Thursday, July 24, 2008
Entertainment
Wargames Celebrates 25th Anniversary, Wired Interviews Everyone and their Mother About It
11:46PM Mark Wilson | Unlike more modern films about hacking like The Net and Hackers, Wargames has been lovingly embraced by the geek audience. And even 25 years after its release, it holds up as a thought-provoking film about a changing technological future–a future where the fate of the world really can be in one man’s hands, or just as easily, the neutral clutches of an obedient piece of computer software. More »
Toys
Star Wars Bounty Hunters and Yoda Have Us All Steamed
11:30PM Jesus Diaz | Here in Gizmodo we have this love-hate relationship with steampunk–which borders in the hate-hate most of the time. But when it comes to Star Wars redesigns, I can’t help it, I’m fascinated by them, specially the new bounty hunters from Empire Strikes Back, including an omfg-I-want-it version of Boba Fett. Yoda and the rest of the characters, like the Snow Trooper, are equally as good. More »
Science
Photos of Labs at Night Show a Spooky, Soulful Side to Science
11:15PM Kit Eaton | Science lab night-time routine goes like this: the experiment concludes, equipment winds slowly down. You rub bleary eyes, stretch your stiff neck, hit “save” on the data for analysis tomorrow. Then you deal with the forest of coffee mugs, flick the light switch and bumble out of the door. But the lab’s still there: racks of equipment that can’t be turned off humming, shining in the glow of its own LEDs… The technical bounds that give us our gadgets happen in these places of science, thought and, as it turns out, a kind of weird beauty when everyone’s gone for the night. And that’s the subject of this amazing photo set over at Seed Magazine. Check out the link for the full set: it’ll get you thinking, or possibly reminiscing (it certainly did for me.) [Seed Magazine via Wired] Photos: Noah Kalina. galleryPost('sciencelabs', 3, ''); More »
Gadgets
Sony Opens Up More E-Book Formats For Reader
11:08PM John Mahoney | A firmware update scheduled to drop later this week will allow Sony Readers to use the .epub format, an open standard (with DRM support) that has the backing of several major book publishers. This means you’ll be able to get books from sources other than Sony’s own Connect store, which currently only has one third the titles of Amazon’s Kindle store. The Kindle, however, currently uses the Mobipocket format for its Kindle Store books, and does not yet support .epub. [AP] More »
Software
Most Expensive iPhone App Champion: MyAccountsToGo Costs More Than an Unsubsidised iPhone
11:00PM Jason Chen | At US$449, MyAccountsToGo Dynamics GP and MyAccountsToGo SAP BusinessOne are the most expensive iPhone Apps available as of right now. It’s under the Finance category and is designed for sales, marketing and finance people to access their transactions, statements, and other corporate terms that we have no clue about. Since the most we know about “business” is “business time“, we can’t say whether or not the US$449 is worth the cash, but we do know that you should buy both apps and just make it an even US$898. There’s a free version if you want to know what the excitement’s all about. Just don’t accidentally buy the paid version. More »
Games
Nintendo: We Ain’t Afraid of no iPhone
10:45PM Mark Wilson | When Nintendo isn’t busy heating their offices with a money furnaces just to wipe the sweat off their brow with money, sometimes Nintendo president Satoru Iwata takes a moment to step down from his sweaty throne to lay the smackdown (generally through a stinky sock filled with golden pirate coins) on competing consumer electronics. This time, he responded to those thinking that the iPhone might be the new DS: More »
Hardware
Intel To Use Atom For Embeddable Systems, Moving Beyond PCs
10:43PM John Mahoney | Intel has found another use for its tiny, low-power Atom chips–today they’ve announced intention to move into the system-on-a-chip industry, where they’ll compete with ARM, MIPS, Freescale, and IBM among others to provide embeddable systems for things that aren’t PCs. Namely cable boxes, manufacturing robots, security hardware, and anything else that needs an all-in-one brain. Initially they’ll be using the Pentium M, but the transition to Atom should happen next year. Maybe this is what the “most of us wouldn’t use Atom” talk was all about.[WSJ] More »
Toys
I Pity the Fool Who Doesn’t Get this A-Team RC Van
10:27PM Jesus Diaz | Listen up you fools! I know that you cry and cry because you can’t get a cool van like mine! Stop whining now and get the RC version for just sixty Washingtons! Or ask your mama for it if you don’t have the money! More »
Toys
Lego Blade Runner Spinner Video Makes Us Drool to Dehydration
9:43PM Jesus Diaz | The always fascinating and outworldly Xeni Jardin points us to this video of the Lego Blade Runner Spinner. She wrote: “Guys, you posted a while back about the badass one of a kind LEGO spinner car from Blade Runner that Joel Johnson spotted during the BBtv shoot at Syd Mead’s studio. We cut an episode about it, check it out!” Actually, what Xeni meant to write was: “Witness Joel Johnson getting a stiffy touching Syd’s Lego Spinner.” I can’t blame him. In his own words: More »
Robots
