Crave

This week, old meets new as we drool over a new AC/DC pinball machine, turn our old CDs into works of art, and put your condom's location on the Web. Plus, a skateboard powered by your brain, a shopping cart that stalks and judges you, a DIY Chewbacca tissue box suitable for space travel misadventures, and Bonnie's robot gets a name.

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This isn't our first rodeo. The wild, often contradictory rumors that precede an Apple product unveiling would have you thinking that the iPad 3 could take just about any form or shape. But really, so long as you don't get hung up on the specifics, it's fairly easy to piece together the big picture of the iPad 3. Now that we have confirmation of the event on March 7 in San Francisco, what exactly is it Apple will be unveiling?

Improved screen resolution The rumors about the iPad 3 display are nearly unequivocal about a substantial improvement … Read more

The typical DJ booth is awash in buttons, knobs, and faders, allowing for precise control over any music mix. And if you've ever witnessed a DJ in this natural habitat, you know how utterly boring it is to watch.

Enter the MIDI Fighter 3D, a new $249 DJ controller from DJ Tech Tools. Finally, a visually striking controller that requires its user to do more than just twist a few knobs.

In addition to the arcade-style oversized buttons used on the original MIDI Fighter controller, the MIDI Fighter 3D adds an internal gyroscopic sensor and digital compass, allowing you to control MIDI parameters (such as volume, pitch, and effect variations) by tilting or turning the entire device. … Read more

The demand for dirt-cheap alternatives to the iPad 2 is undeniable. At the outset of the tablet wars, the majority of sub-$300 tablets being sold were pretty awful. Their bad screens and slow processors fundamentally crippled the entire tablet experience and had us begging for our laptops, or even a decent smartphone.

Fortunately, there's now an abundance of tablets that are both cheap and worthwhile. Sure, their screens are not as big as the iPad's or a 10-inch Honeycomb tablet, and their Internet connections may be limited to Wi-Fi. But through all their skimping, they still preserve the fundamentals of what a good tablet should deliver: Web, e-mail, and fun.

To give these wallet-friendly slates their due, we've created an ongoing feature that rounds up our top budget tablets. … Read more

Have you ever tried buying an AC/DC album on iTunes? Don't bother. It's not there. Unlike those sellouts, The Beatles, AC/DC is too cool for that crap.

So what better way to honor the world's most tenaciously old-school rock gods than to give them their own pinball machine? I mean, it's about time someone showed The Who, that serious pinball geeks deserve a more rocking anthem than "Pinball Wizard."

The AC/DC Pro, currently in production by Stern Pinball, weighs in at a whopping 250 pounds, and can be yours for around $… Read more

This week, Lego goes crazy for Minecraft (even if we don't); the Death Star gets a real-world estimate; DARPA invests in making "Avatar" a reality; and Eric and Bonnie make their Barbie dreams come true. In Geek News, Eric is obsessed with Mass Effect 3, and shows off a mashup of "The Prestige" and the latest "Dark Knight" trailers.

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A special Valentine's Day episode of Crave featuring robots, champagne, littleBits circuit boards, and zombie chocolates. Plus, X-ray leggings, spider battle bots, hoverboards, Star Wars crafts, and a peek at the perfect date movie, "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter."

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Smartphones and tablets grab all the attention these days. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that Apple's iPod sales still rake in millions year after year.

Portable media players like the iPod Touch will eventually die out, but there's still plenty of interest in the category, and money to be made by chasing after consumers who don't feel the iPod fits their needs.

As so it is that a product category we wrote off as a casualty of our national obsession with smartphones rises once more. The following list contains four Android-based portable media players that take aim directly at the Apple iPod Touch. Many promise bigger screens, GPS, and all of the geeky conveniences that Android is known for. … Read more

Eric and Donald run though the latest in desktop haptic devices, including a weather forecaster you can feel, and a USB kissing robot cow.

"Tron"-inspired electroluminescence makes a comeback with some neat shades and an eco-friendly charging cable. And in Geek News, we take a longer look at "The Avengers" and a preview of the upcoming "Amazing Spider-Man."

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