Hasta La Gadget!

We’d figured that Sprint and partner Clearwire were going to have a devil of a time rolling out WiMAX this year in New York City; urban canyons are always tricky, of course, but their oddball 2500MHz spectrum allocation isn’t the best at penetrating buildings and other structures, either. On that note, we’d been tipped earlier this week that a reader was seeing some weak WiMAX reception for the first time on his EVO 4G near Coney Island (see a shot after the break), and now, we’ve been able to independently confirm it on one of our own units — in saturated Midtown, no less — though we weren’t able to do much with it beyond get a notification that a “4G network is available.” Clearly this isn’t ready for primetime use, but it’s a good sign that these guys have officially started lighting up a few cells here and there. 1080p streaming, anyone?

[Thanks, r0ckstar_23]

Update: We’re getting tipped that folks are seeing some occasional 4G action in LA and San Francisco, so keep a close eye on those EVOs!

Continue reading Sprint’s WiMAX service teases EVO 4G-toting New Yorkers (update: LA and SF, too)

Sprint’s WiMAX service teases EVO 4G-toting New Yorkers (update: LA and SF, too) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yokohama-sponsored electric car will compete in 2010 Pikes Peak race. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-20007946-48.html” class=”origPostedBlog”The Car Tech blog/a/p

I had high hopes for PlayStation Move since its announcement. Having played around with various titles for about an hour today, I have to say: if Sony’s technology is better, it isn’t showing in its first-gen software. More »

It’s a geek fantasy come true as two Netherlands-based designers have created a piece of furniture built entirely out of Lego blocks.

Designers Mario Minale and Kuniko Maeda took 25,000 Lego pieces and replicated the design of a sideboard that Dutch designer Gerrit Rietveld had sketched in 1919.

“Lego is the perfect contemporary material for it as it is  available to everyone,” says Minale. “It is simple yet relies on complex and perfect moulds and production systems.”

The Lego pieces were sourced partly from the company itself but also from the bricklink.com website. The entire project took two months to plan and sketch on computer and three weeks to build.

What makes the table stunning is not just the intricate design and the use of the same color throughout, but that it is completely functional piece. The drawers and the doors for the table open and it can be used in a home, if you can afford it.

“It shows us that the seriousness of developing a system that serves a good purpose is ultimately grounded in our desire for playfulness,” says Minale.

Only five of these Lego tables will be made and sold through the droog website, says the designboom site. Pricing for the tables have not yet been disclosed.

The Rietveld Lego table is on show at the ongoing Design Miami/ Basel event. It’s not the first time the designer duo who own the firm Minale-Maeda have worked with Lego bricks.  In 2004, they designed a chair using red, blue and black lego bricks. The chair had an aluminum frame and only seven of those were made.

For now, feast on more views of the Lego table.

[via Technabob]

Photos: Minale-maeda

Raygun Gothic is a loose collective of artists and amateurs who built a 40-foot-tall, 7.5-ton, retro-styled, steel-and-aluminum rocket. It debuted at Burning Man, made an appearance earlier this year at the Maker Faire, and will soon be installed on San Francisco’s Embarcadero for a 14-month stay.

While we were at Maker Faire, we got an in-depth tour of the rocket from project manager and lead artist David Shulman. While it will be closed to visitors during its stay on in San Francisco, the rocket has an elaborate, three-level interior in which nearly every surface holds some kind of interest. There’s control equipment, scientific testing equipment, navigational devices, sensor readouts of various kinds, and even a shelf of books — all of them artful, if not particularly functional, spawn of someone’s artistic mind.

The sheer amount of labor required to build this thing is impressive in its own right. The aluminum skin was hand-rolled using English wheels, Shulman told us, and was fastened to the laser-cut steel frame with more than 3,000 rivets.

It’s all put together in a style that evokes the science-fiction pulp mags of the 1930s and 1940s. If we had actually gone into space during those decades, there’s no doubt our rockets would have looked like this.

The rocket is scheduled to land on the San Francisco waterfront in August.

For more on the rocket, including the crew’s retro-fantastic poster art, visit the Raygun Gothic website.

Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

See Also:

• Art, Madness and Electronics at Maker Faire 2010
• Video: Tesla-Powered Band Electrifies Maker Faire
• Maker Faire Preview: Animatronic Dragon Breathes 8-Foot Fireball
• Maker Faire: Still Life on Etch-a-Sketch
• Maker Faire Preview: Electronic Fireflies to Light Up Your Backyard