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public service announcement

U.S. Travelers Lose 12,000 Laptops Every Week

All you travelers coming home tomorrow from your wild and crazy Independence Day weekend vacations, don't be one of 12,000 people who lose their laptops at airports every week. That's right, that ain't no typo—12,000 dudes and dudettes somehow manage to misplace their portable computers every seven days. That's 600,000 machines a year, many containing sensitive information that companies need to account for. More »

Batman

Batpod Makes Its Way to the British Formula One Grand Prix

One of the coolest things about the Batpod from the upcoming Dark Knight movie is the fact that it actually works. Previously seen being straddled by Meredith Viera on The Today Show, the decked out motorcycle burned rubber at the slightly more dignified British Formula One Grand Prix this weekend. Who else would give anything to be Jean-Pierre Goy, Christian Bale's stuntman, right now? [Gizmag] More »

Nintendo

Interview: Collecting Every Nintendo Game & Watch Ever

Before there was the Game Boy, there was Game & Watch. DS Fanboy has a sitdown with two dudes who scoured the world to collect every Game & Watch handheld ever produced: 60 in all, each one a unique and delicious plastic bundle with a single game, like Snoopy Tennis or Donkey Kong Jr. How obsessed is collector Michael Panayiotakis? More »

zeppelin

Can CO2 Worries and Rising Oil Costs Make Airships Popular Again?

With soaring fuel costs and greenhouse gas concerns, zeppelins might get their second chance to be a relevant mode of transportation. According to the New York Times, several countries are now looking into developing dirigibles for transporting things such as sightseers, postal deliveries and scientific payloads. France's postal service, La Poste, seems to have some of the most ambitious plans in mind: using airships on routes between France and Corsica or the Antilles in an effort to reduce emissions. More »

Furniture

Twist Chair Will Corkscrew Giant Holes into Your Lawn

Here's a great product to ensure that you'll never be invited to somebody's backyard ever again—the “Easy Install Twist Chair.” Instead of having four legs like regular chairs, the Twist uses a corkscrew base that you plug into the ground and spin until it's solidly placed. Bring the chair along the next time you go to a garden party and see if your hosts appreciate you aerating their lawn. [Yanko Design]

Windows Update

Windows Update Getting Updated: Will Be Faster, Less Sucky

Have you ever searched for new updates with Windows Update in Vista? It's slow as balls, no matter how beefy your machine is. But! Windows Update is getting an, um, update that will make it run a lot faster—scan times are down almost 20 percent. If you have automatic updates turned off, obviously you won't get this happy joy update when it rolls out at the end of the month, unless you go to Windows Update and install it manually. And you should, unless you want update scans to still take forever. [Microsoft Update Product Blog]

Sony

Sony Gets Serious With Another Next-Gen Display Tech: FED, Like CRT But Really Thin

Sony is probably OLED's most vocal prophet as the TV of the future. But according to Nikkei, they're hedging their bets and getting more serious with another next-gen display tech: field emission display, which is a lot like a good ol' cathode ray tube, except that it's super thin—it has all the benefits too, like deep blacks and zero motion blur. A "dream panel" says Nikkei. Plus, they're easier to build at large sizes than OLED TVs. Sony just agreed to take over a plant run by Pioneer to begin mass production of FED panels in late 2009 after holding the tech at arm's length for years. More »

Shooting simulator

ST-2 Indoor Shooting Simulator Is Duck Hunt on Steroids

For the ultimate game of Duck Hunt, Marksman Training Systems is offering the ST-2 shooting simulator—the first on the market for shotgun and rifle shooting. Co-developed by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, the simulator is so accurate that its used by Russian and Slovakian national clay shooting teams as a way to practice before the Olympics. More »

