Your garden may be seasonal, but part of it can live long and prosper with a set of Star Trek garden gnomes from the warped minds at Think Geek.
There are four, including a dead yeoman in a red shirt, lying on a slab that says, “Join Starfleet they said. It’d be fun they said.”
Imagine if Mr. Scott in the transporter room mixed up the energy patterns of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock with elves and you would have the Think Geek creations.
It’s springtime in Chicago, and one sure sign is the bizarre lines of helmeted tourists teetering on Segways on the biking paths along Lake Shore Drive. When I am stopped at a light and see a group of Segwayers crossing the road, I always think to myself “Those things never really caught on.”
A Dutch company has created a mode of transportation that borrows the technology of Segway and the cool of the skateboard culture.
The Oxboard houses gyroscopes that help a rider maintain equilibrium as they subtly shift their body to guide the two-wheel electric scooter. Gone are the handlebars and the cost. While a new second-generation Segway runs between $6,000 and $8,000, the Oxboard costs around 900 U.S. dollars.
We are in the middle of the cap-and-gown selfie season, when dorky high school and college graduates hold up the line to snap a quick picture with the person handing them the diploma. The relatively new custom drags out an already long and boring commencement ceremony. It’s harmless otherwise.
But a university in Malaysia didn’t see it that way when it suspended one snap-happy graduate for two years with one official saying, “Let them call me cruel, but I’d rather let a child die than lose our customs.”
According to a report in TODAY, an English-language newspaper in Singapore, Muhammed Hasrul Haris Mohd Radzi apologized and said he was just excited when he took the picture of himself with the school’s chancellor during a recent commencement ceremony at Universiti Teknologi Mara Lendu in Malacca.
A first-class flight in a Soyuz space capsule is rocky, reliable and rather snug. An astronaut sits in a semi-fetal position, works the controls with a stick and feels a pretty heavy G load, especially on reentry.
So imagine if a fire breaks out on the Soyuz spacecraft. There’s no extinguisher, no exit and no help to call.
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen narrated a video showing he and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov going through a simulated fire on a capsule to train for an upcoming flight to the International Space Station.
A Super Bowl ring is the most coveted of football’s rewards, a talisman with the sparkle to match the magic of a championship season.
An Indianapolis Colts fan wants to give the New England Patriots the ring he thinks they deserve. Sitting on top of his 3-D-printed blue ring is a ball-inflation needle, the kind the NFL now believes was used in the infamous Deflategate game where the Patriots “cheated” their way to the Super Bowl.
Some restaurants take pride in offering perfect food and wine pairings. Others think more in terms of food and phone pairings.
Yes, you can blame Instagram if your restaurant is a little brighter and the presentation of the food is a bit fussier. Restauranteurs are trying to cash in on our obsession with photographing our meals by giving Instagram users better lighting and compositional conditions to make more appetizing shots.
Everything about your vibe – the earbuds, furiously typing fingers and intense body language – says do not approach. But the steady stream of co-workers stopping by your desk can’t take a hint.
You could tell people “Can’t talk now!” but you’re afraid to come off as rude. Your politeness is killing your productivity.
A Utah startup called Wired In has come up with a simple, sleek desk accessory that does the talking for you. It’s a light-up sign that lets people know you’re in the zone without insult or anxiety.
Francesco Orru has a guitar that would make H.R. Giger proud and put Sigourney Weaver on edge.
The designer used a Delta Wasp 3-D printer to create a guitar with a body shaped like the killer creature from the 1979 sci-fi classic Alien.
Pieces of the guitar could be yours for around $150, but be prepared to also shop for volume and tone pots, a neck and Stratocaster neck plate, humbuckers, tuning pegs, a bridge and, of course, strings. Plans are also available for free download at MyMiniFactory.com to do your own 3-D printing.
Never mind that espionage is a dangerous line of work. The secret agent game promises plenty of intrigue and lots of fun spy gadgets.
If I knew exactly what today’s tools of the trade are, someone would probably have to kill me. Politics and enemies change but spies’ needs are essentially timeless: Disguises and false papers maintains a cover, tracking and listening devices record movements and conversations, and small, secret cameras copy documents and photograph dubious characters.
A hidden weapon can get a spy out of a jam. A concealed cyanide pill — so the intensely devoted might say — beats interrogation.
