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
"How can you be serious?" Not by wearing this T-shirt! The classic Mark Pawson T-shirt, updated for 2012.