Hasta La Gadget!

When I was a boy, I loved New York‘s Museum of Natural History. Mostly the dinosaurs. But why, in the tech world, are there no places to celebrate gadgetry as art, history, the things we love?

This year’s follow up to the original Giz Gallery is just that.

It is a collection of the greatest gadgets and tech we could find and fit under a roof. It is not meant to throw things in your face that you don’t need so you can engulf them in exchange for debt, but is here to celebrate what is great about our world of tech, commercial or hacked, new or old. And there is no other collection in the world like it for strength of display of amazing technical achievement and fun—sometimes those artifacts are commercially made but more often, not. And this year we’ve learned a few new tricks.

It’ll be 3 times bigger in a new location and open nearly 3 times as long (from September 23rd to the 27th). And from what we learned last year, we added lots of stuff for you to play with: there’s less of an emphasis on staring at old, important pieces of gadgetry in glass cases, and more chances to try things out. We have over 60 devices this year; here are just some of the things we’re bringing you:

• Tesla coils. Singing. Three times a day. (Hello? Man made lightning? Check!)






• Panasonic’s amazing 103-inch TV, again. With exclusive art from Bad Robot’s Star Trek playing on it. When we’re not playing Rock Band or Call of Duty.

• A giant 3D Etch a Sketch with a custom 3D motion controller.





• Pancake Machine running all hours of the show.





• A brief timeline of the Sony Walkman, through history.





• A smartphone testing station—all the best, side by side, for your use and abuse and evaluation.

• The world’s most expensive keyboard—hovering under the world’s most disgusting Cheeto.






• A blank wall of Lego plates. And thirty thousand bricks you can attach to the wall.

• An original 1984 Apple Mac, signed by the entire Mac team (and currently owned by Jesus Diaz).

• A reader party on the 25th at 8pm with prizes.

• Guest-curated items by Adam Savage of the MythBusters, former nemesis and gdgt founder Ryan Block, Phil Torrone from Adafruit and Make Mag, and none other than the great Hartmut Esslinger, founder of frog design, who influenced the original Mac designs and Apple design language.





• One of a kind tech art projects from NYU’s ITP program, including the messy and fantastic Mud PC.

• Secret new gadgets being seen for the first time at the Gallery.

• And much more.

• Did I mention free pancakes?

The tech world needs the anti Best Buy*. One as great as the Smithsonian or the Museum of Natural History. For now, we have our little Gizmodo Gallery and I want to invite you to come hang out with me and the Gizmodo NYC writers for a little while. It’ll be a blast.

You can follow @gizgallery on Twitter to find out more about the crazy stuff we’ll showing, early announcements and special events that are happening inside the Gallery.

(*There’s nothing wrong with Best Buy, inherently. We’re just doing something that is the opposite of it.)

There’s no admission fee, but we will be collecting money for Doctors or Engineers Without Borders. Donations are optional but recommended.

Gallery Hours and Special Events Open to the Public:

Wednesday, September 23 through Friday, September 25
12noon – 8pm
– Main Gallery
– Opening Day features Laser Etching ($25 a laptop, $5 a gadget)

Friday, September 25
8pm-10pm
– Public Party, with prizes

Saturday, September 26
11am – 8pm
– Main Gallery

Saturday, September 26
9pm – Live DJ set by Music Director Jason Bentley, KCRW, 100% independently funded radio station

Sunday, September 27
11am – 6pm
– Main Gallery

Location:
267 Elizabeth Street
New York, NY 10012

NEW YORK – On September 23rd, the Gizmodo Gallery is bringing the most impressive and fun tech in the world to Manhattan. The interactive museum will be filled with the coolest gadgets, handpicked from today and yesteryear, ranging from a one-of-a-kind model of the first Apple phone prototype and a man made lightning machines to a mind blowing gigantic Panasonic plasma TV to robots that can spit out 200 pancakes an hour.

This year’s visitors will be able to get their hands on many interactive demos, including a guitar that uses lasers for strings, draw on a giant 3-D Etch-A-Sketch, use a computer made by mud, and take a bite from the world’s largest Cheeto cheese snack. Some never before seen, secret gadgets are also set to be unveiled to the world at the Gallery.

Gizmodo’s friends are bringing their toys, too. Adam Savage from Mythbusters, Phil Torrone from Make and Adafruit, Frog Design founder and original Macintosh designer Hartmut Esslinger and gdgt.com cofounder Ryan Block are set to be the Gizmodo Gallery’s first guest curators, introducing their own rare and wonderful tech pieces to the public.

WHAT:
THE GIZMODO GALLERY presented by Gizmodo – a blog about gadgets and technology. Started in 2002, Gizmodo has grown to be Gawker Media’s largest blog, bringing in upwards of 100 million page views a month in traffic with posts about a variety of electronics, as well as all sorts of things gadget geeks might enjoy. The Gallery is Gizmodo’s best content from the year, come to life.

