GizMag
Sixty years ago on Monday, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome atop a variation of a rocket originally designed to launch nuclear weapons to become the first person to orbit the Earth. Though his flight lasted only one hour and 48 minutes, it was an historic event that ranks right up there with when the first fish decided to take a step on dry land.
As the folks at tech startup CharaChorder point out, we think in words, not letters … so why do we have to slowly type words out one letter at a time? That's where their new keyboard comes in, as it uses groupings of keys to instantly generate whole words.
Category: Good Thinking, Lifestyle
Tags: Kickstarter, Keyboard
Plastic is a lot easier to work with than glass, which is one of the reasons it's used so much more often. That may be about to change, though, thanks to a new process that allows glass to be injection-molded – just like plastic.
Tags: University of Freiburg, Glass
Although the chest-beating of male gorillas is a common behaviour, its purpose still isn't entirely understood. Now, however, scientists believe it may serve as a means of acoustically indicating the size of the apes' bodies – needless to say, bigger is better.
Tags: Max Planck Institute, The George Washington University, Behavior, Sound
Pearl Jam founding member Mike McCready has played a number of guitar models over the years, but he's perhaps most associated with Fender Stratocasters. And of those, his vintage '59 model is his most prized. So it was this instrument that was chosen for a very limited Custom Shop replica run. But while researching the build, Master Builder Vincent Van Trigt discovered that not all was as it seemed.
Category: Music, Technology
Tags: Fender, Fender Stratocaster, Guitar
Moshe Safdie's latest project sees the designer of the world's largest indoor waterfall and world's first horizontal skyscraper return to a museum his firm first completed a decade ago. The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art expansion will involve increasing available floorspace by adding new buildings, including one that bridges a body of water.
Category: Architecture, Lifestyle
Tags: Building and Construction, Museum, Renovation, Safdie Architects
If you misplace your iPhone, or someone makes off with it, Apple's Find My network can help zero in on its location so you can retrieve it. Now the application has been opened up to third-party products, and among the first are ebikes from VanMoof.
Category: Mobile Technology, Technology
Tags: Apple, Apple+Apps, Location, Object Tracker, Tracking, Applications
Brian Swerdfeger either has one of the greatest jobs in the world, or one of the toughest; as VP of R&D at Fender Guitars, he spends his days crafting tools of musical inspiration, with the formidable machinery of the world's biggest-selling guitar company standing ready to push his ideas and creations out into the world at incredible scale and volume. So on the one hand, he's in a unique position to create the things the next generation of musicians will use to change the world.
Category: Music, Technology
Tags: Fender, Guitar, Interviews
Trackers like Tile or Pixie have been helping us find lost keys and wallets for years now, but they aren’t all that precise beyond “it’s within Bluetooth range.” Samsung has now unveiled the Galaxy SmartTag+, the first tracker to use the more accurate ultra-wideband (UWB) technology.
Category: Around The Home, Lifestyle
Tags: Samsung, Samsung Galaxy, Object Tracker, Bluetooth, Wireless
Pulp mills generate significant amounts of waste and we're seeing scientists get quite creative with how it might be put to use, with the possibilities including everything from foams, to batteries to stronger concrete. The latest example comes from researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC), who have used a pulp mill waste product as a filler material for cement, which they report proved stronger and more resilient.
Tags: Cement, University of British Columbia, Building and Construction, Recycled, New Atlas Audio