A new Kickstarter project aims to make a marble run game that acts as a mechanical computer. Turning Tumble involves players solving logic puzzles by constructing a pathway with six different parts. The game will ship with 51 puzzles to solve, detailed through a graphic novel storyline, though there’s scope for future expansions and user-created […]
One of the men who created Android has unveiled a high-end phone. But at $699, Andy Rubin’s ‘Essential’ phone seems somewhat misnamed. The most notable different feature is a modular element. It’s not quite the Lego-like design that Google explored before abandoning, but rather a new form of expansion port. It’s two magnetic clips on […]
T-Mobile users will soon be able to have a single number that covers multiple devices, as well as having the same phone cover two or more lines. The Digits feature is being extended to all customers next week after several months of testing. In effect, Digits is an extension of the Google Voice idea that […]
Let’s face it: we’re in a difficult economy, we geeks. We covet the expensive, the shiny, the technologically advanced, all in spite of our financial situation. Sure, some geeks are lucky. They’re good with numbers and programming and, in spite of economic woes, can manage to get by and drive new cars and snatch up […]
Reports that the MP3 format is dead have proven extremely premature. It’s about as dead as the GIF. Despite some confused reports, there’s no reason whatsoever to think the format isn’t going to disappear or that existing files will stop being useful. All that’s happened is that the organization that held some of the key […]
Today’s data storage solutions have an expiration date. What’s on the horizon to replace them? The folks from SciShow take a look at some of the possible and amazing hard drive technologies of the future, including five-dimensional glass memory that can store up to 360TB per disc, holographic data storage, and DNA data storage. [SciShow]
The days of typing in the lengthy default password from the bottom of your mom’s router could be over. Google has unveiled a way to get round this, along with dedicated virtual reality headsets and a hyperlocal take on GPS among a host of small but useful improvements to machine learning and artificial intelligence. Possibly […]
Google says it’s used balloons to help “tens of thousands” of people get online in Peru after flooding hit connections in rural areas. It was an unplanned expansion of an ongoing experimental project. Project Loon (which is technically run by Google parent company Alphabet) uses 49-feet wide helium balloons flying 12 miles above earth to […]
An Indian teen has designed a satellite weighing just 64 grams. It will spend 12 minutes in micro-gravity next month to test how well the design works. Rifath Sharook’s ‘Kalamsat’, named after former Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam, was the winner of Cubes In Space, a joint competition run by NASA and education company I […]
Smartphones with batteries that recharge inside five minutes could be on sale next year according to a company that’s been working on the technology for several years. But ongoing mysteries about how exactly it works means there’s still scepticism. We covered the claims by StoreDot back in 2014, noting that it had explained that: The […]
The latest version of Amazon’s Echo will have a seven inch touchscreen that can double up as a videophone. The addition of a screen on the $230 device fulfils three main roles. The first is to give a visual element to the Alexa assistant while retaining the hands-free convenience. For example, as well as getting […]
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University say they can turn virtually anything into a computer touchpad by using a conductive spray paint. The technology is simply a more ambitious implementation of how touchscreens already work. While older ‘resistive’ screens worked by the user physically pressing down a screen until it contacted a second layer beneath, modern capacitive […]