19.02.11

PopSci's Guide to The Best New Kids' Toys for Adults

From Toy Fair 2011, a dozen amusements for grown-ups This time every year, PopSci spends a couple of enjoyable days scouting out the blinkingest, fastest, smartest, most glee-inducing
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Toshiba's Automated Checkout Cam Can Distinguish Different Varieties of Apple

Self-checkout kiosks at the grocery store can save time and space for quick shoppers, but if an item doesn't have a bar code--like, say, produce (hopefully)--you still have to search through the list of variations, which can lose any time you've gained by phasing
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The Internet Officially Runs Out of Addresses Today, But It's Not Cause for Panic

Today, in a thoroughly nerdy ceremony in Miami, the last five blocks of IPv4 addresses were handed out. That's sparked a lot of concern: The internet as we know it is out of space! The next evolution of Internet Protocol,
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A Company Seeks Ubiquitous Iris Scans On PCs, ATMs and Cell Phones

A company based in Puerto Rico wants to install iris-detection capabilities in everything from cell phones to ATMs, beefing up personalized
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Telepresence Bots Help Sick Teens Attend Class, Providing Real-Time Lessons and Adolescent Interaction

With telepresence robots serving as stand-ins, there's no reason for sick kids to miss school. Some children may prefer to skip class, of course, but for those with serious immune system disorders, telepresence ‘bots are a
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Just In Time For Spring Break, Water-Powered Jetpack Finally Goes On Sale

Waterskiing is so passé. This summer, you'll be able to fly with Raymond Li's water-powered jetpack, which is going on sale in March. It's only $99,500! The JetLev jetpack
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Sponsored Post: The iRobot Roomba and Scooba

The iRobot Roomba and Scooba will leave you floored The modern American home has become a minefield of microscopic ordnance. Dust bombs... pet hair parapets... corn chips strewn like spent shell casings. It's an unruly battlescape that requires the kind of constant
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The Next iPhone and iPad May Include NFC for Wallet-Replacing Mobile Payments

Near-field communications, or NFC, is one of the more promising up-and-coming technologies in the mobile world. In the near future, we'll be able to make secure mobile payments or send files over a short distance with our phones--but nobody has taken that first big
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Lexmark's Scanner Borrows the Brains of a Camera for Instant Imagery

Why scan when you can snap? For more than 20 years, flatbed scanners have used slow-moving sensor bars to copy an image by scrolling over documents a little at a time. In replacing that bar with a retooled camera sensor, the Lexmark Genesis captures the entire image
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Ga-Ga-Glasses

Polaroid's crazy GL20 camera glasses, designed by the Haus of Gaga Lifecasting devices are interesting--you wear them as they unobtrusively capture photos, video,
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A huge week in photography

In the days leading up to the industry-stopping Photokina event, the major players have lifted the lid on all-new and exciting camera bodies that are sure to command the attention of conference attendees when it finally kicks off.
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Build a life-size paper clone of yourself for under $40

A young German guy has a detailed Instructable online this week that explains how you can exercise your inner narcissist and make a 3D paper clone of yourself. It's worth checking out
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Samsung's New Notebooks

Samsung has announced three new models to add to its lineup of notebooks - the QX series, the RF series and the SF series. We haven't had a chance to test any of these units yet, but the press release offers the following information: QX Series: This Core i5-driven notebook is made for professionals
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New this week: Win a Zeppelin, plus meet our new blogger

Meet Tesla Patent Pending. PopSci.com.au has unleashed a new opinion writer over at our blog. He's outspoken, he's informed, and he can usually be found hiding in dark rooms with a pile of new gadgets around him. Boys and girls, please
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MIT's Opera of the Future Features Singing Walls and Dancing Robots

A new opera produced by the lab behind Guitar Hero technology includes robotic singers, interactive instruments and a focus on technology that could change the way we experience live performances.
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Mobile Indoor Positioning is Coming, But Incompatible Standards Stand in the Way

Our GPS-wielding smartphones have made it somewhat difficult to get lost, say, on the way to the museum. But if you're waiting for the day your phone will also help you navigate to a specific painting once you're inside, you might be waiting
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You built what?! A real Iron Man suit

Anthony Le, 25, has been a fan of Iron Man since he was a kid, but when he heard that the comic-book superhero was hitting the big screen in 2008, he was inspired to build his own Iron Man suit. That version was more of a costume, but his new one, finished just in time for
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Proof-of-concept carshark software hacks car computers, shutting down brakes, engines, and more

Using homemade software and a standard computer port, a team of scientists has figured out exactly how easy it is to hack into a modern car -- scary news for motorists already wary of faulty brake and accelerator systems. The research team wrote code that allows
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Acoustic Fingerprinting Software Turns Any Cell Phone into a Touch-Sensitive Device

Cambridge, UK, firm Input Dynamics is trying to take the bite out of iPhone envy with a new software fix that turns any "dumbphone" into a touchscreen device.
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How It Works: The Most Advanced Gas-Powered R/C Car

The Most Advanced R/C Car LOSI 1/10 TEN-T TRUGGY RTR Top speed: 72km/h Size: 34.3 x 45 cm. Price: US$500 Get it: losi.com This 18-inch off-roader
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Opinion: Should You Buy An iPad?

Apple's iPad was finally launched yesterday to eager Australian crowds yesterday, with numerous media reports of enormous crowds being piled up outside
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Video: An incredibly accurate (working!) hoverboard replica would make future-Marty proud

The closer we get to the year 2015, the louder people lament that our world hardly resembles the one depicted in Back to the Future II. Although it will be awhile before any of us coast around in a flying Delorean, we've piped down our complaints, as a young
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Video-stitching surveillance camera gives DHS 360-degree, 100-megapixel seamless views

Big Brother was watching before, but soon he'll bewatching with a whole new set of high-tech eyes. The US Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is creating a wide-eyed
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Video: Apocalypse-Fearing Folk Can Seek Shelter in Futuristic US$10 Million Doomsday Bunker

A doomsday bunker envisioned by California company Vivos can offer you, your family, and 4,000 other people the chance to escape the end of the world in a network of 20 underground shelters. Surely even the sceptics can't resist the allure of scary music played over scenes of comfortable underground
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Although It's Been Said Many Times, Many Ways: The iPad is the Future

After a weekend using the iPad, I've realised I'm not interested in hedging my reaction to it with careful considerations of its lack of a USB port or webcam. It's not every day, or every year or maybe even every decade that we're able to see a piece of technology that takes a familiar human
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'Imaginary' hardware interface lets users wield their own fantasy peripherals to control a real device

Imagine a gesture-based mobile device with no screen, no keyboard, and no other peripheral inputs or outputs, a mobile device that's not really a device at all. Can you see it in your mind's eye? If so, you're probably picturing something akin to a new
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Liquid mirror breakthrough could make state-of-the-art optics cheap

A $136 million Earth-based telescope using brand new adaptive optics just trumped Hubble's deep space image clarity three-fold, but such high tech optics aren't just reserved for high-dollar observatories. A breakthrough in deformable liquid mirror technology
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Kinect: good with kids, bad with couches

Microsoft's Kinect, the controller-free, gesture-based gaming platform that finally saw an official unveiling at E3 this week continues to surprise us, but not always necessarily in good ways. For instance, we think it's awesome that the non-peripheral peripheral can
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LEDs Dethrone Compact Fluorescents as King of Eco-Friendly Lightbulbs

Never mind that twisty compact fluo­rescent. The new energy-efficient way to light your home is with LEDs. An upcoming crop of bulbs draw 12 watts or less, edging out a typical fluorescent, and they have a more conventional shape, contain no mercury, and last at least
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Nintendo's 3DS Will Take the DS Experience into Three Dimensions, Somehow

With Avatar, the highest-grossing movie of all time, and the World Cup, the most-watched TV broadcast, both in 3-D, it was only a matter of time until Nintendo, the most popular video game maker in the world, jumped on the three-dimensional bandwagon. And last
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