Today Google Play Music released an updated version with support for podcasts, but the much bigger deal — visually, anyway — is that new logo. Gone are the simple two-tone headphones, and in their place is a four color triangle-and-circles confection that closely resembles breakfast pizza. You’ve got the reddish, saucy crust, the yellow scrambled eggs, and the orange cheddar cheese. It’s topped off with a music note that, to these eyes anyway, comes across as goat cheese. Who’s hungry?
Google announced this week that it's making a bunch of changes to the emoji in Android: namely, it’s finally introducing emoji that look like people, and it’s largely doing away with its freaky blobs.
Apple is auctioning off a one-of-a-kind iPad Pro, Smart Cover, and and Apple Pencil to raise money for London’s Design museum. The products were donated by Jony Ive and the Apple design team, which only intend to produce a single instance of the products in these colors.
Google is introducing a new series of Nexus phone cases today, and they’re a lot more interesting than the average snap-on shell. They’re called Live Cases, and that’s a fitting name, because these cases can actually interact with your phone. For one, snapping the case onto a Nexus phone will customize it with an animated wallpaper. The case also has a button on it that you can set up to launch a specific app.
The case only comes in one shape for each Nexus phone, but what it looks like can be customized quite a bit. Google allows you to print either a photo or a map on the case, and it provides tools to customize them with different filters and color schemes. The choices you make on those will affect what the case’s animated wallpaper…
And yes, Motor Trend deserves a lot of ribbing, particularly because it spent a full day on Twitter teasing that it had some sort of huge Apple Car scoop coming today. (In reality, there isn’t a modicum of actual information about Apple’s plans, even though MT dares to call its story…
Google is testing a new folder design on Android. Rather than showing a stack of icons like it does now, Android N’s latest beta makes it look like you’re seeing inside of the folder, which is filled with a grid of icons. It looks a lot more like a folder on iOS — which is perhaps in some ways more functional, but a lot uglier and less visually interesting.
The new design appeared in the second developer beta of Android N. It’s possible that the revamped folders are only in testing for now and won’t make it into the final release — which will likely come sometime around October — but it’s also very possible that this is the direction Google wants them to head in. Hopefully the Android team reconsiders: the current folders are great and…
Thanks to a brain implant, Ian Burkhart can use his hand to play video games for the first time since the accident that broke his neck six years ago. The finding, published today in Nature, is the first instance of a person living with paralysis regaining the ability to move simply by thinking.
The creators of an app that lets people order pizza with one tap have developed a new pizza box that can also be used to smoke weed. Developed by the team behind the Push for Pizza app, the box includes a cutout section that can be folded to form the shaft of a “Pizza Pipe.” A plastic stand commonly used to prevent the box from crushing its pizza is designed to attach to the end of the shaft, serving as the pipe’s bowl.
The box was designed in collaboration with the Nikolas Gregory studio, which has previously developed concepts like “poo jewelry” formed by the human digestive tract. The box is made entirely out of recyclable materials, and the pizza stand/bowl is made out of temperature resistant white ceramic, and includes a carb for…
I’m in a suburb 30 miles outside of Sacramento, California, and Yoda’s teaching me how to fight with a lightsaber.
In this particular case, Yoda is the online nickname for Michael Murphy, a 43-year-old artist that makes his living building high-end custom lightsabers — including the ones we’re using — but that doesn’t make the lesson any less intense. I step forward, my blue blade cutting through the air with an unmistakeable thrumm. My blow is easily parried, our sabers clashing hot white. He pivots, blade twirling behind his back as he executes a 360-degree spin that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Ewan McGregor pull off.
He swings straight for my head, and as I bring my saber up to block I can’t help but think two things: This is probably…
The tragic loss of Zaha Hadid last week has left the architecture world suddenly bereft of her inspiring talent. As many obituaries over the last few days have noted, perhaps one of the biggest tragedies is that Hadid, who passed away at the top of her profession at the age of 65, had years of creating new buildings in front of her. But that doesn’t mean we’ll never see a new Hadid design take shape.