Three hundred channels and a DVR full of recorded shows, and you’re still sifting through it all with a controller straight out of the ’80s. That’s why Hillcrest Labs designed the Loop, a remote with nary a number on it. Instead, a button brings up an onscreen guide, which you navigate with a scroll wheel. To select what you want to do—browse recordings, change settings—just wave the remote around to move an onscreen cursor through a series of intuitive, icon-driven menus.

Here's a classic how-to from the archives—an article from 1949 on making your own nitrous oxide. Link via Modern Mechanix.

Dept.: Geek Guide

Tech: VoIP

Cost: Free to $40 per month

Earlier this year a video of an eerily lifelike robot policing a dystopian landscape sparked Internet mayhem. Seventy thousand people tried to download the clip, crashing the Web site of the Vancouver-based visual-effects company The Embassy. We saw the clip before the crash and, duly impressed, asked Embassy artists to put their computer-generation magic to work envisioning aircraft of the future.

Inside a green and wired Swedish home: onClick="window.open('','popup1','height=500,width=450,scrollbars=no,resize=no')"
target="popup1" class="sidebar">Click here to browse through a photo gallery of the Tango complex.



Read the feature article "It Takes Tech to Tango."