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Army’s New 3D Trainer, Complete with Funny Helmet Attachment
The military pours plenty of money into training and simulations, but their video game-style trainers are often dull and static, and involve sitting or standing in front of a large, unmoving screen. So now the Army is trying out a more immersive approach with a new training helmet that allows trainees to move around in [...]
05.18.10 -
The Empire Strikes Back — in ’50s-Style 3-D
Star Wars gets warped back to the ’50s in this mashup trailer showing what The Empire Strikes Back might have looked like as a retro 3-D sci-fi flick. The faux trailer is the latest “premake” by YouTube user whoiseyevan, who has previously tackled Raiders of the Lost Ark and Ghost Busters, among other classics. “Ever since [...]
05.18.10 -
Tablet Rumors Multiply as iPad Sales Soar
It may have taken a long time for the competition to respond to Apple’s iPod and iPhone. Not so with the iPad: All sorts of companies — Google, Sony and Research in Motion, to name a few — are sitting up and taking notice of the iPad, thanks to Apple’s claim that it sold a [...]
05.18.10 -
30-Year Time-Lapse: Mount St. Helens Recovery From Space
runMobileCompatibilityScript('myExperience86348784001', 'anId');brightcove.createExperiences(); The eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980 has a special place in the evolution of our scientific understanding of volcanoes. Though it won’t go down in the record books as the biggest, longest or deadliest eruption, it is one of the best-studied eruptions in history and the only major volcanic [...]
05.18.10 -
Video: Ghostbusters Bust Ghosts at NYC Library
A team of Ghostbusters converge on a New York City library to capture sheet-wearing specters in the latest public prank pulled by Improv Everywhere. Watch the video above, and check out many more photos on the Improv Everywhere page that documents the Ghost Busters-inspired stunt. [via Mashable] Follow us on Twitter: @lewiswallace and @theunderwire. See Also: Improv Everywhere Talks R.E.M., [...]
05.18.10 -
Jokey Mirror App for iPhone Upsets Customers
Along with questionable App Store rejections, Apple occasionally makes peculiar approvals. Take for example the app Mirror, which is nothing short of a black screen with a frame. Flipping your iPhone screen off would make a better reflection for checking out your mug. It’s a joke, get it? Nonetheless, a large number of people fooled into [...]
05.18.10 -
Yahoo Buys Online Content Factory for $90 Million
Yahoo has joined the race to mass-produce content for the web with its purchase Thursday of Associated Content for a rumored $90 million. Associated Content, like Demand Media and AOL’s new Seed project, relies on thousands of freelancers to write and film how-tos, profiles and top-whatever lists for web publication — with help from search algorithms [...]
05.18.10 -
Facebook to Launch “Simplistic” Privacy Choices Soon
Reacting to the latest privacy backlash, Facebook will be rolling out new “simplistic” privacy options for its users in the coming weeks, according to Facebook head of public policy Tim Sparapani. “Now we’ve heard from our users that we have gotten a little bit complex,” Sparapani said in a radio interview Tuesday. “I think we are [...]
05.18.10 -
Classic Gamers Chase After Burner Championship
The planners of the Annual International Classic Video Game Tournament never reveal the classic arcade games that will be played before the day of the event. But this year they’ve got something special planned. In June, the American Classic Arcade Museum at the world famous Funspot in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire will host the first-ever World [...]
05.18.10 -
Anybots Robot Will Go to the Office for You
Robots have replaced humans on assembly lines, battlefields, space missions and rescue operations. Now how about doing something useful, like sitting through endless meetings for you? Meet the Anybots QB, a telepresence robot that can represent you in the office by sitting in conference rooms, going to meetings and rolling about through the cubicle farm. The [...]
05.18.10
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LifeLock CEO’s Identity Stolen 13 Times
Apparently, when you publish your Social Security number prominently on your website and billboards, people take it as an invitation to steal your identity. LifeLock CEO Todd Davis, whose number is displayed in the company’s ubiquitous advertisements, has by now learned that lesson. He’s been a victim of identity theft at least 13 times, according to [...]
05.18.10 -
Foucault’s Pendulum Dented in Museum Mishap
The cable holding a model of Foucault’s pendulum snapped last month at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris, sending the 60-pound ball crashing to the ground. It was permanently dented in the fall. Léon Foucault’s 1851 experiment remains a mesmerizing evidence that the Earth does, in fact, rotate. Scientists were aware of this, but [...]
05.18.10 -
Gamera DVD Puts Fresh Sheen on Classic Sci-Fi
By modern standards, Gamera might look cheesy, yet the giant turtle still packs a weirdly hypnotic punch. Fifty-five years after it first ravaged Tokyo, the fire-breathing amphibian gets a fresh chance to scare the hell out of civilians, thanks to a newly remastered DVD package. The unedited, special edition of Gamera, The Giant Monster, released Tuesday, [...]
