fry's

Circuit Playground plushies a perfect post-Xmas toy for hacker kids

It's a little late for Christmas presents, but if you throw a little time-machine action into the mix, this might be the perfect gift for the hacker kid in your life: Circuit Playground plushies.

The plushies are the newest product from Adafruit Industries, a leader in the open-source hardware world and the maker of a wide range of products for hackers young and old. Led by Entrepreneur magazine's entrepreneur of the year Limor Fried, Adafruit has a long history of promoting the do-it-yourself movement, and giving those who play and work in it the tools they need. … Read more

Breakfast is coming: Combat Kitchenware for warrior chefs

Every Sunday morning, my squire helps me put on a full suit of chain mail before I head into the kitchen to do battle with cranberry muffins and eggs over easy. Now all I need is some Combat Kitchenware to truly force my hash browns into submission.

Combat Kitchenware is the melding of a sword with a pan. It swaps out the pan handle with a pommel, grip, and guard from a sword that could have been plucked off the set of "Game of Thrones." These pans would add a new dimension to Iron Chef battles, especially if the combatants were allowed to fight to the death. … Read more

Lego for girls, this time hardware-hacker style

For Limor Fried, a hardware hacker and leader in the booming maker and do-it-yourself movements, there was never a question of waiting for someone else to jump in and do a better job of inspiring girls than Lego has done with its widely-panned Lego Friends set.

The product was featured on the cover of Bloomberg Business Week last year and drew worldwide attention as the global toy company's first major attempt at showcasing girls in a new set. Still, many Lego fans were upset that the company had focused on well-worn stereotypes and had ignored the modern reality that girls can do pretty much anything they want, whether or not there's pink or purple involved.

For Fried, who runs open-source hardware developer Adafruit Industries, it sounded like it was time for a little culture hacking.

… Read more

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

The 404 887: Where we're bleeding $99 HP TouchPads (podcast)

Guess who got a TouchPad for $99 this weekend? Everyone. If you weren't lucky enough to snag one early Saturday morning, don't lose hope yet--we expect some online distributors to continue dropping prices for existing stock, not to mention the white 64GB model that just dropped last Friday.

We got plenty of voicemails and video messages from listeners standing in line for the TouchPad, so tune in to hear a couple horror stories from the trenches.

We're also encouraging all 404 listeners to shoot us an e-mail at the404(at)cnet(dot)com with your suggestions, criticisms, and ideas for growing the show. We've always valued our listener input about where you think we should improve, so let us know and we'll try to make it happen.

The 404 Digest for Episode 887

HP's TouchPad fire sale: The fallout. Wilson's Best Buy investigation shows dismal turnout for competing tablets. Arturo gets a touchpad for $99.

Episode 887 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Kingston launches Wi-Drive for iOS device storage

Running out of storage space on your iPhone or iPad? Then you may want to take a look at Kingston's new Wi-Drive.

Now available for sale through a variety of retailers, the Wi-Drive stores content that iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users can access directly on their devices. So you can house documents, music, videos, e-books, and other files on the drive and then wirelessly stream that content onto your iOS device. You don't even need a local Wi-Fi connection; the drive uses its own built-in Wi-Fi to communicate with up to three mobile devices at one time.… Read more

OnStar For My Vehicle coming to Best Buy July 24

If you want the benefits of the OnStar system, such as emergency services and turn-by-turn navigation, but your car didn't come with OnStar hope is not lost. OnStar FMV (For My Vehicle) will be available this week.

Launching July 24, OnStar FMV will be available at Best Buy for $299.99, plus $75 for installation. Service plans for OnStar FMV will start at $18.95 a month, or $199 a year.

"The wait is over," OnStar President Linda Marshall said in a press release. "Since we announced OnStar FMV at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, … Read more

CA focuses on virtualization-to-cloud continuum

Over the last several years CA Technologies has made a number of cloud-related acquisitions--3Tera, Oblicore, Nimsoft--companies focused on the management and associated necessities of cloud infrastructure, if not direct components or providers of clouds themselves.

At this week's Structure conference in San Francisco, I spoke with Jay Fry, vice president of marketing for cloud computing, about what the company is doing to address the burgeoning cloud marketplace. (The company changed its name last year from CA, and before that it was Computer Associates.)

According to Fry, this year is about figuring out what customers really want--not just from … Read more

Grill, griddle, and wok

Grill enthusiasts find a way to get the job done. But that doesn't necessarily mean a grill hack is necessary to achieve wanted results. After all, grilling is about relaxing; fighting through some shaky contraption just isn't for anybody. (Although, with the weather outside being so frightful, one does have plenty of time to ponder possibilities.) For an elegant solution to stir-fry or griddling on the grill, there is an easier way.

The Weber Original Gourmet BBQ System is like a DYI griller's dream (or nightmare, as the case may be since all the DIY-ness is removed). … Read more