Iconic amplifier company Marshall has expanded into selling people drums and headphones over the past couple of years – and now they’ve announced a mini-fridge that looks like an amp on the outside, but has an inside made to hold dozens of cold beverages. Shut up and take my money.
NASA officials have announced that the first launch of a commercially built space capsule to the International Space Station is scheduled for the end of April. California-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) are the dudes responsible for the capsule in question, the unmanned Dragon spacecraft.
Well this is new, and sort of neat. For the new V40, Volvo is introducing the world’s first pedestrian airbag system, designed to reduce the severity of pedestrian injuries in a car-pedestrian collision. Alternatively it could double as a sweet new inflatable mattress on the hood of your car.
A new website, called Dollar Shave Club, just launched. What are they all about? Look, I can tell you – or you can watch this video. The level of awesomeness you are about to experience knows no boundaries. Check it out inside.
Another alternative to Apple’s iCloud popped up this week, with Google has announcing that it will be combining the Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore into a new cloud-based service called Google Play, allowing users to access all of their media across all of their Android devices.
It’s less than a week to go until the iPad 3 is unveiled, so everybody and their grandma is throwing out thoughts about what the new toy can do. Concrete stats are emerging though – Apple employees have been browsing the web with their personal iPad 3’s, turning up details about the new tablet on website server logs.
The music video for “DoYaThing” — the new collaboration between the Gorillaz, Andre 3000 and LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy – dropped yesterday, as part of Converse’s ongoing “3 Artists, 1 Song” campaign. The promo track was released along with the limited edition Chuck Taylor All Star Gorillaz Collection, which is on sale now.
Apple’s iOS has been under fire for allowing third-party apps to access users’ location data and contacts without permission – and now it looks like photos and videos have been compromised too. The New York Times used a test app to prove that the security software had a giant loophole in its privacy settings.
Hey, future. Mercedes-Benz unveiled plans yesterday to use Siri – the virtual assistant exclusive to the iPhone 4S – to power its new A-class electronics system, called “Drive Kit Plus,” which will allow drivers to access their iPhone apps using voice commands. In case you ever feel like updating your Twitter status while driving something sexy.
Facebook is expected to file for an IPO later today – Wednesday morning stateside – raising $5 billion. This is a fair deal less than the $10 billion previously rumored. Folks figure Zuckerberg wants to start with a conservative base at first. Because he can’t be sure this “Face-book” thing is going to take off.
Whoops. Looks like somewhere between Eric Schmidt and Larry Page, Google forgot their ‘don’t be evil’ rule and turned into the creepy uncle of the internet. Well, the other creepy uncle of the internet. It now follows users’ activities across YouTube, Gmail, Google Plus and Google Search, among others. Everybody, clear your history.
Apple is holding a product event later this month in New York – and since the Christmas buy-a-palooza is just past, it’s looking unlikely that they’re going to be announcing any new hardware just yet. Instead, Apple seems set to refurbish iBooks, their eBook retail platform, with a couple of new publishing options.
IBM have released their annual predictions for the future of technology, via the IBM “5 in 5” project, which looks at five innovations which they figure will transform modern life within the next five years; these include mind-reading computers, human-generated electricity, and biometric scanning replacing passwords.
In a worrying move for people who like their internet uncensored, a federal judge in Nevada has ruled that Chanel has the right seize 700 domain names that have been peddling fake Chanel products – and that search engines and social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Bing, and Google, are to “de-index” the domains.
Akio Toyoda, Toyota’s president, described the freshly-unveiled Fun-Vii as “a smartphone on four-wheels,” which sounds like something you would say to describe a car with lots of gadgets. Except Toyota’s new concept car, unveiled ahead of the Tokyo Auto show is like a smartphone on four wheels because it has giant touchscreen doors.
I feel a little bad for Widen + Kennedy, Old Spice’s advertising agency; everything they’ve done since introducing Isaiah Mustafa as the Old Spice Guy has been subject to comparison, not always fairly. Which is a pity, because they’re killing it here with their new “Smell Better Than Yourself” campaign. Check out the video, after the jump.
Cosmetics line, Lip Smacker has unveiled a new line of Girl Scout Cookie-themed lip balm tubes featuring balms matching five well known cookie flavours – Thin Mints, Trefoils, Tagalongs, Do-si-dos, or Samoas. So, you know, now you can have whole minutes of cookie taste on your lips without any impact on your hips.
While Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of RIM, has already publicly apologized for last week’s three-day BlackBerry outage, the PR guys figured that that probably wasn’t enough. Which is why they’ve announced that they’re offering BlackBerry customers a bunch of free “premium apps,” in the hopes of winning back some love. Check the app list after the jump.
Virgin Atlantic announced that their planes will soon be able to fly from London to Hong Kong on fuel that produces half the carbon of regular jet fuel – which is sort of huge news, given that flying is one of our most carbon-intensive activities, enough to offset any good otherwise done by unplugging unused appliances or whatever.
As part of its promotional campaign for the new Chrome operating system, Google has quietly opened up its first retail store in London, called the “Chrome Zone”. The store is Google’s first venture in realspace retail, using the location to sell its Chromebook computer line.
Coca-Cola Australia has launched an innovative campaign called “Share a Coke”, by replacing its brand name on its bottles and cans with 150 different ordinary names in the run up to Christmas. They’re hoping it will go “viral”. “Cool”.
We know you love BOS Ice Tea – those trendy, brightly coloured cans of deliciousness – but did you know Sir Alex Ferguson loves it too? The well-known manager of Manchester United has just bought a stake in this very cool South African Rooibos brand. And for a product that only recently celebrated its first birthday, that’s pretty boss.
Hoo. So American Apparel wanted to inaugurate the introduction of an XL size into their clothing range by holding an online model search for plus-sized women to promote the new threads. Enter Nancy Upton, who, offended by the contest, sent in photos of herself gorging on ice-cream on her kitchen floor. And then won.
Sleek, compact design, leather seats, carbon fiber chassis. This is what a baby needs in a stroller today, right? This is the future? Swedish designer Dawid Dawod thinks so, having collaborated with Porsche Design to put together the P’4911 for parents with their fiscal priorities in order.
Australian artist and ‘body architect’ Lucy McRae, in collaboration with Harvard biologist Sheref Mansy, is releasing these little digestible capsules that make human skin emit perfume scents. Which is nice and futuristic, I think. And by futuristic I mean I have no idea how this thing works.
So Nonhle Thema – from Vuzu reality show Nonhle Goes to Hollywood, and the former face of the Dark and Lovely brand – seems to be having a bit of a freak-out on Twitter. She’s eager to tell everybody that she is “young and RICH……….LOL…..DEAL WITH IT PLEASE…” Over and over again.
Google Wallet and Google Offers launched yesterday, both of which sound supremely cool – PayPal’s grumblings (and lawsuits) about commercial espionage notwithstanding. Google Wallet lets users swipe their phones in lieu of credit cards, even allowing subscription to a new prepaid Google debit card; Google Offers looks to work like a virtual loyalty card.
CocaCola turns 125 today, friends. “Nothing refreshes like CocaCola!”.
Indeed, except for cocaine, which put the Coca in CocaCola for the first thirty-odd years of production. Now you know.