05.18.10 -
Spotify Adds U.S.-Friendly Service Plans
Spotify, our favorite freemium music service you probably can’t use, announced two new payment plans for its service in addition to the free, ad-supported and premium versions it has offered in Europe for over a year now. The new plans bear some similarity to the rules by which U.S.-based music services play, and that could mean [...]
05.18.10 -
iPad-Controlled Blimp Schmoozes With Partygoers
As if anyone besides Apple needed to inflate the hype surrounding the iPad, a digital marketing team jiggered with the tablet to remotely control a homemade 52-inch blimp at an after-party. To construct the blimp, the BreakfastNY team followed instructions provided by Wired magazine’s Chris Anderson in his blog DIY Drones and added a camera that [...]
05.18.10 -
Copyright Lawsuits Plummet in Aftermath of RIAA Campaign
New federal copyright infringement lawsuits plummeted to a six-year low in 2009, the year after the Recording Industry Association of America abandoned its litigation campaign against file sharers, court records show. Copyright lawsuits numbered 2,192 in 2009, down almost a third from the previous year, and represented more than a 50 percent drop from 2005, when the recording industry’s legal machinery was [...]
05.18.10 -
Facebook Backlash Sparks Transparency Tools
The continuing backlash against Facebook’s growing power on the web and its ongoing push to make its users share more data has inspired hackers to develop transparency tools that demonstrate the site’s privacy threats. One shows you your own data leaks; another lets you peek at the forehead-slapping foibles of others. The Facebook privacy scanner available at [...]
05.18.10 -
Android 2.1 Operating System Gains Steam
Fragmentation caused by the different versions of the Android operating system — a cause of concern among developers — is on the decline. The Android OS is coalescing around three major flavors: Android 1.5, aka Cupcake; Android 1.6, or Donut; and Android 2.1, nicknamed Eclair. Among those, Android 2.1 has the maximum share. About 37.2 percent of [...]
05.18.10 -
Dementia Caregivers More Likely to Also Get the Disease
Elderly people who care for a spouse who has dementia are at increased risk of developing dementia themselves, a study finds. The stress of attending to a mentally incapacitated spouse may somehow contribute to the added risk, scientists report in the May Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Previous studies have shown that chronic stress leads [...]
05.18.10 -
Report: Final Fantasy Versus XIII Could Go to Xbox 360
Hold on tight for this one. Everybody’s favorite piece of vaporware might soon be scheduled to not get released anytime soon on two platforms. When the spinoff game Final Fantasy Versus XIII was announced over four years ago at E3, it was a PlayStation 3 exclusive like its big brother. Even Final Fantasy XIII’s shift to [...]
05.18.10
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Nintendo Magic Book Tells (Partial) History of Wii
Ever wonder just how Nintendo created the company culture that produced the Wii and DS? Well, tough cookies. As the author of a new book called Nintendo Magic states repeatedly, Nintendo doesn’t like to talk about its management philosophy. But Nikkei Business writer Osamu Inoue has enjoyed some enviable access — exclusive interviews with company president [...]
05.18.10 -
Visa Seeks to Extend Retail Dominance With Pay-With-iPhone Service
A battle is heating up over the right to process payments when you wave your cellphone over a sensor to buy goods at a local merchant. Visa made waves this week by announcing a collaboration with DeviceFidelity, which makes an iPhone case called In2Pay with a near-field communications microSD card embedded in it that will [...]
05.18.10 -
Missile Defenders Blast Critics After Interceptor Attack
The Missile Defense Agency, the Pentagon directorate charged with developing anti-missile technology, might want to consider a new line of defense: Intercepting articles by critic Theodore Postol before they land in reporters’ inboxes. Postol’s record as a missile-defense skeptic is well established: The MIT professor famously — and correctly — questioned the Army’s claims about the [...]
05.18.10 -
Pakistani Site: Drones Only Killed One Terrorist in 2010 (If You Don’t Count Taliban)
Read one American analysis, and you’ll be told that U.S. drones haven’t killed a single civilian in Pakistan this year. A look through one pair of local eyes yields a very different result, however. According to the website Pakistan Body Count, America’s drones have only hit a single terrorist in 2010, while slaying dozens and [...]
05.18.10 -
Ramenbox: A Box of Awesome at Your Doorstep
Remember back when you were a poor college student surviving on Ramen and Hamburger Helper? (Disclaimer: I actually ate quite well in the college dining hall, and though I did have a hot pot for ramen-making purposes, I quit using it after my roommate actually cooked something in the hot pot and ruined it.) Anyway, [...]
05.18.10 -
Facebook and Shutterfly Are Now in a Relationship
Privacy issues aside, Facebook is a popular way for many of my friends and family to share, comment, and now print photos. Yesterday Shutterfly and Facebook connected their intertubes and made it simple to print paper versions of your Facebook photo albums. Shutterfly’s “Simple Path” process can import a photo album (or selected photos) and auto-magically [...]
