The Academy Awards were on TV last night, and the many retrospective montages showing 80 years of film made me want to write something about why few of those movies are available legally online today. Remember all those promises back in the late 1990s about how the Internet would soon allow people to watch […]

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The Japanese love beer and they love automatic vending machines. So, naturally, beer can vending machines are plentiful. But what if you want draft beer? The Japanese also have that covered: This little gadget automatically tilts your beer glass to the perfect angle while dispensing beer with just the right amount […]

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Some Chinese bloggers are questioning whether a lunar photo taken by a Chinese satellite is real. The doubters claim that the photo was copied from an old NASA shot. The Chinese government has been quick to rebut the claims, pointing out moon craters that appear only in the Chinese photo and arguing they […]

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Unofficially crowned most bizarre gadget this year at CES, the Sony Rolly is an egg-shaped MP3 player (with stereo speakers) which also “dances” in a unique and expressive fashion, by rolling around the floor and “flapping” its… um… ears. Users can create their own “motion files” using Sony’s Motion Editor software, and then share […]

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Many innovations seem only to appear where there is a really unusual need, warranting an unusual solution. The Kawazu-Nanadaru Loop Bridge (河津七瀧ループ橋) in Japan is one such example: How do you build a bridge along a mountainside when the grade is so steep that switchbacks aren’t practical? This double spiral brings cars up and down […]

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