We love our spy stories. It is why the James Bond film franchise endures, James Patterson sells books and there are spy museums from Prague to Washington, D.C. (where there are two). Here’s a less-than-clandestine peek into the shadowy spy gadgets that filled the world of espionage over the years.
When the rocket you are about to ride has 3.9 million pounds of thrust under the seat, it’s comforting to have an exit strategy should something go wrong.
The private company SpaceX recently had a successful test of a launch abort system as it moves closer to having manned flights on its manifest.
Astronauts inside a Dragon spacecraft can be propelled a third of a mile away from the rocket in five seconds in the event of an emergency. SpaceX already has had seven successful unmanned cargo missions to the International Space Station and hopes to start carrying astronauts into space by 2017.
We all know how exciting a GoPro camera can make our lives look. Mount one to the end of a surfboard, on the handlebars of a mountain bike or to the helmet of a wingsuit diver and the viewer can get a similar stomach-churning thrill.
But what if extreme sports are not on the day’s agenda? Can GoPro make loading the dishwasher or drinking bottled water exciting?
The filmmakers for YouTube channel Burger Fiction set out to challenge our point of view by mounting a GoPro in 21 random places. And behold, there’s an extreme side to such random events as a woman reaching into her purse or a child reaching into a toy box.
We have a reinvigorated interest in the mysteries of space. Astronaut Scott Kelly is just beginning a record-breaking stint in zero gravity, a space probe is about to fly by Pluto and manned missions to an asteroid and Mars are in the pipeline.
There is also the ongoing science on how to go to the bathroom in space, where things tend to float.
Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti explained that mystery over the weekend, when she took time from her work on the International Space Station to give a video tour of the bathroom (see below) and delicately describe going Numbers 1 and 2 in zero gravity.
The concept artists who envisioned the future of the automobile created edgy, forward-thinking illustrations knowing their works might never be seen — and would likely get destroyed.
But some of the forward-looking art created during Detroit’s “Golden Age of Automotive Design” made it outside company walls, thanks to artists who lined overcoats with drawings or used boxes with false bottoms to smuggle out their work.
The car-centric art is the subject of a current exhibit at Lawrence Technological University in Detroit and is the subject of an upcoming documentary on PBS called American Dreaming.
Rick Smolan, creator of the Day in the Life series, has made a career out of turning complicated ideas into groundbreaking photography books. His latest book is more personal — and equally innovative. It’s a collection of photographs he made in 1977 that seemingly come to life with a smartphone app.
Inside Tracks combines Smolan’s photographs of a woman’s trek across the Australian Outback with a smartphone app that, when pointed at one of the pictures, brings the reader to a corresponding scene from a movie about the epic journey.
“It’s the best book I’ve ever done,” said Smolan, a New York Times best-selling author. “It has done amazingly well, especially for it being self-published. The smartphone feature has fascinated people. It’s an inspiring story with cool technology.”
All that remains of the original Thomas Edison invention is the socket fitting. That and it still only takes one person to screw in the light bulb.
The rest of the ilumi smart bulb, which is slowly lighting the way to smart home and office living around the world, would be unrecognizable to Edison or any of the other early inventors of incandescent bulbs.
It is too soon to know whether the names Corey Egan, Swapnil Bora and their company ilumi Solutions will assume a place on the list of lighting pioneers with their smartphone-controlled LED lights. But with a growing list of patents, financing from a certain well-known “Shark” and a steady stream of orders, the David-like startup is holding its own against bulb big shots like GE and Phillips.
Richard Ryan is friendly and easy-going — even when he’s behind a 50-caliber rifle, violently shredding an iPhone, iPad or, this week, the new Apple Watch.
Every neighborhood had that one kid who liked to build a model only to blow it up. Ryan, 33, is that kid, except with more firepower and a slow-motion camera. He delights in “blowouts,” meaning when a round completely shatters a device, and likes to admire the “peel back,” the path a bullet travels through a device’s metal casing.
“Very little, if any, practical knowledge comes out of this,” Ryan told Cult of Mac before shooting an episode where he tested the Apple Watch while skydiving in a wingsuit. “It goes back to that kid smashing that thing he just bought as soon as he gets outside the store. Yes, there is a cringeworthy feeling you get watching that device you and I both want get destroyed. But there is a visual payoff with the slow-mo. It’s entertainment.”