05.18.10 -
Scissors Redesigned: Less Bouncy, More Comfy
When Spencer Nugent cuts something with scissors, he likes to be in control. For him, a bouncing bottom blade is waste of time and just plain uncomfortable, while the double-handled design of conventional scissors twists your wrist to an awkward angle. Nugent decided to fix this, and came up with the Comfort Grip Scissors. These keep [...]
05.18.10 -
Ask GeekDad - May 18th, 2010
Last week we put out the call to our readers for questions from our readers. Questions about what? Well, anything, really. We had no idea what to expect, but the bottom line is that we’ve got some great questions that really run the gamut from serious to zany. Which is generally how we like things [...]
05.18.10 -
Pointless iPhone Stylus Gets its Own Case
I remain resolute in my continued ridicule of the Pogo Stylus for the iPhone. The entire point of the iPhone is that you don’t need to pull out a little metal pencil to tap the screen. You’re supposed to do it with your fingers. Still, if you insist on it, for instance if you have [...]
05.18.10 -
Tozzle Some Fun For Your Kids: GeekDad Video App Review
A new feature on GeekDad: video reviews of iPhone/iPad apps by the people who use them the most - our kids! runMobileCompatibilityScript('myExperience86111154001', 'anId'); brightcove.createExperiences();
05.18.10
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How to Transfer Your Stanza E-Book Library to iBooks for iPad
Stanza, our favorite iPhone e-reader application, has not yet been updated for the iPad. Maybe it’s coming soon and will be awesome, or maybe the current owner, Amazon, has killed it to reduce competition for its money-making Kindle app. Either way, unless you want to read your e-book collection on a blocky, pixel-doubled screen, you’ll have [...]
05.18.10 -
MacBook Updated with Faster Graphics, Ten-Hour Battery
As promised by yesterday’s leak from Vietnam, Apple has updated the plastic unibody MacBook. The new model, which appears on Apple’s traditional new hardware day - Tuesday - gets the NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor and the new aluminum MagSafe power-cord. It also gets another feature not revealed in the inexplicably leaked Vietnamese MacBook: a [...]
05.18.10 -
Potentially Catastrophic Science Is Ruinously Enjoyable
“Do you remember those Magic Eye images from a few years ago?” I’m sitting in a hotel lobby, chatting with author Sean Connolly, who’s currently on tour promoting his new book, The Book Of Potentially Catastrophic Science. He continues, “You’d stare at these stereograms and stare and stare and all of a sudden, you’d get it [...]
05.18.10 -
Quiz Play Day: Take a Quiz for Charity and Prizes!
This week, through Friday, four websites are hosting a game that will give you some fun, benefit charities and allow participants to win excellent prizes. But unlike many contests that benefit charities, you get to pick whichever charity you want. You can donate to ANY charity, as long as they are 501c3. Here’s how it works. [...]
05.18.10 -
Boeing’s Newest, Oldest Airliners Fly Together
Boeing’s chief test pilot Mike Carriker was able to take a brief break from the busy flight test duties earlier this month to fly formation with the oldest flying Boeing airplane. After photos were leaked on the internet last week, many were thinking it was a creative digital editing job, but the photo shoot has [...]
05.18.10 -
Kindle for Android ‘Coming Soon’
Kindle continues its mission to let you read your Amazon-bought e-books anywhere. Amazon has announced the forthcoming Kindle for Android, and it is almost exactly the same as other software-only implementations, like those on the iPhone or Blackberry. Almost. The big difference here is that you can buy books from within the application (this also works [...]
05.18.10 -
Microsoft Seeks to Put the Hot Back in Hotmail
Microsoft is unveiling a major upgrade to Hotmail this summer, in an attempt to become the top webmail provider in the United States by outdoing the innovations that Google’s Gmail brought to the online inbox. Now nearly 15 years old, Hotmail serves more users worldwide than any other online e-mail service, with 360 million users. Despite reports [...]
05.18.10 -
Judge Issues Legal Opinion in Brooklyn fMRI Case
The judge in a recent Brooklyn case in which brain scan evidence was offered has delivered an opinion on why he ultimately excluded the fMRI data. In Judge Robert H. Miller’s written opinion, obtained by Wired.com, he decided that under the Frye test, which is slightly different from the Daubert standard used in federal court, lie [...]
05.17.10 -
Fox Fries Up a New Dork Family Cartoon Bob’s Burgers
In the tradition of The Simpsons and Family Guy, Fox’s new animated series Bob’s Burgers wrests its laughs from a madcap brood of irredeemably misguided goofballs. The midseason replacement, unveiled Monday at the network’s upfront presentation in New York City, bears the wry, dry stylings of creator Loren Bouchard, who earlier produced Comedy Central’s egghead [...]
