Hasta La Gadget!

After many successful years with label Virgin/EMI, the electronic music duo known as Daft Punk will be headed to Columbia records with the promise of a brand new full-length album set for this Spring. Though the details surrounding the new album are scant, we do know that Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo have indeed left Virgin records – this is a monster happening due to their extended period rocking and rolling under the label – nearly 17 years!

The it’s apparent that the team will not be doing any extensive touring inside the first half of the year, the rumor mill remains strong with notes of a possible support push for late in the year. This same mill of rumors did tip the team to be hitting up Coachella in April, and we know that to not be true in the least, so we’ll be eating a full bag of salty chips with the tour business. As far as the team moving forward with an album, however, we’re ready for that action all day long.

The original note of this change-over for the music team comes from NME where they also suggest that the group Chic’s Nile Rodgers will be joining them for one or more songs. They also suggest that Paul Williams, Giorgio Moroder, Animal Collective’s Panda Bear, and Chilly Gonzales will be collaborating with Daft Punk in this new release. Let’s just call it Animal Sounds and be done with it – if you know what I mean.

This album will be the fourth full original album release from Daft Punk, but fifth if you count their work on Tron: Legacy. The covers of these albums are included in the gallery below, with the Tron: Legacy soundtrack (all made by Daft Punk alone and in a severely original manner) coming in at 2010 and “Human After All” coming before it in 2007. The first album they created and released with enough tracks to be considered an LP was 1997′s “Homework” while the 2001 album “Discovery” was also accompanied by a film release by the name of Interstella 5555, a full animated realization of the album, track by track.

Daft Punk is now a multi-national super-hits group that’s taken the world by storm, being well known not only for their music, but for their elaborate live concerts and appearances in media from high-budget Hollywood films (Tron) down to syndicated television (The Simpsons). We’ll be watching this explosive next release with great interest!

[via Dancing Astronaut]

Daft Punk album 4 tipped as duo hits Columbia Records is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Creating a touch screen wherever you have a flat surface has certain perks. Find out how one company is making that dream a reality for consumers and companies. The folks over at the Light Touch company are making this a reality for homes, offices and businesses a reality with their product that allows any flat place to become a touch screen.

If you’re the type of drinker who can’t tell when enough is enough, then maybe these ‘smart’ ice cubes can help you out. They’re not really ice cubes in the sense that they aren’t made from water and all. However, they’re supposed to go into your glass along with your drink in order to use them.

Each cube is made up of an accelerometer, some IR receivers, a battery, and an LED light which is molded into a jelly-like substance. This way, its insides are kept dry and the taste of your drink will remain unaffected.

The cube works by keeping track of how many sips the person has had and compares it with a timer to estimate the level of intoxication. The light goes from green to yellow to red to signal when the person has had enough. It’s a rough system that doesn’t consider a bunch of other things when it comes to intoxication, like a person’s tolerance to alcohol or the legal limits, but it’s a pretty good start.

These ‘smart ice cubes’ were built by Dhairya Dand, a student at MIT’s Media Lab.

[via Gizmag]

It looks like data use for smart phone users is on the rise, a change from the past when tablets ruled the data useage landscape. And will the iPhone users finally be dethroned from their data usage dominance by Samsung?

A look at a mouseless mouse that lets your fingers do the browsing.