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Tech NewsGoogleGoogle Maps Navigation Now Directs You Around Traffic
I’ll gladly drive out of my way to avoid the soul-crushing agony of bumper to bumper traffic, and that’s just what a new beta for the Google Maps Navigation Android app will show me how to do. From now on, the first set of directions it spits out will be the fastest in current conditions, … Continued
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Tech News
EcoModo – The Best of TreeHugger
This week on TreeHugger, cardboard USBs, Smart EVs that recharge in 45 minutes, Star Wars AT-ATs made from recycled computers, kite-powered cars crossing deserts, parasite flies inspire better antennas, and more! Submarine-Boat Hybrid Goes All-Electric for Greener Get-Aways The Ego is a “compact semi-submarine” from Raonhaje, which works as both a motor boat and a … Continued
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Tech News
So This Is How Kids Play The License Plate Game These Days
Everyone’s played the license plate game, but has anyone actually ever won? As in actually spotted plates from all 50 states? How did we ever even keep track? Well now there’s a way, with State Plate, a gorgeous iPad app that turns your tablet into a touchable scorecard for the classic road trip pastime. It’s … Continued
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Tech NewsCrazy Realistic Geminoid Robot Now Comes in Cool College Professor Variety
Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro was responsible for the first Geminoids—super realistic androids capable of reproducing facial tics and other subtle mannerisms—but a team of researchers at Aalborg University in Denmark has fired back with their own fair-skinned take on the creepily realistic robot: the Geminoid DK. DK already looks startlingly familiar, like he’s the cool … Continued
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Tech NewsAppleThis Week’s Best Apps
In this week’s app roundup: Craigslist, beautified; Infinity Blade, expanded; Android apps, suggested; Evernote, redesigned; legendary boxers, punched out; people nearby you, chatted with; taxes, made easy; group chat, freed from the bounds of SMS; and more! The week’s best iPhone apps GroupMe: We fell in love with GroupMe at CES, but at that point … Continued
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Tech News
This Week’s Best iPad Apps
Battleheart: It’s certainly not the first RPG for the iPad, nor the most traditional-Aralon probably takes that title-but as far as I’ve seen it’s the best RPG designed for the iPad, a game that rewards investment but is easy to get the hang of, one that has delicious graphics and a control scheme designed around … Continued
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Tech NewsThis Week’s Best iPhone Apps
GroupMe: We fell in love with GroupMe at CES, but at that point the app itself was sort of secondary to the whole experience. No more! The free app got a big update, making the default messaging option free “push” messages that get piped in over your data connection (for chat that’s both quicker and … Continued
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Tech News
A-Trak On How the 21st Century DJ Builds His Music Collection
In a recent sit-down with NPR, turntable prodigy and longtime Kanye West collaborator DJ A-Trak gave an overview of Serato, a piece of software that lets DJs spin MP3s and other digital files with an old-school turntable setup. The software, he explains, offers a compromise between the convenience of digital files and the tactile experience … Continued
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Tech NewsGoogleNo One Was Hurt in This Google Maps Plane Crash
Follow this link to a Google Maps shot of Alameda, California, and you’ll see an arresting site: a downed commercial aircraft spewing debris, with its wings snapped into pieces and its hull cut cleanly in half. It looks like a crash perfect enough for a TV show. And in fact that’s just what it was. … Continued
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Tech News
MTV Might Actually Help You Discover New Music Again With the Music Meter App
Would you believe me if I told you MTV might actually help you find some new music to listen to? Not by playing videos on their TV station, of course, but with their free new Music Meter app for iOS and Android. Basically you can browse a chart of new trending artists (or hunt around … Continued
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Tech NewsHarperCollins Forcing Libraries To Re-Buy Ebooks After 26 Checkouts
C’mon HarperCollins. C’mon. We know that books aren’t flying off shelves like they used to, but you’re not helping matters with policies like this—setting your ebooks to lock up after 26 rentals and forcing libraries to buy a new copy to keep them on shelves. Ugh. The publisher’s rationale is this: physical books wear out—HarperCollins … Continued
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Tech News
How Pinball Machines Became Legal Again With One Shot
Here’s your pinball history lesson for the day: In 1942, pinball machines were deemed gambling devices and made illegal in New York City, prompting police to seize and destroy some 3000 machines. That law was reversed, according to the NYT, “in 1976, when a 26-year old pinball wizard named Roger Sharpe predicted – and made … Continued
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Tech News
Darth Vader’s Place in the Suburbs
I wonder how the neighbors of this house in Sendai, Japan feel—their buildings, from the look of things, seem like normal, unassuming homes. And then someone had to come and build this brooding black monstrosity. The living areas of this residential behemoth, the Lift House, are all on the first floor, but a slotted, sloping … Continued
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Tech NewsYobongo for iPhone
Why talk to a stranger when you can text them!? Yobongo, a much-ballyhooed chat app that lets you talk to strangers in the same geographic area, finally went live in the App Store. SXSW will never be the same again! What is it? Yobongo, Free, iPhone. Currently serving NYC, San Francisco, and Austin, TX (where … Continued
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Tech News
This Is What a Leg Consumed by Flesh Eating Bacteria Looks Like (Not Safe for Work or the Faint of Heart)
Necrotising Fasciitis. Flesh-eating Bacteria. It is some serious shit, and sci-fi writer (and Biology PhD) Peter Watts was unfortunate enough to contract it after a skin biopsy at a hospital in Toronto. He’s documenting the ordeal over on his site—there you can see photos of his unobscured wound, with muscle and all exposed to the … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
Kor Vida Is a Gorgeous Take on the Steel Water Bottle
We’re big fans of Kor’s futuristic looking water bottles—er, vessels, as the company calls them, ’cause it’s cooler—and they’ve just debuted the newest addition to the line: the Vida, which comes in two sizes, is their take on the ubiquitous reusable steel water bottle. It looks very nice! They sought to make a steel bottle … Continued
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Tech News
Battleheart for iPad
For your average gamer (me!), RPGs can be daunting. It always seems like some confusing soup of powers and power-ups, like everything’s in some mystifying and dorky language that I just don’t speak. Battleheart, an adorable and addictive RPG, is more my speed. And it might be the perfect iPad game. What is it? Battleheart, … Continued
Kyle VanHemert
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