Gadgets
OpenOfficeMouse has frankly preposterous 18 buttons, joystick
And now, a heart-warming tale of a dream come true. One day, a World of Warcraft-loving gamer decided he just couldn't take it any more. His mouse just didn't have enough buttons to deploy all his l33t skillz. He'd do something about it, just you watch. He'd make his own mouse, and it would have 18 buttons, 63 programmable profiles and an analogue joystick. He'd team up with OpenOffice to give it brand recognition and a grown-up use. It would be called OpenOfficeMouse.
Yes, it's real. No, it's not a joke, or a hilarious over-reaction to Apple's spartan Magic Mouse. The anonymous gamer has setup his own company, called WarMouse, and this is its first product. It's about to go into production and it will set you back $75 (£45). That might sound excessive for a mouse, but in comparison with products such as Razer's Mamba (£100), Logitech's G9 (around £50) and Microsoft's Sidewinder X8 (£50), it's good value, offering far greater customisability. Continue reading...
Crumbs! Large Hadron Collider suffers snack-related bird mishap
Yet another bizarre accident has befallen the Large Hadron Collider. The enormous particle accelerator, buried deep beneath France and Switzerland, overheated when it was invaded by a piece of baguette, apparently dropped by a bird.
The Register reports that the bread entered machinery above ground. Honestly, they've spent over £3.5bn on the thing, you'd think CERN could afford a tarpaulin, or perhaps a Wendy house. Continue reading...
Top 10 geek recipes
It's the question on everyones' lips: "What do the world's greatest geeks eat, and how can I cook these dishes?" It's easy to forget that every geek has a food-port in the middle of their facial interface zone. But when they weren't redefining the fabric of modern society, many of the world's most famous nerds took time out to snarf a burger. Not so in the case of Steve Jobs, of course -- he's far more likely to be nibbling on a couscous flan. So take hold of our podgy little hand while we guide you through the top 10 geek recipes. Let's get cooking! Continue reading...
Digg is dead: Twitter killed it and Google helped bury the corpse
If you don't know what Digg is, you're probably either over 14-years-old or you do all your fighting with people on YouTube. Either way, it doesn't matter, because we've checked its pulse, and Digg is dead. Oh sure, it has millions of users and a fiercely loyal core following -- but that doesn't mean we're wrong. It's holed below the waterline and we're going to show you who fired the broadside. Continue reading...
Why won't they die? The tech we won't forget
If you were born, it's highly likely you'll die. Sorry about that. For consumer tech, it's not quite so cut and dried. There are some gadgets that just refuse to kick the shiny bucket, in the manner of Daniella Westbrook -- the chick whose nose fell off.
Dearest reader, we're about to explore the technologies that defy the wishes of Silicon Heaven's Grim Reaper, and delve into the more pressing matter of why they refuse his cold embrace. Why do real people -- not IT departments or tech professionals, but the chap in the street, who's paid tax on this money, why does he keep buying this obsolete junk? We'll start with something you'd be forgiven for thinking was a bizarre first choice. Continue reading...
Plug versus Plug
We might be British, but that doesn't mean we're generally swelling with national pride. After all, there's much about the UK that's simply broken and highly annoying (Hello, trains! Take a bow, Royal Mail!). We do have some things going for us though. Our health system means if we get ill, we get treated -- and our power plugs are excellent.
Yes, you read correctly. We said power plugs. Continue reading...
Interview: The man who makes killer robots for the US military
It sounds like the opening scene of a Terminator movie: a team of intelligent air, land and sea robots working together to hunt down a group of human soldiers. Detected by infrared sensors mounted on a cyber-jetski, the platoon is forced to take shelter in a beach bunker. Stealthy flying drones then co-ordinate an attack, flushing the panicked warriors right into the arms of a pair of tracked and armed ground robots. Game over, man.
This isn't some far-flung, fictional future, but a genuine exercise that pitted real soldiers against real robots designed by the US military's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Centre -- Spawar for short. For decades, Spawar has been quietly building up an army of autonomous robots that are among the smartest and deadliest on the planet, and we were lucky enough to be invited to its San Diego labs to witness the future of robotic warfare firsthand. Continue reading...
Every BBC iPlayer device tested
The BBC's iPlayer is compatible with so many portable devices now it's almost funny. In terms of ease of access to on-demand content, Auntie has pushed the boat so far out it's barely a dot on the horizon.
So the time has come to survey the best ways to watch the iPlayer. Over the last year we've tested a huge number compatible devices, from phones, to PMPs, to games consoles. Here, we've collected together our thoughts on the iPlayer functionality of every compatible device currently on general sale. Continue reading...
Secret Cinema goes Alien: In Shoreditch, no-one can hear you tweet
This Halloween, Crave joined Secret Cinema for a screening of Alien in a deserted East London warehouse, transformed for the evening into a suitably eerie set from the film.
Secret Cinema puts on location-specific screenings, only revealing the film at the last minute. The entertainment begins as soon as you arrive: punters, here known as 'recruits', were issued with jumpsuits emblazoned with Nostromo crew insignia. The queue and the location are roamed by actors re-creating moments from the film. Continue reading...
Interview: The Space Station's IT guys
It's the most expensive single thing ever built (£92bn and counting), the quickest manned vehicle in existence (17,300mph) and the staging point for future Moon and Mars missions. But when computers on board the International Space Station go down, the astronauts living there do the same as any office drone in Slough -- they call IT. We were lucky enough to meet Tyson Tucker and Joey Crawford, the NASA flight controllers responsible for maintaining uptime in mankind's first permanent space colony.
Tucker and Crawford work at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as part of a three-shift team that provides IT support -- 24 hours a day, 365 days a year -- for the Space Station orbiting 250 miles above their heads. Their OCA (Orbital Communications Adaptor) team has its own MPSR (Multi Purpose Support Room) where they maintain data, video and voice links with the ever-growing International Space Station (ISS), oversee the LAN (local area network)... and probably invent AFMA (a few more acronyms). Continue reading...
