Crave

Step right up, kiddies, the carnival is coming to town! And this time, it's bringing robots and lasers.

Well, it will be if the STEAM Carnival successfully reaches its Kickstarter goal and hits the highway with all manner of amusing geeky hijinks under its big tent. Think Maker Faire meets Burning Man, with a decidedly less naked, more kid-friendly slant. The goal is to not only get youngsters pumped about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), but to warm them up to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math).

"Our culture isn't doing enough to get kids interested in STEAM," say the creatives behind Two Bit Circus, a collective of builders, inventors, developers, and makers behind STEAM Circus. (They also helped create the wacky Rube Goldberg machine in OK Go's "This Too Shall Pass" video.) The carnival's advisory board also brings some serious geek cred to the proceedings in the form of MythBuster Grant Imahara; Brian Fargo, creator of the video game Bard's Tale; and Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and father of Brent Bushnell, one of STEAM Carnival's masterminds.

… Read more

MONTREAL--For the first time in maybe 20 years, I got a new cassette tape.

It's a bitchin' mix of 1970s funk tunes and it sounds delicious on my car stereo, which fortunately is old enough to be able to play it. But the best thing about this tape is that it came out of a vending machine.

Distroboto is a nonprofit network of machines in Montreal that have been retrofitted to sell works by independent artists. They spit out music, literature, and accessories, all for $2 a pop. … Read more

Low Latency is a weekly comic on CNET's Crave blog written by CNET editor and podcast host Jeff Bakalar and illustrated by Blake Stevenson. Be sure to check Crave every Friday at 8 a.m. PT for new panels! Want more? Here's every Low Latency comic so far.

Back in March, I read a story by The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg titled "How Apple gets all the good apps." It was mostly about why Apple's rivals -- Google, Microsoft, and others -- have brought their apps to the iOS platform while Apple didn't reciprocate the gesture.

Mossberg described the situation as obviously lopsided in Apple's favor and that it "stemmed from the different business models of the big rivals." Apple, after all, makes the "vast majority" of its money through hardware sales while Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, … Read more

Google set a pretty high standard of what I'll call "wow-ness" with last year's introduction of Google Glass to the world at its annual developers' conference, Google I/O. Glass-wearing stunt people took the brand new device skydiving, rappelling down the side of San Francisco's Moscone Center, and mountain biking through the crowds inside the conference center.

Can Google I/O 2013 possibly contain more wow-ness than that?

A year later, Glass is now in the wild, so it's always possible Google could have some new apps, features, and use cases it plans to … Read more

Congrats to Tywan J. of Owings Mills, Md., for winning an Otterbox Realtree Camo case for the HTC One in last week's giveaway. Like the sound of getting a pair of high-end headphones for free? Read on.

We're giving away a pair of full-size over-the-ear Sennheiser Momentum headphones, which feature a brushed-stainless-steel headband and plush, leather-covered earpads and come with two cables and a carrying case.

Steve Guttenberg, CNET's Audiophiliac, lauded the 'phones for their build and sound quality: "The Momentum headphones sound crisp and clear with all types of music and movies." Earlier this year, the headphones scored a spot in our Top-rated reviews of the week lineup. … Read more

Remember back in the olden days, when you had to wait till your baby came out of the womb to start determining whose nose and chin it had?

Pioneer, maker of speakers, receivers, and headphones, is moving into the in-utero-baby-picture realm with 3D holograms that give a remarkably detailed look at an infant's early visage.

The company does that using a full-color hologram printer. The device, which fits into a briefcase, can record a full color card-size hologram in 120 minutes, and a single-color hologram in 90 minutes. … Read more

Even if you're too short to join the Galactic Empire as a Stormtrooper, at least you can still see yourself as one with the magic of 3D scanning and printing.

For $99.95, visitors to Florida's Walt Disney World during "Star Wars" Weekends (running each weekend from May 17 to June 9) can immortalize themselves as a 7.5-inch-tall Stormtrooper figurine. In some ways, it's probably a better deal than being a real Stormtrooper. They usually end up getting vaporized aboard a Death Star or miss every shot they fire at fleeing Rebels. … Read more

Any fan of "Star Wars" will immediately recognize the Lars Homestead, where Luke Skywalker grew up. But they may not realize that the sets used to film those scenes in the 1970s were left essentially untouched after George Lucas and his crew departed Tunisia.

Thanks to Laughing Squid, I stumbled across the beautiful and haunting photographs by visual artist Ra di Martino, who visited the location in Chott el Gharsa, Tunisia, where Lucas filmed those scenes, and captured their decrepit state years later.

Of course, there are a lot of people who want to keep the Lars Homestead … Read more