzzled why
Google released Google Earth on the iPhone before Android.
There was a clock with
a thousand gears, a giant
human skull made out of kitchenware, a bench
made of Nokias, an
Open Source GameBoy and an
Atari Punk Dreamcast. And that's not even to mention an invasion by
LEGO bots.
And the headline of the day was:
I have no mouth and I must bark.
Link
By John Brownlee at 4:57 am Friday, Oct 24
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Yesterday on
Boing Boing Gadget, it was review Thursday and we flushed our systems clear: Joel posted a thoughtful review of
the Android G1 and horrible hair review of an
iPod dock while Beschizza reviewed the
self-moving chess set he always wanted as a youth.
Otherwise, Brownlee's glasses are
disgusting, and Korens invent a system of
radioactive hamster droppings to help save firefighter lives. A bedside table that breaks apart into
bludgeoning weapons will make an excellent gift, although a
scanning dictionary the size of an adult forearm would probably not.
The new MacBooks can indeed use
both GPUs at once, and we looked at rumors that
a new Apple device is being spotted in the search engine wild. Beschizza, a shut-in, dreamed of an
electric sunset, while Brownlee's inner eight year old squealed for a DVD playing
Darth Vader head.
There were also
boxing robots, industrial
Margarita makers and Joel
imagining Opera on a Sybian.
And, as always, a stop-motion nightmare chicken laid an egg that
hatched into a car.
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:59 pm Wednesday, Oct 22
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Yesterday on
Boing Boing Gadgets, we applauded Microsoft's attempts at creating an
booze detecting bar countertop, and tested it with some rotgut served in Rob's tacky
Pac-Man shot glass set.
Our thirst for alcohol temporarily satisfied, we looked to slake our thirst for violence, and fell in love with a
Mac vs. PC video that was one part
West Side Story, one part
Reservoir Dogs.
A
walking house was discovered, although it was slightly disappointing and nowhere near as arachnid-like as we'd all hoped. Beschizza liked an
iPhone speaker system that looks like a
Star Wars trash droid and a
Bluetooth keyboard with "industrial anti-charm." Brownlee, meanwhile, liked an attractive watch with a
futuristic occulus and a pair of
color changing spectacles only David Pescovitz could ever get away with wearing.
There was a
stupendous set of home-made steampunk goggles and a
wonderfully morbid hangman lamp. Google added
WiFi geolocation to its services, and the Nintendo World Store has a
hard drive Wii.
And finally, at midnight, we turned out the lights and communed with the dead with an
automated Ouija board.
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:59 am Thursday, Oct 16
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, we looked at the T-Mobile Android G1's "not evil"
killswitch and a tiny little Korean monitor for
corralling your contact lists.
Joel Johnson — Obama supporter — said "so what?" to a
report that Verizon and AT&T provided temporary cellular towards to McCain's ranch, and Brownlee looked at a gorgeous refreshof a
1960's Italian stereo
Joel loved a 64K
intro by a Hungarian demoscene group, puttered a 3D printed car
around his desk while making puttering noises with his mouth, put a paper plate made out of
leaves through the dish washer and the old
Lemonaid Loaders his grandfather used to make.
Brownlee liked a
Space Invaders alarm clock, an
R2D2 backpack and a
suicidal light night.
The newest
3D webcams will stab porn into your eyes, Studio Ghibli is
doing a DS game, Joel needs advice on
building a gaming PC for $1k and Rob got some hands-on time with
Sony's hot new all-in-one desktop.
Oh, and according to Apple France, the new MacBooks are
perfect shit.
Link
By John Brownlee at 1:25 pm Tuesday, Oct 14
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, the timestream temporarily spat us all out of
Infomercia, and so we did as we usually do. We ridiculed the photoshop disasters of
Lexar and
puked in our mouths a little about e-mail notification lamps.
Beschizza considered
buying a rug covered in roadkill and lusted after Nokia's
WiMax tablet. We chuckled over cornflakes at
XKCD's oh-so-true take on piracy, and our mouths watered when we considered
a cotton candy machine that could make a spool of fluff out of any hard candy.
