Last year's rollout of a refreshed UI across Google's essential suite of web apps proved that the company isn't afraid to experiment with design. Now, a group of Russian designers have offered up a video containing some additional changes they'd like to see at some point in the future. Titled...
Now if they'd only do something about Google Reader
Leading Japanese carrier NTT Docomo has shown off a prototype transparent touchscreen that can be operated from both sides. One advantage of the display is the ability to modify traditional screen taps in a manner akin to the Shift key on a...
Wikipedia lives and dies by its edits, and the process of adding information to the site is not without controversy. With debates flaring up around most pages dedicated to contentious subject matter, the edit history of the page itself can be a valuable source for points of view that don't make it into the article for long. That's the thinking behind NYU Tisch student Kate Tibbets' Wiki-History...
A rather unusual event took place in New York City this past Sunday: the New York Mets' Citi Field was filled to capacity with Orthodox Jews — males only, in keeping with the religion's code — who were there to attend a rally about the dangers of the internet. So populous was the gathering that nearby Arthur Ashe stadium (20,000 capacity) had to also be rented out, while women interested in observing events were provided "viewing parties" in Orthodox neighborhoods of Brooklyn and New Jersey.
"The siren song of the Internet entices us! It brings out the worst of us!" Eytan Kobre, event spokesperson
"Killer gaming performance, poor battery life." Frogger40
Facebook’s $16 billion IPO values the young company at $104 billion, bigger than McDonald’s, Citigroup, and Amazon. Its debut on the stock market today caps a remarkable run for the eight-year-old social network. Begun in a Harvard dorm room, it is now one of the largest companies on the web in terms of its user base and global reach. Mark Zuckerberg has proven a ruthless leader with an eye...
Waterstones, one of the UK's largest booksellers, has signed a deal with Amazon to sell Kindle devices together with "new e-reading services." Details of the partnership are very thin at present, with more announcements said to be coming this fall. James Daunt, Managing Director of Waterstones, said that the store won't simply be reselling the Kindle, but rather offering its own services on top:
O2 has announced new Olympic Games editions of its Galaxy Note and Galaxy Y smartphones, which feature either the Union Jack or Team GB logo emblazoned across their back covers. The Olympic editions also include a £1 (around $1.55) contribution to Team GB athletes of the future, and the chance to win an "exclusive Team Samsung experience." The prize consists of a pair of tickets to the games, the Team GB training camp, and a "Team GB celebration event taking place in London." The handsets are available through O2's website, and also come with the standard black back cover.
If you're a Facebook user as well as a fan of staying on top of the ever-churning news cycle, you're going to love this. As you know, The Verge is able to track long, complicated news stories over time thanks to our StoryStream technology (part of the ingenious Chorus platform which powers all of Vox Media). What you might not know is that now if you "like" one of our StoryStreams on Facebook, you'll automatically see major updates to that...
Automatic updates mean never having to worry that you're missing news
We've seen some memorable Minecraft recreations in recent years, but a programmer known as [eloraam] has taken things to the next level with RedPower 2 — a mod she used to create a fully emulated 6502 computer. As explained in the 23-minute tutorial below, the [eloraam]'s system essentially...
Audi used its presence at the 2012 Wörthersee Tour to show off the auto maker's sleek electric bike concept — fittingly named the e-bike Wörthersee. The company claims the bike, featuring a lightweight 3.53-pound carbon fiber construction, has been crafted with "sport, fun, and tricks" in...
The Optimus 3D Max is perhaps the most puzzling entry in LG’s 2012 lineup. Priced at €499.99 (around $635) SIM-free in the EU, it's something of a second flagship (behind the incoming Optimus 4X HD) for the Korean conglomerate, and as such...
Panasonic is announcing that its 12–35mm f/2.8 lens for the Micro Four Thirds system will be arriving in Japan on June 21st for a healthy price of ¥124,950 (about $1,580). The lens is the world’s first Micro Four Thirds zoom with an f/2.8 aperture across its entire focal...