05.17.10 -
Eyewitness Account of ‘Watershed’ Brain Scan Legal Hearing
The very first federal admissibility hearing for fMRI lie-detection evidence wrapped up May 14 in a Tennessee court room. The decision, expected in a couple weeks, could have a significant influence on the direction that brain scan evidence takes in the courtroom. A special session was held to determine whether brain scans that were generated by [...]
05.17.10
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Intel and Vice Launch Creators Project: Selling Out or Boosting Creativity?
Processor giant Intel and Vice, the growing media empire behind Vice Magazine and VBS.tv, launched The Creators Project in New York on Monday to showcase creative talents discovered or championed by Vice . The core idea sprang from a dinner conversation between Vice’s Shane Smith and (excellent) film and video director Spike Jonze. Jonze asked Smith [...]
05.17.10 -
Summer Glau Sees Fresh Action in The Cape
Summer Glau, Joss Whedon’s go-to ass-kicker, is taking a fresh stab at small-screen heroics in NBC’s upcoming superhero caper The Cape. As seen in the teaser clip embedded above, the series centers on the adventures of a good cop (played by David Lyons) who dubs himself The Cape — taking the name from his son’s favorite [...]
05.17.10 -
Israeli Microbot Fires Pencil-Sized Rockets to Stop Bombs
This teeny little robot is the size of a toy truck — just 50 square inches. It’d be cute, almost, if it wasn’t armed with “dozens” of eight-inch rockets. The world’s militaries have been gun-shy about letting armed robots roam around the battlefield; they’re always a danger the machines will malfunction and ruin some pesky [...]
05.17.10 -
GeekDad Photo Contest: Generation Geek
Parents–especially geeky parents–love taking pictures of their kids. Gigabytes of pictures. Now we’d like you to share your memories with the community by uploading photos of your family participating in DIY projects, games, and other geeky activities. Submit a picture* of your family doing something together–preferably something geeky! Perhaps it can be building something together, or [...]
05.17.10 -
5 Lessons TV Should Learn After Losing Heroes
NBC finally canceled Heroes, a move early adopters of the ultimately underwhelming superhero show probably saw coming soon after Season 2. But all is not lost. Heroes‘ meteoric rise and ignominious fall leave behind much residual data for those looking to build faster, stronger, smarter and more resilient programming. Here are five ways upcoming NBC show [...]
05.17.10 -
Hybrid Power, CNG Shine at Nürburgring 24 Hour Race
After more than 22 hours of racing around the punishing Nürburgring circuit, Porsche nervously waited for the remaining two hours to tick by. After unveiling its new hybrid drive system back in February, the company’s new 911 GT3 R Hybrid was in the lead of the grueling Nürburgring 24 Hours. The company had only a [...]
05.17.10 -
Robo-Thriller The Gift Triggers Hollywood Frenzy
Robot thriller The Gift is that rare species of “branded” entertainment that hits an artistic home run not through corny product placement, but by making its sponsor look cool. Shot by TV commercial director Carl Erik Rinsch on the streets of Moscow, the futuristic short film follows a ‘bot on a mission that entails a [...]
05.17.10 -
Dealing With the Dreaded ‘Flash of Unstyled Text’
The use of custom fonts on the web is finally a viable option for designers. Browser support for CSS’s @font-face rule is pretty solid — even IE 5 can be wrangled into displaying custom fonts loaded from your server. Services like Typekit, which licenses fonts from well-known font foundries, and free services like Font Squirrel are [...]
05.17.10 -
Screens: Adjectives Make Super Scribblenauts Even Crazier
Super Scribblenauts is the official title of the sequel to last year’s most innovative Nintendo DS game, Warner Bros. said Monday. In Scribblenauts, players solved puzzles by writing words, which magically transformed into the very objects they described. If you needed to climb a tree, for example, you could write “ladder” (or “jetpack” or “wings” [...]
05.17.10 -
Review: Horror Game Alan Wake Can’t Keep It Creepy
The first thing you hear when beginning Alan Wake is the following line, spoken by the videogame’s eponymous protagonist: Stephen King once wrote that nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations. They’re antithetical to the poetry of fear. In a horror story, the victim keeps asking why. But there [...]
05.17.10
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Students, Parents Allowed to View Webcam Scandal Photos
Suburban Philadelphia parents and their high school-age children soon will learn the extent of a potentially criminal webcam scandal. A federal magistrate on Friday ordered the Lower Merion School District to start sending notification letters to any student covertly spied on through their school-issued Macbook, as well as to their parents. The order covers screenshots taken [...]
05.17.10 -
Gameloft Sidesteps Android Market for Mobile Assassin’s Creed, HAWX
Unlike iPhone users, owners of Android smart phones aren’t tied to a single app store. On Monday, mobile game publisher Gameloft made 10 of its Android games available directly through its website, bypassing the need to use Google’s Android Market. The games, which run on Android handsets like the Motorola Droid, HTC Desire and Nexus One, include [...]