Engadget was declared the
blog partner of CES, prompting a WTF from Joel. Brownlee marveled at an HDTV
easel and channeled Robert E. Howard as he wrote about a
cell phone stand. A 1942 Philco Radio was converted into a swank
Mini Mac jukebox and a
dubious device claims to be able to carve your CDs into perfect circles for better music.
Oh, and yeah:
Apple announced some new MacBooks.
Link
By John Brownlee at 1:52 pm Thursday, Oct 9
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Today at
Boing Boing Gadgets, the morning started with the shrill tintinnabulation of a
green tea telephone, which we profusely stabbed with a handy philips head.
That accomplished, dived into the techno-flotsam: Beschizza claimed to have
a thousand uses for a pocket LED scroller, yet cited none. We looked at a
fake electro-cigar for cyborg cigar aficionados, and then dug into our breakfast with
LEGO fork and spork.
Realish news: the
360 may get Blu-Ray and the new
Nintendo DSi will get more RAM. Brownlee revealed his lack of foresight by oggling some
L-bent HDMI cables, and admired a
Portal-style oviposited recycling egg.
Tron?
It really happened!
Toy Story's creepy
baby doll robot spiders crawl all over you. A backseat car window becomes a
kick-ass SHMUP. And Disney's latest DVD release contains a
120 page EULA.
Joel looked at a
swank calculator made in a video game and reviewed the iPhone's surprisingly wonderful arcade RTS,
Galcon. We learned that there may well be an
$800 laptop announced by Apple at its
October 14th notebook event, and Rob crunched some numbers, proving its physical dimensions.
And finally, an egregious lapse in geek cred:
Joel "Rainbow" Johnson has never seen Aliens.
By John Brownlee at 4:58 am Friday, Oct 3
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Update: Game's Over! Look for a transcript tomorrow! But we're all still chatting, so why not come in and say hi anyway?
It's been quite a while since we held our last IRC event, but with the solstice drawing the summer days to a wane, it's time once again to dust off the
#boingboing IRC channel and spend a few hours in a rousing community game of an old favorite,
Rule 34 Showdown.
Rule 34, as all men know, is the cosmic rule that demands that porn can be found on the Internet to fit any concept. The rules are simple: numerous times over the course of one hour, I will shout out a random Rule 34 Challenge.
"RULE 34: Obama French Kissing Joe Biden!" I might cry. The denizens of #boingboing will go scrambling to find a link that illicitly matches the challenge. The first three people to come up with separate links and images for the same concept will be awarded first, second and third place points of decreasing denominations. At the end of the hour, the person with the most points will be declared the official RULE 34 PORNOGRAPHER OF #BOING BOING! At least for the week. And to make it all timeless fun, we'll knock up all the links we accrue in the official transcript of the event, with the best images highlighted for fun.
This week's game will be held tonight at 4PM EDT / 1PM PDT / 9PM GMT. To play, simply come to the official #boingboing IRC channel on Freenode about 15 minutes before the game and /msg Brownlee that you'd like to play. Don't want to play? Come on by and watch.
If you've never used IRC before, you can find instructions on how to
get to the channel here, or simply use the
Java chat applet.
To discuss or ask questions, head on to the discussion thread over at
Boing Boing Gadgets.
Discuss
Update: Sorry! Huge time mess up in the title. It's at 4PM EDT. See you then!
By John Brownlee at 4:23 am Wednesday, Oct 1
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Yesterday on
Boing Boing Gadgets, we discovered the best place to buy a 3G iPhone are in the electronics black markets of
Hong Kong and were surprised by a remarkably candid admission by an Apple engineer about
what went wrong with MobileMe.
Lustfully, Brownlee coveted a
bowling ball bag for DSLRs and a
candy-colored crapgadget of cuteness. Meanwhiizza admired a D12
media server, a Fujitsu
12-inch tablet and puzzled over how the
ancient Romans used a speculum to remove a wine cork.
There was (probably unwarranted) speculation that Apple's new
"Brick" product will be an Apple TV with built-in DVR. Pac-Man morphed into a line of designer
Italian furniture, and Goofy taught us all the proper way of
hooking up a home theater system.