Laundry

Laundry Concept Hides Washing Machine In Lounge Chair

Someone I know once had the awesome idea of turning a laundromat (popular here in my neck of the woods) into a singles bar. With this concept washer and dryer from Indian designer Harsha Vardhan, we could up our prospective plans a notch and instead turn laundromats into singles lounges. The make believe washing machine doubles as a large seat whether it's in active or passive mode. The inner chamber of the chaise acts as a pressure washer and cleans clothes with ionized air instead of water. More »

iPod

Adorable iPod USB Stick Will Melt Any Apple Hater's Heart

Sure, you might loathe Apple with every fiber of your Windows-running being. But look at this iPod USB stick. It's so cute. How can you hate it? It comes in 1GB and 2GB flavors for £19.95 (about $40, damn weak dollar) and £24.95 ($50). Yep, still adorable. Awwww. No? You probably hated Wall-E too. [BoysStuff via Nerd Approved]

DIY

Water Balloon Slingshot Brings the Wet into Hot American Summers

Now that we're headed deep into the middle of summer, it's time to bring out water balloons and figure out ingenious ways to fling them at your enemies. Here's a great tutorial at Instructables for making a wicked water balloon catapult using surgical tubing, a rag and other random doohickies from around the house. According to the dude responsible for this weapon of watery destruction, this shooter will never explode the water balloon prematurely, unlike some of the types you get in stores. [Instructables]

Rage with the machine

Punk Rock Robots Rock Out to Punk Rock ONLY

Making robots even more hardcore, British roboticists have designed machines that will only dance to punk rock music. Standing 2 meters tall, padded in leather and decked in various punk scene insignias, the pogoing robots wait until they hear the familiar strains of anti-establishment rock before they start dancing. Is it just me, or do these things sound like they'd be a minor threat in the mosh pit? More »

Windows Mobile

First Full Facebook App for Windows Mobile

Windows Mobile users have had to look on in envy as people poked and drew penises on their friends' walls with dedicated apps for BlackBerry and Palm, wistfully hoping that joy could one day be their own. And now it is! Apparently the first full Facebook app for Windows Mobile, FriendMobilizer will let you do all of the basics like stalk your newly single friend, send messages or ignore requests from people you've never met. It's a lot greener (and uglier) than the Centro's app (which I like a lot) but hey, beggars can't be choosers. And I mean, you guys were begging for this, right? [Face of Mobile via ReadWriteWeb]

rip

Flying Priest Found Dead in the Atlantic, God Positioning System Still Missing

Father de Carli, the flying priest who got lost last April, has been found dead in the middle of the Atlantic. In an effort to raise funds for a local charity organization, De Carli planned to stay for more than 19 hours up in the air using a thousand party balloons, taking a GPS with him to communicate his position in case emergency. Unfortunately, the trip ended in disaster. More »

Solar

Solar-Powered LCD Brings TV to Anywhere the Sun Shines

As part of Sharp's recent efforts to shove itself to the forefront of solar innovation, the company is showcasing a prototype of a 26-inch LCD Aquos TV that can be powered entirely by the sun. Now even the 1.6 billion people on earth without electricity won't have an excuse to miss the next season of Lost. More »

Futurama

Futurama: Bender's Game DVD Preview

The second Futurama DVD hasn't even stopped spinning in our drives and we're already looking forward to the third one. It's a much geekier affair than even Futurama fans are used to, as they're delving into the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Will this Ender's Game Futurama movie be any good? We're pretty sure it will, seeing as the Kirk and Spock heads are back, and that was probably one of the best episodes ever.

July 4th

NASA Shows Off Fireworks In Space

Before we completely bid adieu to our nation's birthday, we here at Gizmodo would like to give one more shout out to the fourth of July. Seems like even the stars in the sky can't resist putting up a display for good ol' American freedom. These red-white-and-blue pictures of Supernova remnant SN 1006 are what's left over from a star explosion first observed by humans in year 1006. More »

Cook

Lightning Review: Lego Egg Timer

The Gadget: Lego Egg Timer.
The Price: $7.99
The Verdict: It's cute. It's makes a wonderful tic-tock noise. It helps you do roasted lamb and chicken and Beef Wellington and cakes. It's Lego. Really, it can't get any better than that. I only wish it could do more than one hour. More »