Hasta La Gadget!

The rapture has come and gone, but the Maker Faire powers on. Despite warnings of a May 21st doomsday, folks came out in droves for the annual celebration of all things DIY, and we were there to bring you the best in homespun inventions. This year’s Maker Faire was light on robots and big on corporate sponsorship. Among the giants supporting the little guys were Google, ASUS, and HP, but El Goog’s presence extended beyond its dedicated tents. The new Android ADK was big with at-home tinkerers this year, spawning a number of little robots and at least one DIY alternative.

Perhaps no other trend proved more pervasive than 3D printing, however — every time we turned around there was another MakerBot or RapMan pumping out everything from statuettes of attendees to cutesy salt shakers. There were robotic building blocks, a Heineken-themed R2-D2, DIY drones, custom keyboards, and a ton of repurposed gadgets, but it was an arena of destructo-bots, tucked away in the farthest corner of the San Mateo County Event Center, that really blew us away. We came away sunburned and bedraggled, but lucky for you, we did all the dirty work so you don’t have to. To see what made this year’s Maker Faire, hop on past the break for a video of our favorite DIY finds.

Myriam Joire contributed to this report.

Continue reading Maker Faire 2011, in pictures: Arduinos, Androids, and angry robots (video)

Maker Faire 2011, in pictures: Arduinos, Androids, and angry robots (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 May 2011 17:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 19th marked the 10th anniversary of Apple opening its first retail store. We expected some form of celebration, and initially it looked like a product launch may happen, but it turned out to be a revamp of the stores. Staff were told they couldn’t take holiday, night shifts were planned for this weekend, and […]

One of the world’s most (in)famous names has picked a side in the browser battles — last night saw the debut of a new Google Chrome commercial, starring Lady Gaga and her “little monsters.” Spanning a minute and a half of Gaga and her fans singing and gyrating their way through her latest single, the ad is intended to illustrate the power of the web and its creative new modes of interaction. To be fair, said interaction is mostly Lady Gaga saying “jump” and a crowd of YouTubers doing it without bothering to ask how high, but hey, the result is fun to watch. You just need to disable your sense of shame for all humanity and click past the break.

[Thanks, Daryl]

Continue reading Lady Gaga uses Chrome, and here’s the 91-second film to prove it

Lady Gaga uses Chrome, and here’s the 91-second film to prove it originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 May 2011 16:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Back in March, Nash Money showed off a pair of Nike Air Force 1s that he had turned into desktop speakers — pretty rad, but hardly flashy enough for a supervillain / rapper. The professional sneaker customizer has significantly stepped up his game after being commissioned by Sneaker Freaker Magazine, creating two pairs of speakers from some giant suede Pumas. Nash consulted MF Doom for the project, and the masked emcee offered up suggestions like “sci-fi and laser guns,” “modern architecture and geometry,” and “mad exclamation marks.” The finished Sneaker Speaker Doomsday Edition (how timely is that?) Models have mic inputs and red, green, and blue lights with eight effects, like speed control and a dim function. They’ve got plenty of power and can only be fired up by someone with the key — in this case Doom and the magazine, both of whom walked away with a pair. That is, as much as someone with high-end speaker components in their shoes can walk away with anything. Click the source link for more pics or check a “making of” video after the break.

Continue reading MF Doom Sneaker Speakers are perfect for the supervillain rapper who has everything (video)

MF Doom Sneaker Speakers are perfect for the supervillain rapper who has everything (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 May 2011 13:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Protecting intellectual property sounds like such a noble cause that you’d have to be a anarchistic free-market extremist to be against the idea, right? Actually, we don’t think Google CEO Eric Schmidt is particularly extreme in any definable way, yet this past week he spoke with gusto, railing against the proposed Protect IP Act, which was designed to “prevent online threats to economic creativity and theft of intellectual property.” If passed into law, it would give the government the right to shut down any “Internet site dedicated to infringing activities” — “infringing activities” largely being of the sort that allows dude A to download copyrighted item B from dude C when it’s unclear whether dude C has legal rights to be distributing B in the first place.

So, you know, it’s targeting the Pirate Bay and its ilk, giving government officials greater power to sweep in and snag the domains of such sites. Schmidt calls this approach a set of “arbitrarily simple solutions to complex problems” that “sets a very bad precedent.” The precedent? That it’s okay for democratic governments to go and kill any site they don’t like, something Schmidt says would only encourage restrictive policies in countries like China. While we don’t think China really needs any sort of encouragement at all to keep on building up its Great Firewall, we tend to agree that this is a much more complicated problem than the Act makes it out to be. That said, one must admit that Schmidt’s opinions are necessarily somewhat swayed by the knowledge that any such law would also have a negative impact on the business of search engines in general.

But of course no such volley of words could go unanswered from the two shining knights of copyright protection, the MPAA and RIAA, which mounted up their corporate blogs, rode down from twin castles full of lawyers, and collectively told Schmidt he’s full of it. The MPAA spun Schmidt’s comments into some sort of act of civil disobedience, saying that “Google seems to think it’s above America’s laws.” Meanwhile, the RIAA called the statement “a confusing step backwards by one of the most influential internet companies.” Obviously it’s only going to get nastier from here, so buckle your seatbelts, place your bets, and hang on to your BitTorrent clients.

The Protect IP Act: Google’s Eric Schmidt squares off against RIAA and MPAA originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 May 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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