modding

Just in time for next month's Iron Man action and CGI cinematic extravaganza comes this one-of-a-kind, custom-modded Iron Man action figure from Jin Saotome. Painted to resemble Tony Stark's gadget-obsessed hero after a serious bender, and based on a Marvel Movie Legends Iron Man figure, the alcohol-poisoned hero doesn't come with a Great White Telephone from which he can call Ralph.

It does, however, come with several miniature beer cans and a mini bottle of Bacardi that dear, dear Tony Stark probably swiped from a Paris Hilton Barbie. Painted in all the hues of the contents of … Read more

True guitar heroes are a tough bunch to please. Not satisfied with the biggest names in the business making their own branded controllers, these aficionados need something even more realistic to live out their Van Halen fantasies.

That's why an entrepreneurial inventor has gone to eBay with a mod kit that will replace the Rock Band controller's plastic strum bar with real guitar strings. The Fender Stratocaster Modification "includes everything you need to swap out the plastic bar with a playable string, special strum switch, along with several metal strings, springs and even a Fender guitar pick,&… Read more

Some cynics out there might have thought the drum cases from Spotswood Custom Computers were just silly novelty items. Au contraire: Not only have they been popular, but there's a new model that's bigger and--depending on one's point of view--better than ever.

The L-24 is part of the company's "water-cooling" line, measuring 24 inches in diameter and 18 inches deep. That's big enough to house 12 fans, "three triple-fan water-cooling radiators, extra-long graphics cards, a 1600W (or larger) power supply, two 5.25-inch CD/DVD drives and 15 3.5-inch hard drives,&… Read more

I've really enjoyed seeing the lifecasting movement take off. I can't say I feel the need to visit these sites on a regular basis, but like a roller coaster built for children, they provide enjoyable moments mixed in with some less-than-incredible build-up. One of the newest entrants to the space is Mod My Life, which shares a lot in common with its other lifecasting brethren by mixing up live Webcam footage with user chat. The twist is that the person with the Webcam is an actor or comedian, and the audience gets to control what he or she is doing.

All the user-created actions are created and voted on by users, and they show up in an upcoming section that lets the group weed out the good ideas from the bad. The four most popular get dropped into a voting pool where users can vote on the item as many times as they like until the time runs out. The "Modstars," which are the people with the cameras strapped to their heads, then has to go do what people have told them to do.

While watching last night I was treated to several awkward moments of Modstar Jason Wilder Evans bothering people around the greater New York area before managing to somehow walk into what looked like an attempted robbery with a baseball bat. The robbery had just been broken up by the convenience store's security guard. We never really found out what happened, but the damage had been done, and I sat quietly in awe along with the rest of the viewers as Jason called the police and recounted what had happened with other witnesses.

The rest of the show wasn't nearly as gripping as that bit, but like the creators have told me, a lot of it depends on the Modstar, and other variables like location, time of day, and what ideas the community has got cooking. In many ways it's a lot like Justin.TV when they first started out. Far from what Justin Kan and company have expanded to now with their platform and live channel selection, Mod My Life is treading a slightly different path and trying to pack as much as they can into just an hour or less instead of going for daylong marathons. For that, I think viewers who are willing to base their watching around the "time slot" will be getting more bang for their buck (note: the site is free).

… Read more

Being of a certain vintage, we still have a soft spot for particular arcade classics from the '70s. (It doesn't hurt when they come with their own draft on tap.) So even though we're not into the whole guitar thing, we can't help but appreciate this one.

The "Pac-Man Guitar" is a 25.5-inch scale version of everyone's favorite insatiable yellow disc. And custom shop Specimen Products went well beyond the novelty factor, using "ebony, basswood, and maple with mother of pearl accents" to accompany the lacquer finish, according to Technabob.

As … Read more

This whole thing started weeks ago when fellow Craver Tim Moynihan posted a story on a vintage NES game controller and cartridge that had been modded into an MP3 player and portable speaker. Not to be outdone, I realized that my homebrew MP3 player, the Little Professor, needed an equally nostalgic portable speaker system. A quick look through my closet produced the most worthy candidate imaginable--a malfunctioning vintage Texas Instruments Speak & Spell, manufactured the same year as the Little Professor--the year of my birth, 1978. Excellent.

Transforming the Speak & Spell into a portable speaker system wasn't nearly … Read more

No offense to other types of gadget materials, but we're partial to shiny things ourselves. As a result, we were bummed that we missed out on bidding for 50 Cent's chrome Lamborghini, which went for $310,000 on eBay a few days ago.

But there's at least some consolation in knowing that we could get a chromed-out DS Lite mod to help address our bling fetish until the next big-ticket reflective item comes along. As Technabob notes, the $40 copper and nickel electroplating process makes this version appear a lot more metallic than an official silver model … Read more

We tend to avoid computer mods on Crave, simply because we could spend every waking moment collecting examples at the expense of anything else. But there's always the exception that's just too good to pass up, whether it be a bomb mod or perhaps one for the holidays. And, of course, anything to do with our hero, Batman.

Here, an enterprising young man named Kevin Core has created a masterpiece in his "Tumbler Batmobile PC" with an AMD Sempron chip, seven "activity LEDs" and a remote-controlled model of the famed vehicle purchased from Wal-Mart, … Read more

In a recent blog on CNET News.com it was learned that modders in 16 states were brought down for allegedly selling and distributing "circumvention devices."

While federal agents, including U.S. Customs officials, are heralding the capture of these "criminals" as a mark of significant progress in the fight against modding, I'm not so quick to agree.

At its very core, what is so wrong with modding, or modifying, one's gadgets? While I admittedly don't know as much about the techniques involved, because I don't own any modded devices, I still … Read more