Author: Ty Dunitz

If you’ve ever wanted to convert your favorite logo/photo/image to Lego, now’s your chance. The team at Carsonified has rolled out a new tool, the perhaps lazily-if-poignantly labeled Brickify. The Carsonified team apparently came up with this idea during a trip to their local Lego store, where they realized how cool it would be to construct a Lego version of their own logo. With no tools available to do this online, they decided to create their own. The rest is history. No surprises here: simply upload an image, and bam, it’s Lego’d. You can save the schematic, print out the required inventory,…

If you planned on making the iPad 2 your be-all, end-all imaging tool, it would appear you may be SOL. 9 to 5 Mac is reporting that the rear-facing camera on the back of the unit will be a paltry one-megapixel – which wouldn’t seem so bad until you remember the iPhone 4′s camera is five… and some older flip phones are two or three. But, if it makes you feel any better, the front-facing camera is VGA, so by comparison, 1-megapixel isn’t the worst. Just don’t throw out your digital camera just yet. This revelation is especially odd considering it was previously said that OmniVision technologies had been…

You may recall experiencing the unabashed radness that was Hot Wheels way back in the day – whether or not that day was 25 years or 25 hours ago. But either way, you’ll more than likely wish you’d have had one of these. Enter the Hot Wheels Video Racer, hailing straight from the ‘Couldn’t Come Soon Enough’ department. The toy does exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a typical Hot Wheels car. With a camera embedded in the front. That’s right – Hot Wheels enthusiasts will now be able to live their stunt tracks from a first-person perspective. The camera can shoot 30 or 60 fps, and like any tricked-out ride…

Not content to robotically emulate any and all members of the animal kingdom, humanity has turned to another branch of the Tree of Life for inspiration: that of plants. Japanese artist Akira Nakayasu has developed plant (no, really, it’s just called ‘plant’), an interactive robotic installation that does little but look beautiful. Then again, what else would a plant-bot do? The installation is designed to resemble grass blowing in the wind, and reacts to nearby objects – for instance, a human hand. 169 shape memory alloy actuators control 169 artificial leaves, which bend and sway independently,…

Effective immediately, Big Steve has been made to take medical leave from Apple again, handing the reigns over to COO Tim Cook and sending the following memo to Apple’s employees. Team, At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company. I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place…

The concept of flavour just got turned on its ear as engineering students in Japan have developed TagCandy, a device which augments the flavour of whatever candy is inserted into it. Stick a regular lollipop into the handset, choose a flavour (Crunchy apple? Fizzy soda? …Fireworks?), and suck away. The vibrating speaker on the device sends pulses that conduct through your teeth as you eat the candy, emulating the vibration patterns that the chosen flavour would emit. How they discovered what it’s like to bite down on fireworks, you probably don’t want to know. Either way, it’s a totally wicked…

In case you had no idea what you were going to do this weekend, here’s a suggestion: popcorn. With lasers. But not just any lasers: Arctic Spyder blue lasers, the kind that if flippantly horsed around with, you could very literally unweld your retina from the back of your eye. Then you’d just have a floaty retina bobbing around in eye goo. And some unpopped popcorn. And nobody wants that. So if you’re going to try this, do be careful. Granted, not the most efficient way to pop corn. But considering the badassery that goes into every kernal, you’ll enjoy it that much more. This is, of course, assuming you…

In an age where the bulk of practicing geeks can remember a childhood full of He-Man action figures and other static toys, it’s mind-blowing (figuratively) to witness the dawn of an age where a child’s toy can be mind-blowing (literally). A multiplayer extension of its 2009 offering, Mattel is gearing up to release a head-to-head version of its game Mindflex, dubbed Mindflex Duel. The object is to push a small ball along a path, through various obstacles – with nothing but your mind. Your opponent does the same, and the result is presumably a head-to-head tug-of-war (or push-of-war) to the finish….

If you’ve always wanted an iPhone but have been too intimidated by its gargantuan price, now could be the time, as Apple has begun selling the 3GS for a mere pittance: forty nine dollars. And this ain’t no temporary sale – Apple has added this to the official fluff on its website. $49 will totally get you an iPhone 3GS. For keepsies. And that’s pretty radical. But the catch? Well, that would be that this phone is, again, the iPhone 3GS – and it’s only available at this price with a 2-year contract – so to partake in this cheap telephony means you miss out on the iPhone 5. Considering some people are still stubbornly…

Surely you remember the giant 1:1 Gundam Japan erected in 2009. Built by Bandai, the monolithic robot has stood watch ovef Tokyo and spawned many imitators in the last year and a bit. Some of you probably take a sort of ‘so-what’ attitude here. That’s understandable: Gundams are practically space-faring robot ninjas in the show, and this guy can barely turn his head. So what indeed, right? Well, check out this time-lapse video, directed by ‘darwinfish105′, which is a beautiful testament to the epic stoicism of the statue….