We're just days away from the Christmas holiday, and to help usher it in is a new video from Boston Dynamics, the company behind robots like Spot the 'dog'. Its' new video doesn't give us a creepy glimpse of the future, though, or reveal a new type of robotic hellhound. Rather, it gives us a real-world twist on classic Santa imagery: a sleigh being pulled by three robotic reindeer.
Today we've got a tree-full of Star Wars gift ideas for the absolute last minute - that's right now - before the end of the holiday season. This guide doubles as a "everything you missed" guide for the Star Wars fan. Oddities and stuff you never knew you needed. Electronics, Star Wars takes on essentials, and a selfie stick. And action figures. Don't you EVER forget action figures when it comes to Star Wars merchandise.
Believe it or not, BB-8 remains part of our everyday lives three months after we published our first review. This little guy sits charging next to my television - I'm just a few feet away from him right now. That's a real rarity when it comes to reviews of oddities. With a smartphone, sure - it's not unheard of that I might stick with a smartphone for months and months. But a toy? In this case, even though I've reviewed products galore in the meantime, this BB-8 by Sphero toy has remained in heavy circulation.
The White House is decked in its holiday trimmings, and you can get an up close and personal look at those decorations from the comfort of your living room and one of Google’s Cardboard headsets. This is thanks to a new 360-degree YouTube video published on the White House’s YouTube account and filmed with Google’s Jump platform. The video doubles as a VR field trip for schools to utilize.
At some point during the holidays you'll have a realization: inviting more people over means having to decorate more cookies, and having to decorate more cookies makes you want to flip a table or two. Enter a new ingenious LEGO machine created by JK Brickworks’ Jason Allemann, the EV Icer automated cookie frosting decorator. With a certain LEGO Mindstorms set and patience, you can make your own.
Star Wars fans are eagerly awaiting the day of December 18th, when The Force Awakens will be set free at movie theaters across the country, but what about on Christmas Day? How can the Force make its presence known while families are gathered around their Christmas tree? With new official Star Wars Christmas ornaments, that's how. Four new sets have just been announced by Merchoid, each with six baubles, and are available now on their website.
Thanksgiving: there's festivities and friends and football, and if you're fortunate, lots and lots of food. Someone has to cook that food, though, and that someone is probably getting really tired of being inside a kitchen right about now. Fortunately, we live in the modern age and the modern age includes appliances as smart as they are efficient. There are many to choose form, such as these five lifesavers that'll make next Thanksgiving's prep work much easier.
Do yourself a favor and put your cash away. If you see a smartphone on sale this weekend, for a limited time only, don't jump on it. Especially if you've never heard of the phone before. Especially if this phone was not something you'd planned on buying any time soon. A smartphone is not something you should make a quick decision on. At several hundred dollars and a future companion made for several years into the future, this is something you need to think about.
It's the time of year when electronics are sold at bare-minimum cost and appear to be good deals for those that wake up early. Black Friday, it's called - and it's not a great place to shop. It's the place where stores pick up large batches of extremely cheap and terrible pieces of merchandise that, on the surface, seem like they'll be pretty much exactly what a person would want to buy when they've had very little sleep. A big, giant television set! A tablet for next-to-nothing! "Wow, what a good deal," you might be saying to yourself. If it looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is just that.
The holidays are coming, and for some, especially these next few days, that means lots of food and lots of shopping. But for some, it is also a season for giving and for giving back. Google wants to be identified with this latter group and so it is kicking off a new charity program that starts November 24th all the way until the end of the year. And Android Pay will play a major role in it too. Proceeds of this campaign will go to supporting the eduction of children with special needs.
The National Museum of American History opened their new Innovation Wing in Washington DC this week just in time for Independence Day. The LEGO Groups joined in the fun with what is now the world's biggest American Flag made entirely out of LEGO bricks. This flag is a cool nine and a half feet tall and fourteen feet wide, weighing in at 546 pounds in all. That's over 100,000 LEGO bricks in red, white, and blue, with some black for lettering to spell out the name of the new exhibit.
On Memorial Day 2015, a photo of a bald eagle perching on the gravestone of a fallen soldier rings true to the spirit of the day. Today is a day when the United States remembers those women and men who died serving in the country's armed forces, and this one photo taken at Fort Snelling National Cemetery by photographer Frank Glick has struck a nerve. While the photo itself was taken months ago - scratch that, YEARS AGO - the image has spread *again* in a big way since earlier this morning.