05.17.10 -
Cannes Lukewarm on French Online-Gaming Thriller Black Heaven
The critics are mixed on a French thriller that puts characters in peril when they play a fictional online game called “Black Hole.” Director Gilles Marchand premiered his movie Black Heaven the weekend at the Cannes Film Festival to lukewarm reviews. Variety’s Jordan Mintzer said that with all the movie’s twists and turns, its “credibility is increasingly [...]
05.17.10 -
Ravens Console Each Other After Fights
After ravens see a friend get a beat down, they approach the victim and appear to console it, according to new research. Orlaith Fraser and her co-author Thomas Bugnyar watched the aftermath of 152 fights over a two year period between 13 hand-reared young adult ravens housed at the Konrad Lorenz Research Station in Austria. What [...]
05.17.10 -
Iran’s Nuke Fuel Deal: Breakthrough or Bogus?
The Iranian government just announced a deal to send its uranium abroad, in return for fuel for a research reactor. So does that mean the nuclear crisis is solved? Or is Tehran just playing for time while it gets closer to the Bomb? Iran is trumpeting the deal as a diplomatic victory: The United States and [...]
05.17.10 -
Cyberwar Cassandras Get $400 Million in Conflict Cash
Coincidences sure are funny things. Booz Allen Hamilton — the defense contractor that’s become synonymous with the idea that the U.S. is getting its ass kicked in an ongoing cyberwar — has racked up more than $400 million worth of deals in the past six weeks to help the Defense Department fight that digital conflict. [...]
05.17.10 -
5-Year-Old YouTube Tops Networks’ Primetime With 2 Billion Views
America’s Funniest Home Videos may have pioneered the YouTube concept, but as the site reaches the five-year mark, its audience size is no laughing matter. YouTube’s viewership now exceeds that of all three networks combined during their “primetime” evening time slot, with more than 2 billion views per day, Google announced Sunday. Granted, YouTube’s numbers [...]
05.17.10 -
Smart Makes Art With Its Own Oil
It’s no secret that the Smart brand positions itself as a patron of the arts, sponsoring more works than the House of Medici. The latest “Smart art” is both high-concept and high tech, using a robot to translate the sound waves from an accelerating fortwo into visual art. To contrast the differences between internal combustion engines [...]
05.17.10 -
Rowboat Giveaway Winners
Congrats to the three winners of our Rowboat giveaway, selected at random from the comments and tweets: Commenters Isthomps and BukaHobbit, and Twitterer GeekInsight! Thanks again to Moosetache Games for providing copies of the game and to everyone who entered. And if you haven’t already, make sure to check out my review of Rowboat and Myth: [...]
05.17.10 -
GeekDad at INplay 2010
INplay 2010 is a two day conference starting tomorrow in Toronto, Ontario that’s focused on the art and business of kids interactivity. Among the keynotes and speakers are the Executive Produce and Co-Creator of Yo Gabba Gabba! and representatives from a range of companies and organizations that are well known in the industry, including Sesame [...]
05.17.10
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Dork Tower Monday
Read all the Dork Towers that have run on GeekDad. Find the Dork Tower webcomic archives, DT printed collections, more cool comics, awesome games and a whole lot more at the Dork Tower Website.
05.17.10 -
If Yamaha Went Electric, It Would Look Like This
SONOMA COUNTY, California — If you want to build a competitive electric motorcycle, start with a competitive gas-powered motorcycle. That’s what the crew at Electric Race Bikes did when it set out to build the EGP, its entry in the TTXGP electric grand prix. They wanted something light, something nimble and something proven, so they started [...]
05.17.10 -
Five for Fighting 5/17/10
* Iran cuts a nuke deal with Turkey. U.S. evaluating. * Taliban return to Marja. * “30,000 Air Force troops have been shifted to the front lines of cyber warfare.” * Building the danged virtual fence. * Inside “Subtropolis.”
05.17.10 -
Join the Revolution And Bike to Work
Now that we’re deep into spring and the weather has changed, hopping on your bicycle probably is looking more and more tempting — just in time for national Bike Month. Bike Month is, as the name implies, recognized throughout May. But it kicks into gear today with the start of Bike to Work Week and hits [...]
05.17.10 -
TTXGP Electric Motorcycle Race Becomes a Dogfight
SONOMA COUNTY, California — Seasoned pro Shawn Higbee won North America’s first-ever electric motorcycle grand prix today in a race that was tighter than the finish would suggest. Ten riders competed in the 25-mile race around Infineon Raceway, but all the action was at the front of the pack. The 11-lap race was a dogfight most [...]
05.16.10 -
Does A New UK Government Mean Death for the Digital Economy Act?
A frisson of anticipation ripples through Twitter. Now that the Lib Dems are in power, will Nick Clegg repeal the Digital Economy Act? The Act threatens anyone who illegally downloads copyrighted content with being denied access to the web. In addition, blocking injunctions could close down sites that distribute copyrighted content illegally. There [...]