Meanwhile, Joel looked at a Fujitsu flip phone that can
break-in half on purpose and a new environmentally-friendly
Ben and Jerry's freezer. He also coveted after some
junk cars turned into furniture and the
Open Pandora handheld gaming system.
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:59 pm Thursday, Sep 18
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, after we booted up with a
sunrise test, we asked ourselves: do women really
need a
wild cherry steam thing, as LG implies?
Brownlee wondered if
people were really canceling their landlines because of the economy, and admired a
DaVinci alarm clock and an
ice pack for hemophiliacs. There was also musing on the
base functions necessary for even the simplest cell phone. Conclusion: text messaging, at least, is a must.
Joel likes an
iPhone amplifier made without electronics and an
airplane made out of rubbish. Brownlee snickered at a
skull-painted netbook for "unique souls."
Finally, Joel's green streak goes one step too far: he's now
eating his food off of rotting leaves. Meanwhile, Brownlee spells
fancy words in paper clips.
Link
By John Brownlee at 12:43 pm Wednesday, Sep 17
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, we pulled our breakfast from a
refrigerator for flatshares: "a weeping, mold-ridden melon." We washed down its feculence with a cup of joe
served in a camera lens then gorged ourselves on
iPhone cupcakes. Excelsior! Off to the day's adventures.
Beschizza spotted a biomechanical, steampunk Bluetooth
headset and posted in flaccid British rage about
Canon trying to extend NDAs for camera announcements. Joel coined the word
Kraftfahrzeugelektrikermarschall in a post about a Chevy Volt hybrid with some surprisingly smart features, then spotted a swank
Nintendo DS remote for a Canon DSLR. Then he reported on a man
dumping his sex doll in a ditch after deciding to move in with one of his children. Very thoughtful of him.
There was a
talking LEGO Terminator, as usual, and a
$30,000 straight razor mystically forged by Merlin himself. Brownlee found a
MAME cabinet that can play practically every game ever made, and a gaggle of
Atari-cized video game covers, one of which features mocha-colored candy cane zombies. He also wondered if he was
metal enough to wear the new Metallica headphones: the readers answered for him, "Nay."
And LazerTag is now releasing the
coolest ray guns on Earth.
Link
By John Brownlee at 12:44 pm Tuesday, Sep 16
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, we started off with a
gory CRT headshot, then chased it down with a how-to:
using an extraterrestrial humidifier to prevent the sloughing of skin.
Apple continued to be
awesomely evil, patenting DRM for clothes. Mini-systems are just as gorgeously monstrous
as they ever were. The Bokia N810 makes a
dandy mixing console. And the iPhone does some
awesome Kraftwek covers.
Rob wondered why anyone would pay for a Moleskine when you can
make your own? Brownlee furrowed his brow over
World of Warcraft terror plot. Joel reviewed a DAP that lets you
record satellite radio anywhere. And Cray
leaps into the home desktop game.
We also looked at
10 greatest hacks of all time and the
tiniest quality digicam. Brownlee looked back at an encounter with a Quebecois pool shark and speculated that, armed with a laser pool cue,
the encounter might have gone very differently.
And there were, of course,
spaceships a-go-go.
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:01 pm Wednesday, Sep 3
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Today at
Boing Boing Gadgets, we bopped to the tunes of an album
written on the Nintendo DS ("Music to Make Love To Your Old Pleasure Model By...") and introduced BBG's newest mascot, Humbert Humbird, to his own
vacuuming robotic steed.
That accomplished, Beschizza wondered about whether
electric cars would be good in Zombie Apocalypses and fluttered his hands around his head, squeeing with excitement, over
Commodore's new PDA and Britain's Pay-As-You-Go
iPhone plan.
Rumors abounded: that Dell's gorgeous, whore red netbook,
the Mini-Inspiron, would launch tomorrow. That Apple would unveil
new iPods and MacBooks on September 9th.
Robotic jellyfish, they
floated around, swatting flies. Japanese
retro scooters were declared whateverpunk! An alarm clock that never stopped
glowing until themonuclear reactions occur.
