Hardware

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Since 2006, Maker Faire has offered tens of thousands of people an annual celebration of the best and brightest in the do-it-yourself movement.

But while everyone from individual tinkerers who have built small rockets to two people doing amazing things with Diet Coke and Mentos to paper airplane masters and crafters making magic out of felt has had a venue for the last five years to showcase their innovative projects, there's never been a forum for the growing number of people and companies that are developing the new business platforms that are merging manufacturing and making. … Read more

Those of you who loved Lenovo's classic-style laptop keyboards can wave bye-bye to them.

With the new 2012 T-series ThinkPads, Lenovo has put the final nail in the coffin of the classic keyboard once made popular by IBM.

Lenovo stuck with the classic keyboard for the current T420, T420S, and T520. But the new ThinkPad T430, T430s, and T530 due to launch early next month have been overhauled with the island-style keyboards that seem to be hitting almost every laptop these days.

The company had already switched to the island-style keyboards for all of its other laptops, so the … Read more

For the most part, keyboards just aren't very exciting. They sit there and go clickety-clack. What if you want a keyboard that goes squish-squash or splish-splash? Then you turn to the MaKey MaKey Invention Kit.

MaKey MaKey is a kit that turns just about any object into a touchpad. It consists of a circuit board and a set of alligator clips.

Clip those clips onto fruit, people, or pieces of bread. Even pencil markings can work. Open up a Web site or a program, plug the board into your computer's USB port, and you're good to go.… Read more

Back in 2009, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos disappointed those dreaming of a color-screen Kindle by saying such a gadget was "multiple years" away. Well, if industry sources cited by Digitimes are correct, "multiple" might actually only be "three."

Digitimes reported today that Amazon is likely to launch color e-readers in the second half of this very year. The publication bases its projection on "industry sources" who say makers in the supply chain will begin shipping related components this month. Said Digitimes: … Read more

There's a very interesting sociological experiment going on over on Kickstarter right now, where the Pebble smart team watch has unwittingly tested the old notion that you can't have too much of a good thing. Apparently, though, you can.

That's right -- Pebble doesn't want any more of your money. It's drowning in cash. Earlier this week, with 75,000 watches already spoken for, it announced that only 10,000 more would be made available in exchange for a pledge of cash (essentially a preorder). Now they're all gone. All reward levels that would earn supporters their own smart watch are now all sold out.… Read more

One could safely say Dutch computer modder Sander van der Velden adores the behemoth AT-AT vehicle from "The Empire Strikes Back." The self-confessed sci-fi addict recently stuffed a water-cooled computer inside a large Hasbro toy version of Star Wars' most infamous four-legged Rebel annihilator.

The AT-AT computer measures 2 feet tall (plus several more inches for the dock), and contains some spicy hardware, including a Zotac Z68-ITX (Mini-ITX) motherboard running an Intel Core i7 2600k processor, SSD, and built-in Wi-Fi. The water-cooling system (radiator and XSPC pump) uses water blocks to cool the CPU, GPU, and other components.

The designers at Hasbro probably didn't expect someone to take the largest action figure AT-AT ever made and fit a bunch of computer parts into it. … Read more

Google's Project Glass glasses might not be the most stylish pair of lenses you've ever worn, but a new image released by the search company shows how far they might go in changing the state of photography.

Google fellow and vice president Sebastian Thrun yesterday posted an image he took while wearing his Project Glass eyewear. In it, he's spinning his son, Jasper, around with both hands while the glasses he's wearing snap the photo.

Soon after it was posted, the image went viral on the Google+ social network, and it was reposted by company co-founder Sergey Brin, … Read more

The only laptops available right now with Intel's new third-generation Core i-series CPUs (also known as Ivy Bridge) are those that use high-end quad-core Core i7 processors. That means the vast majority of mainstream laptops won't get updated CPUs until the dual-core versions of Ivy Bridge are released, probably sometime in June.

Dell already has a few Ivy Bridge laptops in the Alienware M14x, M15x, and M17x gaming systems, and now the company is adding a couple of Inspiron models as well. The Dell Inspiron 14R and 15R Special Edition are higher-end machines available with quad-core processors, so … Read more

Sony has jumped into the ultrabook business with the new Sony Vaio T series laptop, announced May 2 in Europe (with U.S. details forthcoming, we assume).

The initial specs, reported by CNET UK, include an Intel Core i3 CPU and a 1,366x768-pixel display.

The CPU is potentially problematic because it's the previous second-generation Intel Core i-series model (also known as Sandy Bridge), rather than one of the new third-generation chips (sometimes referred to as Ivy Bridge).

The high-end quad-core Ivy Bridge chips are available now, the more-mainstream dual-core Core i3 and i5 versions are expected imminently.

According … Read more