GADGETS

Phone-Only Sidewalk Lanes Keep Texters in Line

Here's how one company plans to prevent distracted texters from bumping into the rest of us.

8 Futuristic Password Replacements (6 Use Your Body)

From your brain to your stomach acid, your body's unique physical signature may be the key to password security in the future.

11 Magnificent Facts about FAO Schwarz

11 Extreme Toasters for Your Breakfast Pleasure

15 Fantastic Custom Made Lunch Boxes

Summer has officially ended, which means all the youngsters are headed back to school, new lunch boxes in hand. If you’re looking for a cool new lunch box for your kiddo or for yourself, here are some of the coolest custom lunchboxes and bags around.

14 Awesome Ice Cube Trays

It might be hip to be square, but when it comes to ice cubes, it’s way cooler to think outside the cube. Aside from providing something unique to add to any drink, these 14 great ice cube tray varieties are also a great way to really geek up any nerdy coc

Every "One More Thing" from Steve Jobs

5 Bold Proposals For Cleaning Up Space Junk

The Russians Didn't Just Use Pencils in Space

A longstanding urban legend goes like this: During the space race of the 1960s, NASA spent millions developing a fancy "space pen" that could be used in zero gravity ... but the Soviets just used a pencil. This story resonates with us because NASA did act

How Did the Game Genie Work?

The Game Genie was the technological holy grail of my Nintendo-playing childhood. Here was a device that would let me play Super Mario Bros. with infinite lives, or get infinite rockets in Metroid. Here's exactly how it worked, and how people are still us

72 Scenes from the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, 2012

On September 30, I spent a geektastic day at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. I arrived early and got a look at many booths before they opened (later, they would be swarmed by thousands of attendees). For much of the day I was one of several referees for

10 Stainless Steel, Spring-Loaded Things You Should Know About the Swiss Army Knife (Now With a Corkscrew!)

Image credit: Flickr user AJ Cann Pocket-sized multitools are a dime a dozen, but the Swiss Army Knife is an icon. Its name is shorthand for versatility and its cross-emblazoned red handle has gone to the North Pole, to the top of Mount Everest, to the d

10 Classic Computers You Had as a Kid

1. Commodore

DanKam: Colorblindness "Corrective Lenses" for Your Smartphone

I'm not colorblind, I'm just "green-weak." At least that's what I tell everyone. I wrote about my color vision problems way back in 2007, explaining my Deuteranomaly, a condition affecting roughly 5 out of every 100 men. There are other forms of colorb

The Penguincubator: The 1937 Vending Machine for Books

Sir Allen Lane is the creator of Penguin Books, which is credited with popularizing high-quality mass-market paperbacks. Paperbacks existed prior to Penguin, but they were often poorly made and/or had trashy subject matter. Lane changed all that, publis

Tauntaun Sleeping Bag

In the 1980 film The Empire Strikes Back (often considered the best of the Star Wars films), Han Solo saves the life of an unconscious Luke Skywalker by slicing open a dead Tauntaun and spending the night on the deathly cold planet Hoth inside the smelly

Inflatable Seat Belts

Old curmudgeons like me like to talk about how much freedom children had when we were young. We had less supervision, more responsibilities, and the freedom to come and go that our children and grandchildren can scarcely imagine. But there is one area we

U-Fizz

Drinking soda pop has never been so scientific. U-Fizz is a contraption for putting carbonation into drinks that are not already carbonated. For $6.95, you get the necessary tube and caps to transfer bubbles from your mixture of baking soda and vinegar to

8 Television Pioneers

The development of television resembles the development of the airplane in that many engineers were working on the project around the same time, separately, and the finished product owes credit to quite a few pioneers. There are still arguments over who i

10 iPhone Apps to Help You Survive the Holidays

As you settle down with family and friends this holiday season, be prepared: load up your iPhone (or iPod Touch) with applications to get through common holiday disasters. We've got a complete roundup here -- from fun photo moments to actual medical eme

The Clock of the Long Now

Most clocks are built to keep time on fairly short timescales: windup watches may run a few days between windings, torsion pendulum clocks go about a year between windings, battery-powered watches often go several years on a given battery, and of course

More Than Just a Toaster

In a world where computers, music players, game systems, and automobiles come and go, we manage to become attached to our toasters. This simple appliance makes our bread warm enough to melt butter and crisp enough to hold honey or jam. An oven or even a s

4 Ways to Unleash the Power of Your Wiimote Controller

A big part of the Nintendo Wii's charm is its wireless motion-sensing controller, the Wiimote. But who knew it could do so much more than just serving as a virtual racket or bat? From pointing your Roomba to where it should go, to creating an interactive

The Dead Man's Switch

Last night's LOST season finale made mention of a "Dead Man's Trigger," which is another term for a Dead Man's Switch. Although these devices are well known to some geeks, I thought I'd write a little explainer to introduce the notion more broadly. (War

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