And this
Space Invaders keyboard was pretty swank.
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:59 pm Monday, Aug 18
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, the day started as it always does:
deus ex machina. Then
Kafka hit the Apple Store.
Rob looked at
Frotz for the iPhone and a
wrist-wearable 1920s GPS unit. He also discovered a wonderful
MAME cabinet that looks like an old console pulled out of a
Buck Rogers episode. Swoon.
Brownlee found a
Terminator skull DVD player and a new Casio that perfectly captures the rust-aesthetic of
Star Wars. RFID allows an elderly Japanese wife to have an
unsettling discussion with her dead husband. The early BBS cowboys were re-examined through the antiquarian literature of
GIF News. Dell has some
great plans and pants to match for tackling the iTunes juggernaut. And we discovered some amazing tech to enhance videos with
high-res photographs.
Meanwhile, Joel — rushing off to Burning Man — considered some
luminescent clubbing attire, "useful tools to illuminate your drink, making it more difficult for slimebags to slip Rohypnol into your drink." He also looked at RCA's $2,000 television from way back in
1969. iPhone developers find the App Store
soul killing and booze now comes in
juice pack form.
Also perhaps of scientific note: Sony claims their VCRs will
cure cancer.
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:59 pm Wednesday, Aug 13
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, we looked at a company that sells Mac clones that just
doesn't know how to play dead and philosophized on the science of
zip ties. NVIDIA might have a
company sinking FUBAR on their hands, while Joel liked a Threadless shirt that installs
cyborg plugs and ports all over your spinal column.
Brownlee shed a tear for some poor schlub who is being forced to sell his collection of
every NES game ever made and wondered if you could build a Flux Capacitor from
LEGO-like circuit board components. Joel dug a
lamprey-like Logitech mouse and gave his thoughts on the
resurrection of the Polaroid instant camera.
At midday, an Apple R&D building
dramatically burst into flames, possibly due to smoking around the company's new
dancing oil structure. Motorola's releasing a new
RAZR, Dell's selling laptops with
19 hours of battery life and the Wii gets
DVD playback.
Finally, Brownlee's cell phone company calls him up to tell him that they sincerely hope he'll
someday find a lover. In the meantime, he's got Joel.
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:59 pm Monday, Aug 11
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Today at
Boing Boing Gadgets, Mario nee Jumpman jumped over barrels thrown by a LEGOfied
Donkey named Kong while the
smoon ombrella did gyre and gimble in the wabe. Then we looked at a
smokeless ashtray right out of
Gremlins before considering Intel's
devoutly Hassidic CPU naming conventions.
A striking ad for the
Palm Centro 2 was embraced then debunked. A vintage advertisement for the
Atari 2600 feverishly imagined mutant flies and ion zones. Joel equated Apple's
iPhone App Store to an Alan Moore dystopia, while Brownlee advised stealing a
vintage NASA Jet Propulsion Labs trailer.
There was a
box full of stuff that could probably be built into a bomb and a
dimpled, zen-like wash basin. A molten hemorrhoid of a program was
yanked from the iTunes App Store and D-Link released some
green friendly firmware for their routers.
Joel looked at the folly of
vibrating alarm clocks, some
electricity-conducing stretchy material perfect for the construction of robot tentacles and a
turtle that can pour a perfect Black and Tan. HTC's upcoming
Google Android phone was blurrily examined. And the Olympics 2008 Opening Fireworks?
Fake!
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:59 pm Thursday, Jul 24
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, we looked at a
Mondrian MP3 player and catalogued Congress' fight with
evil robots. There was a gorgeous
birdsong box automaton and an iPhone 3G that comes in Brownlee's favorite color,
whore red. And laboratories at night
sure are pretty.
We liked the
Periodic Coffee Table, although it couldn't help but get us wondering how much cooler an Periodic Coffee Table of Imaginary Elements would have been. That's a project for you boys and girls at home... don't forget the Cavorite. But we digress. The hirsute and porcine finally
lasered off his Zune tattoos. Brownlee really likes
Half-Elf Tentacle Assault, surprising no one.
