Lego

In our twisted pop geek culture, it's not cutting-edge technology until it's been replicated with the most simplistic of child's toys. With that in mind, congrats are due to NASA's Curiosity rover, which has finally been reduced to a scale model made of Legos. Oh yea, the full-size rover also landed on Mars yesterday. … Read more

Somebody contemplated the Olympics and thought, "Sure, this is exciting and all, but what it really needs is to be re-enacted with interlocking pieces of plastic." The Lego Olympics were born.

The stop-motion videos from The Guardian range from memorable moments like Usain Bolt's victory in the Fastest Man Alive competition to Shin Lam's sit-down fencing protest.

The women's fencing semi-final takes place with Lego Storm Trooper helmets as fencing masks, a feature I would like to see applied to the real-life sport. … Read more

We've seen some impressive Lego creations recently, including a robotic arm and a giant jet engine. We can now add a working motorized wheelchair to the list.

The Lego wheelchair is a prototype capable of moving a nearly 200-pound person around. The wheelchair uses quite a few bits from the Lego Mindstorms line. There are 12 Rotacaster multi-directional wheels providing the rolling.… Read more

Gentlemen, start your Lego jet engine. Created by Rolls-Royce and unveiled at the Farnborough International Airshow in England yesterday, the engine uses 152,455 bricks and reaches an overall size of 4.9 feet long and 6.5 feet wide. All of those Legos together stack up to an astounding 676 pounds. … Read more

Before giant Lego trees and flowers popped up in the Australian Outback, a honking huge Lego bridge made an appearance in Germany.

Late last year, street artist Megx pulled out the primary colors to transform the underside of a bridge into an optical illusion. Clever use of color and shading makes the bridge in Wuppertal look like it's built from an interlocking set of massive Lego bricks.… Read more

Australia is know for big spiders, big kangaroo feet, and, now, big Legos. Broken Hill in New South Wales is sometimes referred to as the capital of the Outback. It is home to around 19,000 people and a temporary forest of massive Legos.

The Lego installation consists of 15 pine trees and flower sets that are 66 times bigger than a standard Lego. The iconic designs are installed in a flat area of red earth around an old hotel. … Read more

One ring to rule them all, and in the darkness build them! Yes, here's a sight for Sauron's eyes -- we've gone hands-on with the yet-to-be-released "Lord of the Rings" Lego sets ahead of their U.K. release. Hit play in the video below to see what manner of Uruk-hai-jinks Lego has in store for Tolkien fans. … Read more

The Lego land grab is on. Google Chrome and Lego Australia fastened themselves together to roll out Build, a Web app for Chrome that lets you build impressively realistic Lego structures right within Google's browser.

To get started, you can browse the map to find an open plot or click the blue Build button and have Build find one for you. Each plot is a 32-by-32-peg square, and you are given 1,000 virtual bricks to use. There are 10 different type of Lego bricks in 10 different colors, plus two extras: a door and a window. (My son … Read more

Find yourself a little bored at work, or maybe want to embark on a half-hour adventure away from the norm?

Wander over to Build, a virtual Lego play set placed upon a Google Maps view of the land Down Under. The interactive Web site, perfect for amateur architects, uses 3D graphics powered by WebGL -- supported by most modern browsers such as Chrome and Firefox (Internet Explorer 9, however, provided a nonfunctional experience).

To start, each user picks a plot of land in Australia or New Zealand. Builders choose from 12 different basic brick styles, as well as a door and window. The opportunities seem slightly limited with such a small selection of bricks, but at least you can choose from a range of prismatic hues. … Read more