05.16.10 -
Seasoned Pro Takes Pole At Electric Motorcycle Race
SONOMA COUNTY, California — Shawn Higbee handily led a field of 10 riders to take pole position in North America’s first electric motorcycle grand prix. Higbee, a seasoned racer, lapped the 2.28-mile course here at Infineon Raceway in 1 minute 56.86 seconds to take pole in the TTXGP electric motorcycle race on Sunday. He rode his [...]
05.15.10 -
New ‘OpenID Connect’ Proposal Could Solve Many of the Social Web’s Woes
David Recordon, one of the key architects of OpenID and other identity technologies that have emerged over the past five years, has envisioned a new direction for OpenID. His proposal, which was drafted with input from several people in the OpenID community, is called OpenID Connect. At the highest level, it essentially rebuilds OpenID on top [...]
05.15.10 -
This Should Be Zero Motorcycle’s Next Electric Bike
SONOMA COUNTY, California — We have one thing to say to Zero Motorcycles about this bike: Build it. Zero Motorcycles rolled into the TTXGP electric motorcycle grand prix here at Infineon Raceway with a pair of bikes built specifically for the race. The big dog is a converted Suzuki GSX-R600 running a pair of Agni 95 [...]
05.15.10 -
Electra Racing Goes Old-School With an Electric Norton
SONOMA COUNTY, California — Team Electra’s entry in the TTXGP electric motorcycle race looks like something from the 1960s. That’s because it is. Team Electra is among the 12 teams here at Infineon Raceway to kick off the TTXGP North American electric motorcycle race series this weekend, and it is the only one coming out of the [...]
05.15.10
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Q&A: Trek Nation Director Scott Colthorp on Star Trek, Optimism and Dissed Fans
Documentary Trek Nation, Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry and Scott Colthorp’s philosophical peek into the sci-fi franchise’s enduring cultural appeal, has yet to touch down in theaters. But from its desire to be the anti-Trekkies to its all-star interviewees like George Lucas, J.J. Abrams and Patrick Stewart, the movie is approaching warp factor geek. In an e-mail interview [...]
05.15.10 -
Photos: Lost Props Set for Summer Sale
As Lost heads toward its finale, cast-offs from the prop department are bobbing to the surface with news that keepsakes from the ABC series will be auctioned to fans hankering to hold on to a little piece of the show. Memorabilia to be auctioned by Profiles in History this summer includes a fake passport used [...]
05.14.10 -
Filming Transformers 3 Being Filmed Violates Copyright, Studio Claims
On Monday business strategist Ben Brown was in a meeting in a downtown Los Angeles office building when he heard a commotion outside the window. When he looked down, he saw the alleyway had been closed off to shoot an exterior scene for a movie — a common enough sight in L.A. But this movie was [...]
05.14.10 -
Hauppauge Soars On TV Streaming App For iPad, iPhone
BANGALORE (Reuters) - Shares of Hauppauge Digital soared as much as 60 percent Friday, a day after the company said its products can now stream live TV over the internet for Apple’s iPad, iPhone and iPod. Shares of the company were trading up 31 percent at $3.96 in heavy volumes on Nasdaq. [...]
05.14.10 -
Google Street View Cams Collected Private Content From WiFi Networks
Google’s roaming Street View cameras have been doing more than snap pics of your neighborhood; they’ve also been collecting packets of information sent over private WiFi networks, the company acknowledged Friday. The company said the collection was “a mistake,” the result of a programming error, and that it has now stopped collecting the data, according [...]
05.14.10 -
Google to Offer Encrypted Search Next Week
Google will begin letting users run encrypted searches on its flagship search site Google.com starting next week, the company said in a blog post Thursday. Allowing users to search using https - the web security system which many associate with online banking and shopping — would mark a first for a major search engine, and could [...]
05.14.10 -
Internet Poker Players Bring Speed, Aggression to Table
By Harmon Leon, guest blogger A new breed of internet poker players who have honed their gambling chops online are facing off against old-school competitors, bringing speed and aggression to the world’s biggest tournaments. In the movie version of one of these showdowns, Edward Norton could play the role of Daniel Negreanu, a 35-year-old player who sought [...]
05.14.10 -
50 Years of Real-Life Ray Guns
<< previous image | next image >> Fifty years ago this Sunday, Theodore Maiman and his fellow scientists at Hughes Research Laboratory shined a high-power flash lamp on a ruby rod, triggering a beam of coherent light: the first laser. It wasn’t long before the Pentagon started dreaming up military applications, and futurists were predicting that [...]
05.14.10 -
Video: Aperture Science Recruits New Portal Subjects
If you haven’t already grabbed your free copy of Portal, there’s a rogue artificial intelligence that would like to have a word with you. On Thursday, Valve released a promotional video narrated by GLaDOS that urges gamers to download a free copy of Portal for either Mac or PC and become a willing test subject in [...]
