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The Real Cost of Netflix Streaming is the Movie, Not the Bandwidth

Everyone knows that Netflix’s future is in streaming, and as a result, the company is investing heavily in titles for its Watch Instantly service. But a closer look at Netflix’s financials underscore how the Internet has changed the movie distribution business, and how it is capitalizing on that trend. Netflix is spending its more money than ever on streaming video, in part because it costs less to deliver that content online than by mail. Read more...

Super simple gaming controller for Android or iPhone

If you’ve got an iPhone or Android device that you use with a Wii remote when gaming, this quick hack will give you the third hand you need to manage all of that hardware. [Syanni85] mounted his Android phone to a Wii wheel for just a few dollars in parts. He ran across the wheel itself at the dollar store, and the phone is held in place using a universal mounting bracket. A small square pad sticks onto the back of any device and mates with a base. Read more...

Some Windows CE-based ATMs especially generous (and vulnerable to hackers)

Speaking at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, a fellow named Barnaby Jack (really!) used custom software to hack Windows CE-based ATMs on stage. After using an industry standard key to gain entry to the machines (apparently many ATM owners are too lazy to install new locks on their machines) Jack was able to load a rootkit on the device using a USB thumb drive. From that point, it was just a matter of running another program that caused all the cash therein to shoot out in a comical manner. Read more...

Longest Pinhole Exposure Ever Is Also Most Beautiful [Photography]

I love pinhole photography. The fact that people will take a gamble on a piece of film for months—or even years—strikes me as almost romantic, like a time capsule. This longest-ever exposure shows 34months of New York life. Read more...

Nintendo to unveil 3DS launch details on September 29th

Nintendo confirmed on Thursday that it is holding an event to announce the details of a new product on September 29th. This centerpiece product for this upcoming event is most likely the Nintendo 3DS, a 3-D portable gaming device unveiled by Nintendo earlier this year. If this supposition pans out, then we can expect Nintendo to announce the official launch date,launch markets, and pricing for this novel gaming device. Read more...

Mozilla's Tab Candy is the first step to sweeter browsing

Tabbed browsing has arguably had a significant impact on the way that people use the Web, but the feature hasn't really scaled to accommodate the increasing complexity of the average surfing session. The existing tab management and overflow handling mechanisms that are present in modern browsers are dated and suffer from some fundamental limitations that significantly detract from user productivity. Read more...

Navigate the American Museum of Natural History with New iPhone App

The American Museum of Natural History today unveiled the American Museum of Natural History Explorer app for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, designed to help users better navigate through the Museum’s various exhibitions.The Museum has been newly outfitted with indoor Wi-Fi, and users can use the app to pinpoint their location and receive turn-by-turn directions through the 45 permanent exhibition halls, theaters, restrooms, cafes and shops. Read more...

Best Buy Connect Service Inks Deal with Clearwire to Offer 4G

Just over a month ago, we told you that Clearwire had their sights set on installing WiMAX modems into a bunch of Intel Core-based notebooks, which would then subsequently be sold through Best Buy some time by the holiday shopping season. Even as the report hit the ‘net, there were still plenty of questions. Read more...

Groupon Eyes Further Growth with Personalized Deals

Groupon’s model has always been to serve to up a single daily deal per city, per day. Yesterday, the company nearly reinvented itself when it kicked off its Personalized Deals initiative.With Personalized Deals, Groupon subscribers in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, Seattle and New York City will receive deals tailored to their personal tastes and previous purchase behaviors. Read more...

iMac's latest 27-inch iteration requires special parts for your own SSD in second drive bay

One of the few highlights of the refreshed 27-inch iMac is the new SSD option for its second drive bay. This sure is good news for performance addicts carrying some spare cash, but with the 256GB SSD addition costing from $750, some may prefer the DIY route to save a few pennies for that gold iPad. Read more...

What Is Apple Secretly Downloading From Your iPhone at Night? [Apple]

Something weird is going on at night with your iPhone: Large quantities of data are being transferred without any authorization. It's not just a few bytes. It's dozens of megabytes, and nobody knows what's happening, but it's a problem. Read more...

This Is a Gun [Guns]

This cube may look like hell's version of Jenga, but it's actually an elaborate, 125-piece puzzle. The solution? A single-shot 45-caliber muzzle-loading pistol called the Intimidator. No, seriously. See for yourself. Read more...

UK Finds Google Innocent In Street View Privacy Brouhaha [Google]

Google's been cleared of any wrongdoing in the UK over the accidental collection of Wi-Fi network details by their Street View cars, with the Information Commissioner Office (ICO) stating "On the basis of the samples we saw, we are satisfied so far that it is unlikely that Google will have captured significant amounts of personal data." The lawsuit against Google in the US is still undecided. Read more...

Why You Need to Monitor and Measure Your Brand on Social Media

Maria Ogneva is the Director of Social Media at Attensity, a social media engagement and voice-of-customer platform that helps the social enterprise serve and collaborate with the social customer. You can follow her on Twitter at @themaria or @attensity360, or find her musings on her personal blog and her company’s blog. Read more...

Google hopes to make $10 billion per year thanks to Android

At the moment, Google may not make too much money from Android, but the Mountain View-based company seems to have big plans for the near future. Talking to The Wall Street Journal, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said that the company “is positioning itself to earn $10 billion or more per year in the mobile device business.” Schmidt says that this would be possible with 1 billion people using Android phones. Read more...

YouTube Increasing Upload Limit from 10 to 15 Minutes [YouTube]

Since YouTube's launch, the longest video you could upload was 10 minutes. No longer! Boing Boing reports that in the near future, that limit will rise to 15 minutes. Read more...

Samsung refreshes X Series laptop lineup with Core i3 ULV chips

If you've got a hankering for some battery-sipping Core i3 ULV processors and live south of a certain 38th parallel line, you'll probably want to take a close look at one of Samsung's new designs. We hear on good authority that Sammy's refreshed its X Series laptops with the 1.2GHz Core i3-330M processor, including the 11. Read more...

Nintendo 3DS Availability and Price Will be Announced on September 29th, Nintendo Announces

This is a good way to start your Nintendo news for the day. In a move that may seem confusing to some, Nintendo has come forward today and made an official announcement regarding the Nintendo 3DS — the new, handheld video game console that features glasses-free 3D technology. Read more...

Graphic calculator as a spectrum analyzer

[Michael Vincent] turned his TI-84 Plus into a spectrum analyzer. By running some assembly code on the device the link port can be used as an I2C bus (something we’ll have to keep in mind). After being inspired by the cell phone spectrum analyzer he set out to build a module compatible with the calculator by using an I2C port expander to interface with a radio receiver module. Now he can sniff out signals between 2.400 and 2.495 GHz and display the finds like in the image above. Read more...

MAKE Volume 23: Gadgets

MAKE Volume 23 is on newsstands now! In this special GADGETS issue, we show you how to make a menagerie of delightful machines: a miniature electronic Whac-a-Mole arcade game, a tiny but mighty see-through audio amplifier, a magic mirror that contains an interactive animated soothsayer, a self-balancing one-wheeled Gyrocar, and the Most Useless Machine — the creepy mechanical box whose only purpose is to turn itself off (as seen on The Colbert Report!). Read more...

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