WHEN:
Media Only Preview:
September 22, 2009, 11am – 6pm

Open to the Public:
September 23 – 25, 12pm – 8pm
Public Party: Friday September 25th, 8pm
Laser Etching: Sept 23rd, $25 a laptop, $5 a gadget

September 26, 11am – 8pm
Live KCRW Show: DJ set by KCRW Music Director Jason Bentley, September 26th, 9pm

September 27, 11am – 6pm

WHERE: 267 Elizabeth Street
New York, NY 10012

To attend the media preview or for press inquiries, contact:

Charlie Dougiello Lois Najarian
The Door The Door
718.383.1708 718.383.1708
charlie@thedooronline.com lois@thedooronline.com

Activision was kind enough to send over an early evaluation copy of DJ Hero, and while we haven’t had a chance to dive deeply into the game yet, we thought you might want to see how the controller itself stacks up against one of our Technics SL-1200MK2s. As you might expect, compared to the legendarily tank-like construction of the MK2, the DJ Hero controller looks and feels exactly like the plastic game controller it is, although the wheel itself is nice and weighty and the buttons are pleasantly clicky. We definitely have some doubts about how this is all going to work when actually trying to mix tunes together, but we’re eager to try it out — in the meantime, hit the gallery for the full set of pics.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

DJ Hero controller hands-on faceoff with an SL-1200MK2 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Android has become many things to many people, but high-powered media devices haven’t latched on to the OS just yet. Much of it has to do with the Android’s immaturity: from what we hear, it doesn’t even support hardware graphics acceleration, much less embrace multimedia and games. Archos has punched through that barrier by porting over its existing media-happy application layer from Linux to make good use of the 800MHz OMAP3440 processor they’ve stuffed inside the brand new (much leaked) Archos 5 Internet Tablet. The tablet runs a 4.8-inch 800 x 480 screen, and can pump out 720p video (including WMV and H.264) over HDMI. Because it’s Archos’ own special sauce, the device also supports protected WMV and protected WMA (hooray PlaysForSure), a rarity for Linux. With the optional DVR Station the device can do VGA TV recording, though you’ll probably want to spring for one of the beefy HDD models, which offer capacity up to 500GB, but double the girth of the basic 0.4-inch thick flash player. There’s also 802.11n WiFi, a bit of a rarity in portable devices like this, and quite a treat for 2.4GHz-addled city dwellers.

But that’s all pretty regular Archos-ey stuff. The newness for Archos comes in the form of Android, which has been fairly seamlessly melded with the Archos layer — which hovers over the vanilla Android install when needed. The OS scales up pretty nicely to 800 x 480, which is a relief because the touchscreen keyboard is a bit of a chore with the 5’s resistive touchscreen. Since it’s not a Google-blessed device, you’ll have to score a copy of Gmail on your own time, but the regular Market is available if you want to risk going around the 5-optimized AppsLib store. Several third party apps are included out of the gate, including ThinkFree Mobile, which should be updated to allow for document editing in the near future. When plugged into a dock and paired with an optional mini-QWERTY keypad (or any regular Bluetooth keyboard and mouse) the 5 becomes a rather nice way to surf the internet on your TV. It’s missing in-browser Flash, but there should be an update to rectify that soon. Out of the house the tablet offers a high-end GPS experience, including hugemongous birds eye photo maps of major cities, and can tether with a 3G phone over Bluetooth for a bit of data. So, Archos 5 might not be Android’s killer device, mainly because it isn’t a phone and doesn’t make for pleasurable mobile data entry or consumption. Still, it’s doing stuff with media that the relatively sluggish crop of Android handsets have failed at so far, and hopefully will spur the community to greater heights. The player is available as of today, with prices ranging from $250 to $440, not to mention accessories galore. Check out videos of the tablet in action after the break.

Continue reading Archos 5 Internet Tablet makes an honest PMP out of Android

Filed under: GPS, Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Archos 5 Internet Tablet makes an honest PMP out of Android originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Wacom Bamboo multitouch pen tablet spotted by Mr. Blurrycam

Filed under: Peripherals

Wacom Bamboo multitouch pen tablet spotted by Mr. Blurrycam originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You know, a beanbag might be good for the occasional portable movie viewer, but if you’re cubicle bound and liable to look to your iPod touch or iPhone for news and entertainment on a regular basis, you’re going to want something with legs. Here we have a couple prime examples of devices fashioned from good ol’ fashioned LEGO brand building blocks that do the trick with the style befitting one of America’s favorite childhood choking hazards. Itching to get in on the action? Hit the read link — but not before peeping the video after the break.

Read – LEGO iPhone/iPod Touch Rotating Dock
Read – iStand

Continue reading Battle of the homebrew LEGO iPhone docks

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Battle of the homebrew LEGO iPhone docks originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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