05.14.10 -
Jury Reaches Decision in Brain-Scan Test Case
After a judge excluded brain scan evidence offered by the plaintiff, a jury quickly found for the defense in a Brooklyn sexual harassment case this week. The case, which drew national attention following a Wired.com article earlier this month, was one of the first times that fMRI brain scanning had been offered as evidence in [...]
05.14.10
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Photo: Hog’s Head Takes Bite Out of Harry Potter’s Wizarding World
Ramping up for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter’s June 18 grand opening, Universal Orlando Resort unveils a picture of the porker to be mounted on the wall of the theme park’s new Hog’s Head pub. Florida’s faux Hogwarts castle should attract loyalists in need of a fantasy fix before Nov. 19, when Harry Potter [...]
05.14.10 -
Name Your Price for Sleep Is Death
If you’ve got a spare two bucks knocking around in your account, you have more than enough cash to try out Jason Rohrer’s newest game. On Friday, Rohrer began offering his experimental storytelling game Sleep is Death via the same pay-what-you-want pricing model as the Humble Indie Bundle. Sleep is Death is a storytelling game for [...]
05.14.10 -
Roommate’s Tip Led Cops to iPhone Finder
REDWOOD CITY, California — Police closed in on the man who found and sold a prototype 4G iPhone after his roommate called an Apple security official and turned him in, according to a newly unsealed document in the ongoing police investigation. The tip sent police racing to the home of 21-year-old Brian Hogan, and began a [...]
05.14.10 -
First Look: Matt Kindt’s Time-Warped Revolver
Careening between alternate realities every time the clock strikes 11:11, Matt Kindt’s graphic novel Revolver is a subtle exploration of boredom and apocalypse, consumption and survival. Due in July from DC Comics’ mature imprint Vertigo, Revolver’s rough but sharp pages, previewed in the exclusive panels above and below, illustrate a world torn apart by war, [...]
05.14.10 -
Google I/O Will Be Chrome’s Time to Shine
In the year and a half since it first emerged, Google’s Chrome browser has matured from a thinner-than-air experiment that only ran on Windows into a stable, full-featured browser that works on all major operating systems and is available in 50 languages. No longer just the new kid on the block, Chrome is now poised to [...]
05.14.10 -
Review: Skate 3 Shreds With Slick Online Features
By the time Tony Hawk released his third skateboarding game in 2001, we’d ollied into volcanoes, jammed with aliens in Roswell and donned Spider-Man’s costume to bust a Spidey Flip in a Mexican bullring. Electronic Arts’ Skate 3, released this week for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (reviewed), doesn’t take gamers anywhere as exotic or over-the-top. [...]
05.14.10 -
Judge Orders Gizmodo Search Papers Unsealed
Update: Roommate’s Tip Led Cops to iPhone Finder A California judge Friday ordered the unsealing of the search warrant affidavit that led to a police raid on the home of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen, who paid $5,000 for a prototype 4G iPhone. Wired.com, the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Time and other news outlets had sought the [...]
05.14.10 -
Handy Guide to Detecting Support for HTML5
Web developers wanting to use the new features in HTML5 or CSS3 are still struggling with incomplete and inconsistent browser support. While HTML5 isn’t perfect (or complete), that doesn’t mean you can’t start using it; it just means using it is a little more complicated since you need to detect the current browser’s level of [...]
05.14.10 -
Truckloads of Freaks, Strippers, Art and Noodles Drive NYC’s Lost Horizon Night Market
By Dan Glass, guest blogger NEW YORK — If you were a cop and came across 30 unmarked box trucks gathered in a remote industrial corner of Brooklyn, who would you interrogate first — the folks bent over bowls in a mini ramen noodle house, the mourners in the funeral truck or the screaming masses taking [...]
05.14.10 -
Report: Secret Space Plane Likely an Orbiting Spy
When the U.S. Air Force launched its secret space plane last month, speculation about the X-37B’s true purpose ran wild. Some conjectured that it might be a prototype for an orbiting bomber. Others warned of “a johnny-on-the-spot weapons platform to take out the satellite assets of an enemy.” Prominent members of the Russian military establishment [...]
05.14.10
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Early Birds’ Wings Probably Didn’t Flap
The wings were willing, but the feathers were weak. Delicate, thin-shafted plumage would have made flapping difficult if not impossible for two prehistoric birds, a new analysis of fossil feathers suggests. Their feathers probably would have buckled or snapped during strong flapping or sharp maneuvers, so the primitive birds may have been limited to gliding, [...]
05.14.10 -
Military to Deploy Social Scientists to Africa, Searching for Signs of War
In Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has embraced social science as a tool of counterinsurgency, embedding anthropologists and sociologists within brigades as part of an effort to understand local cultural and tribal dynamics. It’s a controversial approach, but in theory, it’s supposed to make military operations less lethal by helping commanders identify who their [...]