Sprint is bizarrely
selling its towers, only to lease them back. A racing game is giving testers
epileptic seizures. Corn plastics do not make
good water bottles and Toshiba says "this is not the
UMPC you are looking for." And Neil Young doesn't understand anything about
digital audio.
From Joel,
an ode to bacon. From Rob, the skewering of a
PS3-loving bumpkin. From John,
Elder's Game meets
Lord of the Flies at
summer camp.
Finally:
half a terrabyte of foot fetish porn for your perusal. We were really on a roll today.
Link
By John Brownlee at 1:00 pm Monday, Jul 21
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Today on
Boing Boing Gadgets, Beschizza leaped out of bed at the crack of midnight, called to wakefulness by the eerie command of
Sir Clive's obelisk-imbued consciousness. That out of the way, Rob chugged down a pre-dawn
iPhone beer, then dived right into a fascinating study of
ergonomic pipettes.
Once the day proper had started, Brownlee looked at a Spectrum game recreated with a hamster and a Liliputian Lolita for your virtual molestation. The EFF busted another patent abuser and OS X media centers got sexier. We also figured out the perfect way to prevent house guests from having sex on your couch: buy a fold out sofa bunk bed instead.
Joel wrote some weird (but awesome) stream-of-conscious story about a hard drive degausser. He learned that Esquire would have an e-paper cover and ejaculated his central nervous system over a range hood, of all things.
We also looked at a pinwheel computer for the nuclear apocalypse and Apple co-founder, The Woz, and his early pirating of The Empire Strikes Back. Solar panels look like a decent investment and HP sucks at packing.
And cassette tapes? Hey, what do you know: they're still a multi-million dollar industry.
Link
By John Brownlee at 3:14 pm Wednesday, Jul 16
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Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, we looked at a wonderful steampunk (read: "stimpank!") mouse while a network admin held San Francisco hostage with his own Dr. Strangelove style Doomsday Device. Joel looked at some LEGO lunch utensils, while Beschizza griped about an alarm clock that expected him to pump iron at the crack of dawn.
Unusual burglar alarms with clockwork muskets were discovered, while Rob reviewed the latest convertible Fujitsu tablets and Joel fiddled with the dials of his wooden radios. AT&T blamed the iPhone 3G launch fiasco on iTunes gremlins, and we wrote some jammin' beats on our PSP.
Also, we were delighted to discover the return of analog gauges to our cameras. We puzzled over how the smell of bread was infused into our wristpads. We looked at an incredible bicycle with a hotly debated number of wheels. And we finally figured out how to make crime pay.
Oh, and lest we forget... We drink your milkshake! WE DRINK IT ALL UP!
Link
By John Brownlee at 11:51 am Thursday, Jul 10
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Today at Boing Boing Gadgets... well, look. We're not going to lie to you. If you hate Apple and its products, today at Boing Boing Gadgets was your own personal Goatse.cx.
I mean, not that we didn't try to space the iPhone 2.0 / App Store news out with some less Jobs-centric filling. There were pet-tormenting insect bots and 12 volt USB power adapters. We observed the 46th birthday of satellite television and looked at a solar power Nissan. We looked at a truly beautiful laptop box. We checked out the first ever Commodore 64 LAN party and his-and-her Wiimote dildos. We even looked at totally stupid weaponry, a naked gyrating Wii Fit beefcake and a vintage 1982 news report on "The Pac-Man".
But Apple, Apple, Apple. Man, did we talk about Apple. You never saw so much Apple! We examined how Apple keeps third-party accessories off market with special licensing fees. We looked at turning your iPhone or iPod Touch into a neat little iTunes remote. We found out how Apple salesmen are supposed to hypnotize you into buying an iPhone. We wondered to do with an old, button-cute indigo iMac G3. We read some ebooks on our iPhone. We wondered which was the better iPhone app: ToDo or To Do? And Joel even spent all afternoon playing with iPhone apps and calling it work.
And the iPhone 3G hasn't even been released yet. Yeesh!
Link
