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The pool table that levels itself in rough seas

The pool table that levels itself in rough seas

Some things don't make sense. At least to one's eyes.

So when I saw the YouTube video I've embedded, I wondered whether it could possibly be real. Yet this purports to be a pool table on a cruise ship in rough water.

The poster claims that this pool table was a cruise ship called "Radiance of the Seas" on its way back from New Zealand last December.

I went to the Royal Caribbean site to check whether this might be true. And, indeed, there I found the boast that this is the first self-leveling pool table at more

DIY Weekend: Bag your own Star Wars Admiral Sackbar

DIY Weekend: Bag your own Star Wars Admiral Sackbar

George Lucas has just released his version of "Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace" in 3D, but c'mon--the guy believes Greedo shot first. Why not make your own little Star Wars universe?

For around $20 or less, supplies from your local arts and crafts supplies store can put you well on your way toward creating your own Star Wars-themed puppets, cat toys, tissue box covers, flower vases, and more. In the first of a Crave series based on projects from Bonnie Burton's "The Star Wars Craft Book", a crack team of crafters fights the power and turns more

Nameless spider robot should just be called awesome

Nameless spider robot should just be called awesome

At first glance, the title of the video "Sneak Peak Greatest Toy in the Universe!" sounds like a showboating claim conceived by a lunatic.

As the video progresses, you meet a remote-controlled toy spider wielding powerful weapons, and suddenly realize maybe creator Jaimie Mantzel is onto something. After all, it takes part genius and part luck for an independent person to get nearly half a million hits in one day for a YouTube video about a toy robot. We also recommend you check out the official promo video for the spiderbot, which is set for release later this year.

Mantzel's 7-minute, 29-second video showing off his creation highlights the arachnid's weapons, which include Ping-Pong balls, darts, and flying discs. It even has removable armor. The spider seems to move around well, and if it doesn't cost a fortune, this could just be the hottest toy of 2012. The operating noise does seem loud, though.

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Outgrowing Instagram? Alien Skin releasing Exposure 4

Outgrowing Instagram? Alien Skin releasing Exposure 4

By now, the idea of applying filters to give photos a retro look is well established. But for the more serious out there who want to go beyond the obvious smartphone apps, Alien Skin Software plans to release Exposure 4 tomorrow.

The Exposure software brings a certain precision to its task, carefully emulating the look of actual film--early Kodachrome, say, or Kokak Tri-X 400 pushed a stop--for those who remember. It's not a coincidence that the software has the tagline "Taking the digital out of digital photography."

Version 4 of the $249 software brings new abilities in reproducing defects such as light leaks or dust and scratches that film-era photographers usually strove so hard to avoid. And it's got hundreds of new presets for styles such cyanotypes and wet-plate photography.

Digging through the settings is like touring decades of photo history--you get far more than the usual collection of washed-out Polaroid, oversaturated Fujifilm Velvia, and antiquey sepia tones. If you want to hearken back to an earlier time, Exposure 4 is a good way to do so.

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An arcadian ode to the old arcade

An arcadian ode to the old arcade

SANTA MONICA, Calif.--There was a time, not all that long ago, when the only way to play a decent (or indeed most any) "computer game" was to seek one out at a local pizza parlor or bowling alley--or, if you were lucky and your neighborhood had been blessed with such an establishment, the local arcade.

In fact, computer games weren't computer games yet. They were video games, or arcade games.

I can remember the excitement my friends and I felt when our neighborhood suddenly witnessed the arrival of a "real" video arcade. Space Invaders had been around for a while by then (how cool was it that the Pretenders had recorded an instrumental in its honor, complete with a sampling of the game's throbbing, threatening sound effects?). But the newly opened Louie's brought us a startling array of bright, beeping, and then-revolutionary games with strange and thrilling names like Pac-Man and Centipede.

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Atlantic Technology's big-sounding little speaker takes it to the max

Atlantic Technology's big-sounding little speaker takes it to the max

I admit it: I like big speakers, the bigger the better as far as I'm concerned.

Big speakers sound more realistic, they play louder with lower distortion, and they have better and deeper bass than small speakers. Then again, I'm an audiophile, so I prioritize sound quality over almost everything else. I also know big speakers are out of the question for most folks, but what if there were a reasonably sized speaker that produced big-speaker sound? The Atlantic Technology AT-2 is such a speaker.

It was just last year when Atlantic's AT-1 tower speaker ($3,000 a pair) rocked the audiophile world and garnered a slew of rave reviews, so when I heard the smaller AT-2 ($1,800 a pair) was about to be released I just had to get it for review. It did not disappoint.

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iMac robot, faux Steve Jobs snapped in Tokyo

iMac robot, faux Steve Jobs snapped in Tokyo

The blogosphere, as you know, is a giant echo chamber. Someone posts something and other sites parrot it like ventriloquist dummies, verbatim or nearly so. But does it matter if the original post is wrong?

Case in point: The pic below surfaced on MIC Gadget recently. It suggests this fellow in a very awesome robot costume, seemingly fashioned out of old iMac parts, appeared in Chongqing, China, along with his mutton-chopped Steve Jobs sidekick striking a Moses pose.

It's been making the rounds recently, with Gizmodo, io9, Cult of Mac, Geekosystem, and Geekologie, among others, hailing the Macbot in China.

The thing is the photo was taken in Tokyo, Japan, not China. If you've ever been to the Tokyo Big Sight convention center, you'll remember its unmistakable inverted pyramids in the background of the photo.

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This week in Crave: The geek love edition

This week in Crave: The geek love edition

It could be because you lined up early to catch the opening of "Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace" in 3D (ha ha, we didn't either) that you missed some of Crave's top stories this week. Fear not, young Jedi, for we have rounded up some of our favorite posts here, along with some geeky gift ideas for Valentine's Day.

• Impress your No. 1 geek or geekette with a lightsaber-lit dinner and USB flowers this Valentine's Day. Ohhhh, yeah.

• Is there anything more romantic than sucking on some delicious, chocolatey braaaaaains?

• Bummed that you won't be with your loved one on February 14? You can still have a remote makeout session, thanks to Kissinger.

• Ready to have your mind blown? Then check out how Corning envisions the future.

• Finally! An answer to the age-old Star Wars vs. Star Trek debate.

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Best Android alternatives to iPod Touch

Best Android alternatives to iPod Touch

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 against the Apple iPod Touch. Many promise bigger screens, GPS, and all of the geeky conveniences that Android in known for.

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See Boeing's Etch A Sketch flight path

See Boeing's Etch A Sketch flight path

It's fair to say the planners at Boeing Test & Evaluation spiced up a recent extended operation test of the Boeing 787.

Spanning 9,000 nautical miles over 12 states, the 787's impressive route spells out "787" and the Boeing logo like a giant Etch A Sketch in the sky. The next-generation commercial airplane took off on February 9 at 1:33 p.m. from Boeing's airfield in Washington state, and landed this morning at 8:45 a.m. Some of the turns needed to create the numbers and logo seem like they'd send a stomach into a spin, but the zoomed-out map exaggerates the sharpness of the turns.

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