05.14.10 -
Study Suggests Uphill Fight for Nissan, GM in EV Market
At this point, General Motors and Nissan will be the first major automakers to offer mainstream electric vehicles, but a study by Deloitte Consulting suggests they’ll face an uphill battle in the marketplace. A study by the consulting firm found high cost and limited performance — i.e. range — will keep the number of electric vehicles [...]
05.14.10 -
Alt Text: How Neanderthal Are You? Take This Quiz to Find Out
Two interesting bits of genetics news sauntered down the interpike this week. The first: A study out of the University of California at Santa Cruz concludes that, much like Elvis, everyone has a little bit of Neanderthal in them. The second: Walgreens will soon be selling genetic-testing kits in pharmacies across the United States — [...]
05.13.10 -
Effects-Heavy Shorts Show Off Directors’ Chops
<< previous image | next image >> Spy Films is a Canadian production house known for delivering eye-popping imagery. “We represent directors who have a strong eye for storytelling and a wizardlike approach to their work,” says Spy Films’ Marcus Trulli in an e-mail to Wired.com. After being blown away by Nuit Blanche, a visually impressive short [...]
05.13.10 -
Canadian Faces Prison for U.S. Internet Gambling Role
A Canadian man has pleaded guilty to charges of assisting overseas online gambling sites to process hundreds of millions of dollars in wagers. The conviction of Douglas Rennick, 35, comes as some U.S. lawmakers are looking to tax online gambling revenue rather than criminalizing such wagering. Federal law prohibits financial institutions and individuals from knowingly assisting [...]
05.13.10 -
Machine Orchestra Features Hacked Guitar, Trampoline-Triggered Music Cues
Sensor-embedded trampolines, accelerometer-hacked guitars and robotic glockenspiels take center stage Thursday when the KarmetiK Machine Orchestra goes live in a Southern California concert. Brainchild of CalArts robotic engineer/sitar player Ajay Kapur and tech sculptor Michael Darling, the ensemble meshes 20 human musicians with eight whirring, clanking, glowing pieces of robotic machinery. digg_url ="http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/05/robot-orchestra/";“I’m sick of going [...]
05.13.10 -
Video: Strapping In With the Crew of the Shuttle for Launch Training
The STS-132 crew will buckle into the space shuttle Atlantis tomorrow before launching into orbit for a 12-day mission to the International Space Station. It is the last scheduled flight of Atlantis, and the last scheduled flight for each of the six astronauts aboard. Earlier this month, I was at the Johnson Space Center after STS-132 [...]
05.13.10 -
Stem Cell Solution for Hearing Loss Makes Progress
If a few too many AC/DC concerts have you now turning up the volume on hearing aids instead of headphones, a new stem cell study in mice is reason for hope. A team led by Stefan Heller of Stanford University set out to elucidate basic principles of how the inner ear detects sound. But they also [...]
05.13.10 -
First Look: Firefox 4 Preview Delivers Speed, Revamped Interface
A new version of Firefox is due before the end of 2010, and while the finished product is still a long way off, beta code is expected to ship as early as late June. Mozilla’s product director Mike Beltzner recently posted his team’s vision of what Firefox 4 will look like, highlighting new features and [...]
05.13.10
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5 Lessons TV Should Learn After Losing Heroes
05.17.10 -
Video: Neo Keyboard Hooked up to iPad
05.17.10 -
Polaroid Archives Provide Snapshot of History
05.17.10 -
Microsoft Seeks to Put the Hot Back in Hotmail
05.18.10 -
5-Year-Old YouTube Tops Networks’ Primetime With 2 Billion Views
05.17.10 -
Ravens Console Each Other After Fights
05.17.10 -
Eyewitness Account of ‘Watershed’ Brain Scan Legal Hearing
05.17.10 -
Students, Parents Allowed to View Webcam Scandal Photos
05.17.10 -
LifeLock CEO’s Identity Stolen 13 Times
05.18.10 -
Android Comes of Age at Google Developer Conference
05.17.10 -
Visa Seeks to Extend Retail Dominance With Pay-With-iPhone Service
05.18.10 -
Is the iPad Driving E-Book Piracy, and Does It Matter?
05.17.10 -
Facebook to Launch “Simplistic” Privacy Choices Soon
05.18.10 -
Intel and Vice Launch Creators Project: Selling Out or Boosting Creativity?
05.17.10 -
How to Transfer Your Stanza E-Book Library to iBooks for iPad
05.18.10 -
Facebook Backlash Sparks Transparency Tools
05.18.10 -
Review: Horror Game Alan Wake Can’t Keep It Creepy
05.17.10 -
Israeli Microbot Fires Pencil-Sized Rockets to Stop Bombs
05.17.10 -
Cyberwar Cassandras Get $400 Million in Conflict Cash
05.17.10 -
20 Years Later, Remembering Jim Henson
05.16.10
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