Author: Kyle VanHemert

Having a spare tire in your trunk is good, sure, but having two is even better. Especially when they’re attached by a folding, pedal-free electric bike made by Volkswagen. A bike with a cool curvy frame. And two kickstands. More »

There’s an insidious force plaguing our nation’s military. It’s vaster than any insurgent network, though much closer to home. It confounds our commanders and keeps our generals up at night. And it’s included with every copy of Microsoft Office. More »

Did you know that Gizmodo has a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and a new and improved newsletter? That means you can keep track of all our best stories without lifting a finger. Or with lifting fewer fingers, anyway. More »

The U.S. finals of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, an annual competition that encourages students to tackle big problems with technology, were held yesterday. One winning solution: combining cameraphones and powerful software to detect diseases in developing areas of the world. More »

Gizmodo’s commenter community is the best in all the interworld. But it doesn’t just take care of itself. We need someone to spend an hour or so a day moderating comments, for a little cash and a lot of glory. More »

What would life be like without all of those helpful infomercial technologies? Without the Awesome Auger, the Doggie Step, the Closet Organizer, the Egg Genie, or countless others? As this impressively thorough compilation shows: a big, miserable mess. [Kottke] More »

The creatively conceived, less creatively named Bottleformball, a chandelier made out of recycled water bottles, debuted this week at the Milan Furniture Fair. I like to think of it as the beautiful moment all recycling spontaneously burst into being. [Inhabitat] More »

Sure, your MacBook would function fine as a desktop computer replacement just sitting there on your table. But the Henge Dock lets you celebrate that sleek slab of industrial design vertically (and eliminates the hassle of plugging everything in separately.) More »

Even armed with a Wiimote, the BotJunkie junkies couldn’t shake the 300-cycle-per-second Adept Quattro, the world’s fastest-pick and-place robot. Watch this video and imagine how quickly it could fill up one of those state quarter maps. [BotJunkie via PopSci] More »

Devon claims that their $15,000 Tread 1 watch, a motorized, belt-driven contraption, is “a big, bold sexy declaration of independence from the status quo.” The status quo, in this case, being affordable, legible, sensible timepieces. But all those belts. More »

Last Saturday, Atlanta’s Georgia Dome was packed with students cheering on the FIRST Robotics Competition national championship. We covered the final matches via live feed, but these up-close photos truly capture the event’s electric atmosphere. More »

Some photographers spend months immersed in muck to capture the perfect wildlife shot. The Burrard-Lucas brothers decided to let an RC car do the dirty work. Their BeetleCam came face-to-face with lions, elephants, and buffalo and captured these stunning shots: More »

When you look at most of the two dozen or so people in this photograph, which belongs to a Canadian museum, there’s no doubt that they’re from 1940, the year in which it was taken. But what about that guy? More »

The Festo researchers who built this prototype robotic arm claim that they were inspired by the form and function of an elephant’s trunk. But anyone familiar with Spider-Man’s nemesis, Dr. Otto Octavius, knows what they really had in mind. More »

In February, Philadelphia’s Lower Merion School District had remotely activated webcams of school-provided MacBooks 42 times. In fact, the school snapped thousands of photos in total, a collection one especially creepy district employee called the “little LMSD soap opera.” The Philadelphia Inquirer has the latest news in the saga, which you can catch up with on their website, Philly.com. More »

The championship match of the 2010 FIRST Robot Competition is starting soon. Many teams have fallen and many robots have fallen apart. But now it’s just the best student-made bots of the lot, battling for all the glory. Watch inside! More »

Is the OPC Computer Amplifier a guitar amp with a bonus computer or a computer with a bonus guitar amp? The look suggests the former. The 500GB HDD, GeForce 9300 graphics card, and Windows 7 OS suggest the latter. More »

Octopuses, it is generally agreed, are the sneakiest, most awesome animals in existence. They have magical camouflaging abilities and can squeeze through teeny holes. The latest octopus rascality: stealing a scuba diver’s video camera and shooting an undersea home movie. More »