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Cop Block Comes To OnStar

SF writer Greg Bear, author of classics like Darwin’s Radio and Blood Music, wrote a novel that predicted yesterday’s announcement from OnStar that they would be installing systems that allow police to shut your car down. The OnStar system is called “Stolen Vehicle Slowdown,” and when activated would slow down and stop a moving car … Continued

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Space Is More Fun Without Space Travel

The end of the Space Age was the best thing that ever happened to science fiction, claims author Gerard J. DeGroot: When the space age ended, the alien age began. In the early 1990s, the Disney Corporation decided to close down its Mission to Mars ride, itself a direct descendant of the Rocket to the … Continued

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Who Speaks For Clones?

While all the attention given to human cloning has focused almost solely on questions of morality and bioethics – or on religion and the nature of government power – little energy has gone into questioning the literary impact a human clone might someday have. Yet it’s an interesting question: Will clones someday write novels? While … Continued

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Forbidden LEGO Book Shows You Naughty Projects to Build

Here’s one of five projects from a new book entitled Forbidden LEGO, showing you cool guns ‘n’ shit that you really would have liked to build when you were a kid but, well, mommy might have gotten pissed. And hey, you could’ve put an eye out with that thing. Projects also included in the book … Continued

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National Geographic Releasing ‘The Cameraphone Book’ For Some Reason

National Geographic knows where the money is: lazy and stupid people. That’s why they’re releasing The Cameraphone Book, a 160-page tome on how to take crappy pictures of your drunk friends using your phone. How they pulled 160 pages’ worth of material out of their asses is beyond me, because most cameraphones don’t have all … Continued

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Harry Potter Hacked?

It’s very unlikely, but someone claims to have hacked into the publishing house that distributes the Harry Potter books (Bloomsbury) and obtained the final manuscript of the soon-to-arrive 7th book. This man (kid) supposedly got into the computers of the publisher by sending a link to a browser exploit through email and having the publisher … Continued

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Snell ICS 1030 Bookshelf Speakers Look Like Books, Other Stuff

Finally, once and for all you can prove to those naysayers that you are actually a smart individual by tricking them into thinking you own some books. The Snell ICS 1030 Bookshelf Speaker is a two-speaker bookshelf speaker that will actually be painted to whatever you want it to look like, in this case, books. … Continued

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Going Digital: Training Wheels for DigiCam Noobs

We show you so many digital cameras and camcorders here on the Giz, you must be getting bleary-eyed just trying to sort through all the choices. Coming to your aid is Going Digital, a book by technology columnist and radio host Alex Goldfayn that helps you noobs navigate through that thicket of info and specs, … Continued

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iLounge Releases The Free iPod Book 2.0

Yeah, you may think you are Mr. or Ms. iPod, but there still must be questions about that little white device that must boggle your mind. Enter The Free iPod Book 2.0, written and developed by the guys over at iLounge. This book is absolutely ridiculous. It is 194 pages of everything you could ever … Continued

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Backscratching: Glenn Reynolds’ An Army of Davids

Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds sent me a copy of his new book, An Army of Davids a couple weeks back. Glenn occasionally does guest reviews for us here at Gizmodo, so it’s the least we can do to get the word out about his book—it’s obvious he’s put a lot of research into it. I’m about … Continued

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Home-Made Book Scanner

Who needs a $35,000 book scanner when you can just make one of your own with mostly household items? Most of this project was constructed with the help of an eraser and Legos. It uses the eraser to act as a grip for the page turner and an upside-down Epson scanner that is hooked up … Continued

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ATIZ BookDrive Automatic Book Scanner

ATIZ has developed an automatic book scanner that is of a somewhat-reasonable size. There are a couple other automatic book scanners out there but they are huge machines according to Art Sarasin, president of ATIZ. This machine uses a page-turning mechanism. It connects via USB 2.0 and all you do is designate how many pages … Continued