LG’s in the midst of revamping their touchscreen UI, possibly because their previous touchscreen phones weren’t all that great, but possibly because…ok that’s probably the reason. Not only is the Korean company looking internally at their own designers to fix the problem, but they’ve offered a 14 million Korean Won prize (US$14,364) to the community for someone to come up with a UI theme that’s good enough for engineers to work with. The submission above, although quite nice looking, is a bit too cluttered to be useful in our opinion. What would you say to your grandma that’s trying to make a call? “It’s right there, next to the steampunk valve and the gear icon?” [LG via Unwired View via Crunchgear]
We’ve brought you Rube Goldberg-style clocks and toys, but none of them are a match for the 156-step device that’s just won the annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. This year’s challenge was to assemble a burger with vegetables, condiments and two bun halves. The meat was pre-cooked… a sensible idea to avoid fires and explosions: you’ll understand when you look at the great pics of the machines that MAKE took. Beneath the gallery you’ll find a demo video of some of them in action. Sadly we don’t have one of the complete 156-step run yet, so you’ll just have to imagine its fantasticness.
The dust has settled on PWN 2 OWN and Linux FTW! The Ubuntu-equipped Sony VAIO was the only computer to get through the tournament unscathed, managing to elude the assembled hackers. On Thursday the MacBook Air was the first to go, followed the next day by the Vista-running Fujitsu, conquered by Shane Macaulay. No one, but no one, however, was able to bring down the penguin. [ PWN 2 OWN via PC World ]
I was working on my 24-inch iMac today when I noticed my cursor moving a little bit erratically. I didn’t know what was wrong. The computer is almost new, I haven’t installed anything recently, and the mouse itself looked ok, as you can see in the photo above. Then I turned it around to discover the true meaning of the words disgoostingly grossirrific:
