Archive for July 2013

LEGO master Iain Heath rides the gigantic Internet wave carved by SyFy’s too bad to be fake Z-movie. Really though, concepts like that should only come from a child’s doodles and never go beyond this level.

We’ve seen a number of ways to transform objects made in Minecraft into physical items. But what if you want to the opposite? That’s the idea behind DekkoScan, an upcoming iOS app that uses your mobile device’s camera to scan physical objects and “cubify” them.

Let people in the real world know how popular you are in real life with Fliike. It’s a physical counter that shows off how many “Likes” your page has received on Facebook in real time. The Fliike was created by Smiirl, which is a design studio start-up based in France.

Illustrator Elizabeth Sherry likes to make classical-style art based on videogame characters. No, not 8-bit. She went way more old school than that. Her digital paintings even have cracks and creases on them to make them look really old. The one above is my favorite, but her Mario still life is a close second.

This isn’t the first time someone hooked something up to Facebook, so that it performed a specific action every time a ‘Like’ or post is recorded on the linked social network account. For example, there’s the Like-a-Hug jacket that gave its wearer a hug every time someone ‘Liked’ his or her post on Facebook.

It’s been a long train ride and you’re starting to get drowsy. So you lean a bit on the window and take in the scenery flashing by… when you suddenly hear a voice telling you about some new gadget or some recent markdowns.

I know that you really had your heart set on buying the TARDIS, but Matt Smith is not getting rid of that. But he is parting with his first car. This Vauxhall Corsa was the first vehicle he purchased at age 18.

If you love the idea of playing classic arcade games, but don’t want to be tied down to just a single machine, you could always build a MAME cabinet. But that doesn’t give you the exact controls and screen of the original machine.

Last time we checked in with Ben Heck he made his own portable gaming device based on a Raspberry Pi. Recently he talked about another custom gaming project on his blog. Ben pried away the Steam Box concept from the abyss of Valve Time and decided to make his own.

We’ve yet to preserve our likenesses in holograms, but a German studio called Twinkind has the next best thing: a highly detailed 3D printed figurine of yourself. Imagine playing a tabletop RPG as yourself! With your dog as your sidekick!

I grew up with the Star Wars action figures so I’m a sucker for anything related to these characters. And this piece of amazing art should be hanging on my wall. It is the Boba Fett action figure, in all it’s plastic glory, painted life-sized and looking very authentic indeed.

This 15 foot-tall steel brain sculpture can be controlled by your brain waves. It is called Mens Amplio (that means “mind expanding” in Latin). The interactive brain and head has been embedded with LEDs in the branching structures that represent neurons.

I’m totally stoked that Pacific Rim is finally hitting theaters today. I can’t wait to go see it and watch giant robots battle giant monsters on the IMAX screen. While awaiting the arrival of the film on the big screen, one of the giant Kaiju monsters apparently made its presence known at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego.

It’s been a while since I featured a product from Brando, and I have to say I’m slightly disappointed with what they recently showed to us. It’s a USB drive shaped like a king chess piece.

What do you do when you see a motorcycle coming down the road with twin gatling guns? You run! Only cyborgs, demons (and the badass woman shown here) ride such things on a highway to hell.

Don’t you sometimes wish that you could just earn extra lives in real life, just like in video games? While there’s not yet a way to do that, you can still eat some tasty 1up mushrooms, thanks to our geeky food pal Chris-Rachael Oseland. These 1up mushrooms aren’t just fungi from a can.