Legal protection for people who unlock their mobile phones to use them on other networks expired last weekend. According to the claims of major U.S. wireless carriers, unlocking a phone bought after January 26 without your carrier’s permission violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) whether the phone is under contract or not. In a way, this is not as bad as it sounds. In other ways, it’s even worse. More »
You’re never going to love Office, because it’s Office—it’s the thing you use to make money and do things you actually enjoy. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be (relatively) painless, affordable, and smart. Starting today, it is. More »
Office—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, the old frenemies—are out of beta and ready to buy. Sort of: you buy the newest version of Office like you buy Netflix or Spotify, with a subscription. And it makes a hell of a lot of sense. More »
As expected, Apple let a 128GB iPad out of the bag today. And there’s almost zero chance you should buy it. More »
Stale tobacco smell. It clings to clothing, permeates wall paint, saturates upholstery, and brands everything it touches with that unmistakable scent. Here’s how to keep from smelling like an ashtray just because your roommate won’t show the common courtesy of cracking a window. More »
If you haven’t heard of Vine—Twitter’s video-sharing app—before today, it might’ve come across your screen this morning after a brief scandal: a dildo porn clip was featured as an “editor’s pick.” Porn on Vine—crazy, right? No. Shut up. There’s porn on almost everything, and there always will be. More »
John Naughton at the Guardian has a perfect—albeit obvious—observation: Despite their overwhelming dominance, Facebook and Apple will eventually fall. “History should teach us that for today’s technology industry titans, the only way is down.” That goes for Google, too. And Amazon. It’s inevitable. More »
I’ve always hated BlackBerry phones. Disgracefully ugly bricks they were—until the BlackBerry Z10. The BlackBerry Z10 is hot. Truly beautiful, elegant hardware. If the OS is as nice as it seemed at CES, I will totally snatch one up. More »
Gizmodo friend Gerald Donovan has sent us an amazing 2.6 GB, 360-degree panorama from the very top of the highest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. You know, where Tom Cruise perched to be closer to Xenu and look out over all of us lousy, pill-popping humans. It’ll take your breath away. More »
Sure, your phone can take a decent picture, but it’s not even in the same universe as the best camera the government’s got. At 1.8 gigapixels, the DARPA-developed ARGUS-IS the highest resolution surveillance platform in the world, and, when mounted to a drone, can single-handedly do the work of an army of 100 predator drones watching the area of one medium-sized city. More »