Category: Switched Video

Paul Budnitz has amazingly sent young adults scrambling after collectible vinyl figures as if they were children after toys. And toys, in essence, those figures are, but not in the child-friendly sense of the word. (In fact, Budnitz points out that his company's products often come armed with cigarettes and machine guns.) Kidrobot, which Budnitz conceived while collecting figurines during a ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2009/11/14/love-for-our-tweeps-people-answer-what-is-twitter'; Share Last week, we took our cameras to the streets and inadvertently stumped roughly half the people when we asked, "What is Flickr?" This time, we decided to try our luck by inquiring about Twitter, and, for the most part, everyone had an inkling as to the micro-blogging powerhouse's raison ...

Share We'll admit that, as tech journalists, we live in a bit of a self-imposed bubble when it comes to Internet goings-on. ("What do you mean, 'You've never heard of a meme?' ") So we decided to take our cameras to the streets of New York and descend upon the less compulsively-geeky masses to ask, "What is Flickr?" Though the image-sharing behemoth Flickr -- now millions of users strong -- ...

You may know him primarily for his work as John Madden, Andy Rooney, or one of a hundred other well-known celebrities, but master impressionist and comedian Frank Caliendo recently shed those facades for a rare moment of (somewhat) serious gadget and video games talk. The man of infinite voices told us (in more than one voice, including those of 'Street Fighter' characters) that he juggles his ...

Back in the late '90s, when brand designer and specialist Matthew Waldman waited for a client, he passed his time like anyone, looking at the clock. Waldman, who has always been fascinated by object meaning and form, was struck by the strangeness of the dial. The clock make-up didn't seem natural; minute and hour hands wouldn't make sense to anyone who didn't know how to tell conventional time. ...

The iPhone increasing lets you do many things, but playing a real piano in real time so far hasn't been one of them -- at least until this past week at CEATEC, the annual consumer electronics show held in Tokyo, Japan, which we were fortunate enough to attend. On display at the Yamaha booth was one of the more impressive iPhone apps we've seen to date: Called Finger Piano Share, since it lets ...

We've spent the past week here in Tokyo taking a look at some of the latest gadgets on display at CEATEC, the annual Japanese Consumer Electronics Show. It's a great place to see everything from cutting-edge TV technologies that'll end up stateside next year to stylish mobile phones that'll (sadly) never find their way out of Japan. And then there's the oddball stuff that probably shouldn't ...

If the Nintendo DS and a random laptop hooked up, the Sharp Mebius would be their love child. The unique-looking netbook features two different LCD screens, the main one being 10.1-inches, and the second being 4-inches and doubling as a visually-enabled trackpad-cum-touchscreen. The 'trackpad' screen is the world's first optical sensor LCD, which essentially means it stays bright and can handle ...

The iPhone may be a failure in Japan, but the country sure loves its clamshell-style, flip phones, among other non-smartphone-styles, which is why the annual CEATEC show in Tokyo is often a treasure trove of innovative, stylish, and sometimes just plain way-out mobiles. Some are finished products that have just come to market, while others remain concepts that will eventually turn into a ...

Dr. David Samadi may look like he's playing a video game when he's at work, but he's actually performing robotic prostate surgery. The Chief of the Division of Robotics and Minimally Invasive Surgery at New York's Mt. Sinai Medical Center is one of only a half-dozen or so United States surgeons who can perform robotic laparoscopic surgery, which uses a special 3-D control system to operate the ...

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Rob Zombie--rock star, screenwriter, film director, gore-fetishist--has little free time for messing around with all the electronic goodies the rest of us take for granted. But we get it. After all, his latest film, a remake of the classic slasher flick 'Halloween II,' only began filming in late February and yet barely six months later is already in ...

Discovering ways that technology infiltrates every aspect of modern life is one of the things that keeps our jobs here at Switched exciting. Tech obviously affects music, communication, and portability, but the way we look is also changed by our increasingly digitized existence. Snap a picture under a harsh light at a concert, and moments later it ends up on Facebook, in all its gruesome ...

Recently, Aussie garage band Jet answered some of our questions about texting, YouTubing, and touring. When brothers Nic and Chris Chester, along with bandmates Cameron Muncey and Mark Wilson aren't on the road, they are either listening to Hall & Oates (so are we!) on their iPods at 5 o'clock in the morning or cracking up to old videos of a toasted Orson Welles. The boys, clad in leather ...

Our parents started getting really uptight as the days between us and that most liberating of birthdays (16) ticked away. The pestering never ended: "You'd better put that seat belt on, first thing when you get in." "Yes, ma'am." Disciplinary threats, filled with images of being driven to senior prom in the station wagon, terrified us. Of course, upon receiving the keys, we jumped through the ...

Like Heather Locklear of 'Dynasty,' 'TJ Hooker,' 'Melrose Place' and 'Spin City' fame, Greg Grunberg is one of those actors fortunate to have starred in three back-to-back hit series. His first big roles came in the J.J.-Abrams-produced 'Felicity' and 'Alias,' but now he is best known for the NBC show 'Heroes,' in which he plays Matt Parkman, a policeman who can hear what other people are ...