Geek culture

Soon, we'll be wearing movies

Imagine: You're walking down the street at night. You turn a corner, and suddenly, coming your way, you see someone with "Avatar" playing on their jacket.

It's a futuristic notion, but according to the folks at open-source hardware maker Adafruit Industries, it's one that's just months away.

That's because Adafruit has just unveiled Flora, its brand-new Arduino and Arduino-compatible wearable electronics platform. Designed to give anyone the ability to craft a matrix of up to hundreds or someday, more than 1,000 small LED "pixels," Flora is meant to make it possible to easily craft custom wearable multi-LED pixel designs perfect for art events like Burning Man, or even the streets of whatever town you live in. … Read more

World's biggest NES controller and other giant tech in video

The world's largest video controller has been unveiled at London's Liverpool Street Station. The controller is an exact replica of an old NES joypad, scaled up 30 times in each dimension. Hit play on our video (above) to see the massive pad in gigantic action.

The working humungopad, which is 4 meters long and weighs 120 kilograms, was created by British engineering student Ben Allen and collaborators from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. It takes two people to play and has to be transported in a lorry.

"We built the controller to celebrate the 105th … Read more

Friday Poll: Concur with Woz's Android comments?

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak created a comment explosion over his recent remarks about certain advantages he sees with Android phones.

Woz isn't pitching his iPhone into the shrubbery, but he did talk to the Daily Beast about several Android features he feels trump the iPhone's offerings. GPS navigation, battery life, and voice commands all made the list.

The Android versus iPhone debate has been as emotional as the great over-versus-under toilet paper debate. Hearing an Apple icon praise the other side just stirs the pot up a little bit more.… Read more

Need a charge? Roll your suitcase

We've all been there, right? Your flight's delayed, your entertainment gadget of choice is running low on juice, and all the outlets are taken. So what's a weary, tech-deprived traveler to do? Go drum up some power with your rolling suitcase, of course!

Designer Jung Inyoung has come up with a pretty cool concept of a rolling suitcase that provides power to your devices using kinetic energy. … Read more

The 404 975: Where we're making educated guesses (podcast)

The format of today's episode is a little different, as we discuss all the products to come out of Apple's Education Event at the Guggenheim Museum here in New York, along with Bridget Carey who reports from the field on iBooks 2, iBooks Author, and the revamped iTunes U platform.

Even after the press conference is over, we're still left with questions about hardware deployment and format compatibility, so CNET's David Carnoy joins us as well to give his take on the e-publishing industry and the challenges Apple will face alongside district budget cuts and existing … Read more

Low Latency No. 6: It's not a hard concept

Jeff: First, a disclaimer. I happen to think Razer makes great products. I've personally reviewed a handful of its gaming accessories and have, on average, been impressed each and every time.

For the second time in a row now, though, Razer has nabbed the People's Voice Award at CES, this time with the impressive yet borderline science fiction Project Fiona portable gaming tablet.

While it's certainly an impressive concept design, one has to wonder where "concept" ends and where practicality begins. We finally got some hands-on time with last year's winner, the Razer Blade gaming laptop, but even its design has seen significant changes compared with just 12 months ago. Will Project Fiona suffer the same fate?… Read more

Walking on walls in Paris

Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich is a master of deception.

His creation, a mirrored building facade called Bâtiment (Building), gives visitors to the Le 104 gallery in Paris an experience that may be about as close to the skyscraping antics of Spider-Man as any of them will ever get. … Read more

The dish on making a life-size Stormtrooper cake (Q&A)

A long time ago (not really), in a galaxy far, far away (Boston), attendees to the Arisia sci-fi convention got revenge on the Evil Empire by tearing into a life-size Stormtrooper cake.

Though geek-inspired cakes aren't new, we imagine creating a 6-foot, 300-pound sugary replica of a Stormtrooper wasn't an easy task, so we had to find out more.

Crave caught up with Amanda Oakleaf, founder and co-owner of Amanda Oakleaf Cakes, to ask about the highs and lows of building the Stormtrooper dessert. (Seriously, where does one even start?) … Read more

Facebook gets 6,600-pound chocolate thumbs-up

Reaching 1 million Facebook fans was a big deal for Cadbury Dairy Milk in the U.K. It was such a big deal that Cadbury stacked 6,600 pounds of Dairy Milk bars into the shape of a giant Facebook "Like" thumbs-up.

The edible hand took two days to build. The crew dressed in matching purple tops, making them look suspiciously like escaped Oompa Loompas.

According to the time-lapse video, there were some worrying moments during construction, but the thumbs-up managed not to squish anybody. A Facebook fan named Denise had the honor of putting the last piece of chocolate into place.

Cadbury offered some handy comparison charts to give fans an idea of just how large the hand is. It's as tall as two small cars or six rockhopper penguins standing on each other's heads. It weighs as much as 24 baby elephants.… Read more

The 404 974: Where we the (podcast)

We've put it off long enough, and today we'll finally spend time discussing Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an incendiary bill written by Texas Congressman Lamar Smith that would effectively put an end to any Web site that would "steal America's innovative and creative products, attract more than 53 billion visits a year, and threaten more than 19 million American jobs."… Read more