awesome

Firefox 3 'awesome bar' not awesome for all

There's no better way to incur user wrath than to change one of the fundamental features of a product. Apple's been doing it for years with each revision, usually prompting a positive cheer from most while alienating a certain margin of its fervent user base that vows to never buy or use the product again. Browser maker Mozilla is not without its own minority that appears to be up in arms about the updated address bar.

The Smart Location Bar, dubbed the "awesome bar" by the company, drops in a mix of your bookmarks and browser … Read more

Where Wilson hasn't quite got a handle on the whole "escalator" game.

EPISODE 42

The Oscars were just meh, Be Kind Rewind was meh + 1 (go see it) and Melinda Stewart of The Other Baldwins is the opposite of Meh. Go watch her video in our show notes and vote for it on FunnyOrDie.com, or check out the embedded clip below.

NSFW. You've been warned.

The Jenkem Song (Sucking the Gas from Your Poo) on FunnyOrDie.com

Listen now: Download today's podcast

A pop-up book that's also a lamp

There are a lot of things that have racked up frequent flier miles on Crave. Oddly shaped USB drives, awe-inducing Guitar Hero videos, and Swarovsky-covered crap are all par for the course on the average day.

As far as I know, though, this is the first pop-up book we've seen that is also a fully operational lamp. And that's worth blogging about.

When opened, the Book of Lights creates an LED-powered pop-up lamp.

Available in traditional lampshade and Parisian streetlamp versions, it's available for preorder for $95 on Charles & Marie.

The big, linen-bound book is available … Read more

It's all about the space Benjamins

The days of bringing a wad of wrinkly $5 bills to space are over. Finally, a form of currency built for space travellers by National Space Centre scientists is here.

According to this BBC News story, the Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination (Quid for short) are coins custom-built for purchasing goods and services in space. The currency was designed by the U.K.'s National Space Centre and the University of Leicester for foreign exchange service Travelex.

The rounded, disc-shaped coins look a bit like skipping stones. Thanks to being made from the same polymer as nonstick pans, they will not … Read more

PC Magazine says we're awesome, super sweet

Film direction: T. Moynihan. Starring: K. Massy, E. Wenzel, D. Bell, B. Cha, J. France, V. Tremblay

File this one under "shameless self-promotion"--PC Magazine has named Crave as one of its Favorite 100 Blogs for 2007. There's no numerical ranking, so we're squeezed alphabetically right in between Core77, a blog we reference regularly; and Crunk & Disorderly, whose title could describe the state that some Cravers can be found in on weekend evenings. Considering the magazine operates its own gadget blog, Gearlog, this is a lovely honor for us.

To make it even sweeter, mid-October … Read more

Telecommuting robot gives Canadian man office presence

Correction: In an earlier version of this item, Ivan Bowman was credited as the inventor of the IvanAnywhere robot. Ian McHardy, a co-worker of Bowman's at Sybase iAnywhere in Waterloo, Canada, is the actual creator of the robot. Thanks to FromWaterloo in the Crave TalkBack section for pointing it out.

Telecommuting is nothing new. Nor is Web conferencing. But building a robot to come into the office while you work at home? That's both new and awesome.

Ian McHardy created IvanAnywhere to cruise around the office and establish a physical presence for his co-worker, Ivan Bowman, as Bowman … Read more

This week in imminent doom at the hands of cyborg animals

What the hell is going on these days? Seriously.

All of a sudden, scientists have created living remote-control pigeons, monkeys that can control huge robotic arms using only their brains, and cats that are getting pimped-out bionic eyeballs. And then there's that gaming helmet that can read your mind. It's awesome, but it's also creepier than 70 clown Draculas.

Here is what I'm talking about, yo.

Real-life pigeon cyborgs: Simply by placing a bunch of electrodes and red wires in a pigeon's brain, scientists at the Robot Research Center at the Shandong University of Science … Read more