Offbeat posts

With Adobe’s Creative Suite 5 barely a couple of months old, the Photoshop team is already hard at work on new features for CS6. Here’s a vidoe sneak peak at a new tool: Photobomb. The video speaks for itself, so check it out, but I’m pretty sure this is something I’ll use on a daily basis. It’s great to see that some of Adobe’s staff are still lighthearted and able to poke fun at themselves, even while their CEO is busy trying to bury the company by chaining it to a dying technology….

We’re all aware of the SteamPunk phenomenon – time-rich nerd takes high tech device and fancies it up with some Victorian apparel. But sometimes going just a little old school is all that’s required. The Compass Phone is a device designed by HaYeon Yoo. We’re off to a rocky start, since the device clearly has no actual phone functionality. So.. it’s a compass. But not just any compass. It’s a compass that instead of pointing north, points to your friend and lets you know their distance and direction. Through this ingenious collaboration of cutting edge technology and old school, no-nonsense cool…

Sometimes, you’re a BSG fan. Sometimes, you find yourself with an old iMac. Sometimes, you add a Larson Scanner kit. Sometimes, you dare look this good on the internet. And that’s all I have to say about that….

A team of students from the University of British Columbia hope to set the record for the fastest coast-to-coast drive across Canada in an electric vehicle – in a ‘72 Volkswagen Beetle EV, that is. The long-distance trek measures an incredible 4,000 miles and the UBC Electric Car Club’s “E-Beetle” has so far managed to stand up to Canada’s diverse geography. Within the E-Beetle is a three-phase AC induction motor mated to a lithium iron phosphate battery. This EV has a range of about 185 miles at 60 mph and over 340 miles at 30 mph. Top speed is said to be around 85 miles per hour. It’s…

It would be uncustomary for me to let a day go by without showing off something designy and musical. Taking a break from all that DJ gear I’ve been hyped about recently, here’s Yamaha’s Silent Guitar.Yeah, it looks like it fell out of Tron. Awesome, right? Right. If you’re a music buff, you’ll be well aware that the Silent Guitar has actually been kicking around for nine years. But the internet was young and stupid in 2001, and Yamaha has just updated it 2010-style, so what better time than now to show off to the rest of the readers one of the strangest pieces of musical tech out there. Seriously, the Silent…

Assuming you’re one who enjoys nothing more than to gaze into the loins of a stranger, you’ll be delighted beyond reason to learn that Chatroulette is back, with a shiny new 2.0 and a promise of all the sweaty junk you can be hot and bothered to look upon. Okay, maybe not that last part. But that’s not going to stop daring exhibitionists around the globe from keeping their webcam at crotch-level – and, after having taken it for a short test drive, it certainly hasn’t. I guess my big question for Ternovskiy is: what’s 2.0 about this, dude? To be honest, I dig the new interface. I’m a fan of really, really minimal…

When you are a social bookmarking site/community owned by a huge mega-empire like Reddit is (Condé Nast for those not in the know), eventually you will be at odds with your dark lords and masters. The big issue for the Nastmasters on Reddit at the moment is Reddit ads being posted in support of California’s Proposition 19, which is a motion to legalize marijuana in order to profit from the fat tax dollars sure to come from the consumption of the demon weed. After Ben Huh of the Cheezburger Network noted publicly that, should there be trouble in paradise, he would be interested in acquiring Reddit,…

I was bored and decided to check out the Virgin Galactic site earlier. I ended up accidentally swallowing an entire ice cube and giving myself massive brain freeze when I noticed a little “book” option. For those not in the know, Virgin Galactic is the project started by Virgin CEO Richard Branson with the final hope of private space flight. The original plan was for tickets to be $200,000 and it seems the company plans on living up to that. God, my head still hurts as I type this, I’m going to send Richard Branson an invoice for causing me such pain and suffering. You can now book tickets by paying…

Today is Toronto’s FanExpo. In celebration of utter geekdom for all, I present to you this day the Alien Pez dispenser – the most terrifying candy delivery system ever released. Childhood: ruined. Designed by Peter Davidson, I have never in my life wanted a Pez dispenser more than this one. And that’s saying something. I’m not even a fan of the franchise. What? Don’t give me that look – I’m already nerd levels of enthusiastic for a million other franchises. It’s exhausting work! Somebody else can have Alien. But if you’re an avid Pez collector, don’t start eBaying just yet – unfortunately, there…

There’s a hell of a lot of crappy iPhone apps. Indeed, I myself have found about four that were useful (that cost any amount of money), and even then, what qualifies as ‘useful’ is elastic – mostly, I’m just playing Lilt Line. But no one can say iCam never pulled its own weight. A Dallas man, visiting relatives in Conneticut, was alerted by the app that there was movement afoot in his home. A quick glance at his phone revealed that two men were, indeed, trying to break into his house, eventually bricking a window as he watched helplessly, hundreds of miles away. A quick call to 911 gave him a second sweet…