Just hours ago, RIM and Motorola submitted an updated proposal for the design of the so-called 4FF nano-SIM, a smaller replacement for the 3FF micro-SIM used in many phones today (most notably the iPhone 4 and 4S). Debate between competing nano-SIM designs — one from Apple, another from a joint...
A new Oregon law that goes into effect on June 4th is set to provide handsome tax breaks to data centers within the state, offering significant savings to Amazon, Google, and other companies that have have already created facilities there. Under the law, Oregon's data centers will be taxed only on their local value, and not on intangible assets such as their national brand value. This exemption would therefore...
Samsung has said that it's going to put more of a focus on its interchangeable lens cameras, and the company has just shown us its refreshed NX series: the DSLR-like NX20, the rangefinder-styled NX210, and the diminutive NX1000. All three of the...
The arcade as we know it may not exist anymore in the US, but there was a time when they were big enough to garner their own TV shows. The Awl has dug up the intro to "Battle of the Video Games," a spectacular taste of the culture of 1983 — that's nearly thirty years ago if you've conveniently...
Facebook's long-awaited IPO experienced its fair share of setbacks on Friday, as NASDAQ dealt with a bevy of glitches and intense demand that...
Some may have called it "creepy," but tiny fabric-climbing robot Clothbot wants nothing more than to explore the surface of your jeans or jacket. The robot, presented at last week's IEEE...
It may have been delayed by a few days, but MVNO Voyager Mobile has opened its doors for business today after its original launch plans were thwarted by a "malicious network attack" on May 15th. As a refresher, the service provider repackages and sells Sprint's CDMA (3G) and WiMAX network as part of a $39 per month, contract-free unlimited talk,...
AT&T and Nokia went all-out for the launch of the Lumia 900 last month, but if you're looking for another white, LTE-enabled Windows Phone with a 4-inch screen on AT&T, you'll want to know that the Samsung Focus 2 is available now. AT&T is selling the phone for $49.99 with a two-year contract —...
Getting to speak with Damon Lindelof, the co-creator of Lost and screenwriter of Prometheus, was undoubtably an On The Verge highlight. In this teaser from our show last Thursday, Lindelof tells our own Joshua Topolsky about director Ridley Scott's strong hand in the creative process during the making of Prometheus — it turns out that when you're working with a director like Scott, screenwriting can be somewhat comparable to Mad Libs, with Lindelof filling in the blanks around Scott's vision.
The full episode will be available Monday, including the full interview with Lindelof, Paul Miller's encounter with Masi Oka (of Heroes and Hawaii...
Reports came in this morning that Twitter has been blocked in Pakistan due to tweets regarding a competition to post depictions of the Prophet Muhammad — an act that many believe to be blasphemous. According to BBC News the country's Ministry of Information Technology directed internet service providers to block access to the site, and there's no word when the service will come back online. The competition itself was apparently hosted on Facebook, and the Associated Press reports that...
The Ludum Dare game jam, themed this year around "tiny worlds," has previously proved a fertile source of browser games, most recently Extensionism. Super Strict Farmer (built, like several of the others, in 48 hours) takes inspiration from S...
Today we can use computers to create incredibly realistic graphics, but in the 1980s that wasn't really the case. But in spite of their relative simplicity, computer graphics from that decade hold a certain amount of nostalgia for many of us, and...
We all know the feeling. You're sleepless in the sad hours of the night or stumbling around early on a hazy weekend morning in need of something to read, and that pile of unread books just isn't cutting it. Why not take a break from the fire hose of Twitter and RSS and check out our weekly roundup of essential writing from around the web about technology, culture, media, and the future? Sure, it's one more thing you can feel guilty about...
Everyone who reads science fiction can probably name some of the movements and fads that have come and gone in the last century. Stephanie Fox of io9 has gone a step further and actually analyzed the distance into the future that science fiction was set during different decades. Fox collected 250 random works of science fiction (in book, movie, TV, and comic form, although it's limited to works readily available in America) created between...
