Monday, June 23, 2008
Entertainment
Girl Talk Meets the Macbook Air Commercial, Lends it Some Street Cred
11:55PM Adam Frucci | Girl Talk, the manic mashup artist who combines hundreds and hundreds of samples to create his frenetic, ADD music, just released his new album, Feed the Animals last week (as a pay-what-you-want download, incidentally). It includes a song with “New Soul” by Yael Naim sampled, the song from the Macbook Air ad. Of course, now that song has been mashed up with the original ad. It’s pretty sweet. [Andrew Pile] More »
Games
WiiBrator Gives Wiimote ‘Personal Massager’ Makeover
10:42PM Mark Wilson | New to the Wii homebrew scene, the “WiiBrator” app is “creating a buzz.” The work of Team DWiildo, it’s a way to convert the jack-of-all-trades Wiimote into a “relaxation” device. Here’s the more detailed description, along with an important warning: More »
Design
SPult Universal Remote is Sleekly Simple by Ditching Most Buttons
10:19PM Gizmodo US Edition | Designer Yurii Smitana Perfilov clearly took a look at the chaotic button-fest that is the usual universal remote and thought “uuuugleee.” So the first thing you notice about the sPult remote is its gorgeousness, like a retro-futuristic digital dagger. The second thing is the lack of buttons: that scroll wheel does volume or channels, selected at a push, and there’s a favourites selector, mute and power function plus a simple display. I thought the back-lit Moto RAZR-like universal remote I just bought was attractive, but if sPult were more than a concept, I’d ditch that silver laser-keypad nastiness in a heartbeat. [Yanko design] More »
Computers
1 Billion Computers Now In Use, Not Necessarily Useful
10:05PM Gizmodo US Edition | According to Gartner there are now more than 1 billion computers in use on this little planet Earth. And not happy with that piece of trivia, they asked their Magic Eight Ball if the number was going to double in early 2014. The answer: “Probably.” What I would like to know is: how many of that billion are Commodore 64s? Unfortunately, the rest of Gartner factoids didn’t offer the answer, but they were almost as interesting. More »
Gadgets
LiveLuggage Power-Assisted Suitcase Lightens the Load for Travellers
10:00PM Gizmodo US Edition | The motors inside LiveLuggage’s ingenious power-assisted suitcase can turn a 30kg load into something one-tenth of the size. With an anti-gravity handle and force sensors in the wheels, LiveLuggage is hack- and thief-proof and, once charged, the battery will run for a couple of hours. Costing US$1,300, I’m tempted to try one of these just to see what the Homeland Security bods might do when faced with a plastic suitcase boasting built-in electronics. [LiveLuggage via Born Rich] More »
Peripherals
Brando’s Portable Disco Lights Do it Psychedelically with Lasers
9:41PM Gizmodo US Edition | Laser beams plus funky light patterns plus party: sounds like a winning combo. It certainly looks that way for this Brando gadget: the green laser light spewing from it can be tweaked into a number of impressive patterns (diffraction grating, anyone?) And though it doesn’t look like it reacts to music, the shifting, changing light-show it makes can only be described as psychedelic, with a dab of Matrix. It’s mains-powered, just 7.8 x 7.1 x 3 cms in size and comes with a stand that looks ripe to be modded into a motor-powered platform. Costs US$65. [Brando] galleryPost('brandolaserdisco', 3, ''); More »
Entertainment
Wall-e Is Huge Glorious Robot Clusterfrak
9:26PM Gizmodo US Edition | Explorer robots, pilot robots, cleaning robots, broken robots. Robots robots robots. Robots everywhere. After drooling over this featurette on Pixar’s Wall-e robot cast–with the creative team getting all Jon Iveish with us, explaining how their design follows function–we can only say two things: first, consider us officially excited. And two, we are happy George Lucas is not involved with this movie at all. More »
Design
Illuminating Table Opens Portal to New Dimension, Doesn’t Require LSD
9:21PM Gizmodo US Edition | Probably designed by Reed Richards as an alternative way to get into the Negative Zone, Cinimod Studio’s Illuminating Table is designed to a) create a “virtually boundless sense of space” thanks to a three-dimensional matrix of globular lights and different glass layers; b) transport you to a new state of consciousness without the help of chemical substances like kerosene, jet engine cleaning fluid, and aspartame; c) hypnotise your date to make her/him think they want some business time; d) all of the above. The fully animated light matrix can interact with the environment or display a shifting pattern automatically. More »
Peripherals
AD88 From Alfred Dunhill a Pointless Waste of Piano-Black Finish
9:20PM Gizmodo US Edition | Whenever I see some high-end retailer flogging non-core business objects, I wrinkle up my nose in disgust. Chanel, of the non-Cylon No. 5, has been the most visible company to do this with its bikes, skis, and now fishing gear, and this is British gentleman’s outfitters, Dunhill’s, take on it. The AD88. Not only does it take my initials in vain, but it is almost US$4,000-worth of iPod dock, digital radio and CD/DVD player that, at almost US$4,000 (I guess you tip the doorman the remaining US$5 when you walk out of the shop with it) makes fools of us all. More »
Peripherals