Mobile cinema today is a Netflix movie streamed on your smartphone. But movie history is full of fearless and devoted projectionists traveling to bring moving pictures to remote communities.
A piece of that history, an actual mobile cinema on wheels, is now for sale in Great Britain.
A fleet of seven government buses toured the country during the 1960s, bringing industrial films to companies to promote efficiency and modern production techniques. One survived the scrap heap, was restored and is now on eBay for about $184,000.
Chris Hawker does his best thinking when he sees someone doing something awkward. Watching people struggle with everyday tools guides the designer to invent things that solve everyday problems, from peeling a cucumber to powering our growing number of electronic devices.
So when Hawker found himself in an uncomfortable stretch between his couch and the nearest outlet, trying to charge his phone and talk on it at the same time, he wished for a plug-in near his leg.
Hawker came up with Couchlet, a thin, dual-USB port that tucks in between couch cushions or wedges beneath a mattress. On Indiegogo for just three days, the Couchlet attracted more than 1,600 funders and surpassed a $30,000 goal.
Instagram continues to play with the color wheel, introducing three new filters Monday the company says get inspiration from weekend outdoor adventures.
In addition to the filters, named Lark, Reyes and Juno, Instagram now allows users to include emoji on hashtags.
Since surpassing more than 300 million users in December, Instagram has added several new features to the photo-sharing app. It added five filters in December and last month, rolled out a new app called Layout, which allows users to combine multiple images in a single post.
The glass may be scratch-proof, but the Apple Watch is not durable enough to withstand a blender.
Tom Dickson wasted no time having the Apple Watch as a guest on his YouTube show, Will It Blend?Sure enough, it didn’t.
Dickson – maybe all too cheerfully – placed the watch in one of his Blendtec blenders and gave it a whirl. It seemed to take the beating from the initial revolutions of the blade before pieces began flying off the watch. The session ended with black smoke and a pile of what looked like ashes.
Jimmy Fallon is known for inventing silly games to play with his guests on “The Tonight Show.” It’s part of the hot host’s comedic repertoire that keeps his show atop of the late-night ratings.
Now Fallon is trying his hand at developing games for the iPhone.
Fallon formed Sparklehorse, a game production company that debuted Thursday on the iTunes store with the game Tedzy, a colorful teddy bear on a quest for feathers to stuff his pillow and get a good night’s sleep.
Greg Pabst and his neurologist were trying to get a handle on his adult onset epilepsy when the doctor’s mention of the newly announced Apple Watch gave Pabst an ah-hah moment.
The doctor was discussing tools for Pabst to chart his seizures and send alerts to emergency contacts.
“Then he said, ‘It’s only a matter of time before somebody does that for the Apple Watch,’ ” Pabst, 38, recalled. “Then I thought maybe it should be me.”
Pabst, of Orlando, Fla., and a developer friend quickly went to work creating SeizAlarm, which appeared in the iTunes store for the iPhone last week and is available for the watch, the pre-orders for which begin arriving Friday.
The Apple Watch and everything it will do is not a new idea. Watches for years have been able to store data, give us directions, offer a means to communicate at a distance and, yes, show us our heartbeat.
It’s just that you couldn’t get all of those functions wearing just one watch. For each function, there was a separate wrist gadget.
So on the eve of the Apple Watch launch, consider the technologically advanced timepieces that paved the way to this momentous day. You might be even more impressed with the power of your new device.
When you hold up your wrist to admire your new Apple Watch, the shiny new device might also catch the eye of an opportunistic thief.
Police and security experts are urging common sense and awareness of surroundings when interacting in public with the new smartwatch, which will begin arriving on doorsteps and adorning wrists Friday.
Chevrolet has a concept car that looks like something Bat Man would drive. Except he wouldn’t drive it the scene of the crime. The car would drive him.
The FNR concept is a self-driving car that may never see the light of day. But for that day to come, developers must dream, and Chevy has put forth a beautifully imagined vehicle that could nudge the future in a certain direction.
The nudging began this week at the Shangai Motor Show, where General Motors showed off its idea of an autonomous electric vehicle. The FNR likely drew more oohs and awes than the new Malibu that also debuted at the show.