Author: Navneet Alang

So, remember when you’d doodle in class instead of paying attention to your teachers? And they said that you’d never amount to anything because of it? Well, they were probably right. But at least now you can turn your sketches into music, with the Drawdio pencil that literally lets you ‘draw songs (drawing + audio = Drawdio)’, an experimental project from those crazy geniuses at MIT. The tech uses the conductive properties of a pencil’s graphite to transmit current and create sound. Attach the kit to a pencil and doodle something and it will create different notes. No, really. But in fact, anything…

At a time like this, there is only one thing to say. And that thing is: OMG! OMG! OMG! Yes, according to the IGN, tweets coming in from the C2E2 comic book convention in Chicago report that Steve Sansweet of Lucasfilm confirmed that all six Star Wars movies are being readied for Blu-Ray release, along with extras. Sansweet reportedly said the following: “We have been at work for a couple of years working on—I won’t call it the Ultimate Set because we keep finding stuff—but, a very full set of all six movies on Blu-ray with lots of extra material. We’re finding all kinds of scenes from dailies that…

Though we have, over the past few years, become accustomed to rather strange, aggressive ideas from those who run the movie and music businesses, the latest move from the RIAA and MPAA is a little astounding. Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated to defending internet users’ rights, outlined some of the suggestions made by the media conglomerates for protecting their content. They, along with many other players, were asked to weigh in on how intellectual property should be treated in a changing, networked world. And you know what the MPAA and RIAA suggested?…

Remember the old days? When there was no internet, and only four channels on TV, asbestos in your walls and you actually had to break up with your partners face-to-face? How primitive, right?! Thankfully, here in the future, you can now employ the services of a website like breakupeasy.com to end your relationships for you. The, um, forward-thinking site lets you send break up messages via SMS, Facebook or email, even helpfully offering a list of reasons for the break-up, which range from things like ‘didn’t make enough time for you’ to ‘gave you an STD’. (Um, what?) Such a great idea, right? I mean,…

This, one imagines, is the mentality behind Sony’s new promotion in Europe, in which you get 4 free 3D video games when you buy a new Sony Bravia 3D TV. I  mean, a few years after we all just bought HDTV’s, companies are going to need some incentive if they want people to upgrade yet again. Of course, it’s important not to let the really important news be forgotten here: 3D video games are arriving in just a couple of months! 3D (according to the people pushing it) seems to be among the next big thing in gaming, with at least Sony’s PS3 and Nintendo’s forthcoming Nintendo 3DS supporting the new Avatar-inspired…

Hey, remember before the iPad announcement, when an exec from McGraw-Hill let slip that the tablet device was about to launch? And there were all those rumors that Jobs and Apple got really mad and excised McGraw-Hill from the launch event? Well, regardless if they were true, you gotta’ wonder what will happen to Robert Watson of Canadian wireless company SaskTel, who suggested the following: “The good news is that (Apple) is coming out with a new version of the iPhone in the June time-frame and they’re going to put us on that,” Watson was quoted as saying. “So we’re quite excited about that.” Uh-oh!…

About a year ago, the blogosphere was all-a-twitter about a clever parody service named Flutter that shortened micro-blogging down to 26 characters. But now, in one of those funny twists of Web 2.0, we’re getting a real service named Flutter – but rather than shrinking Twitter messages even further, it simply tells you who from your social networks is physically close by. Launched by Mashed-In, Flutter connects with your Twitter, Facebook and Linked-In friends and, using geo-aware tech in mobile phones, lets you know whenever they check in or update something from nearby. While this naturally…

Alright, I’ll be honest – last time I wrote about the GM EN-V vehicle, I ridiculed it for its rather, um, ‘unique’ look . And I stand by that. It looks… odd. But now that we get to see a video of a prototype in action – and hear one of its designers extol its benefits – it’s hard not to be impressed by the overall concept (if not the design). The vehicle is meant to carry a single person and uses a series of sensors and GPS technology to move itself around. What the designer in the clip envisions is entire areas that are car-free, and instead use these vehicles to create a futuristic, environmentally friendly…

Even though 2002 wasn’t that long ago, when Minority Report launched then, the futuristic interfaces it showed seemed decades off. But it seems like they’ll be here much sooner than we think. Case in point: this video of the prototype Bonfire uses a system of cameras, lasers and mirrors to create to basically turn the space on your desk next to your laptop into a usable interface. What makes the Bonfire project so interesting is that, rather than being a standalone interface like a touchscreen, it’s instead meant to augment your existing keyboard and mouse. The system projects images onto your…

You can now add one more to the list of reasons that Bing doesn’t suck: Microsoft is now integrating up-to-the-minute search results from real-time services like Twitter into Bing. Using a new feature called social search, users of Bing will soon also see near real-time results – very useful if you’re searching for news on a natural disaster, a local event, or if you just want to know what’s going on at a given moment in time. While the feature hasn’t been rolled out to all users yet, Microsoft say they it will be available to most in the U.S. shortly. You will also be able to see which topics are creating…