water

Water-powered 'bike' lets you ride above the waves

You may have seen those crazy cousins of the Jet Ski and jetpack that let you zip around your favorite water-sports venue while essentially attached to a wild fire hose.

We've written about the JetLev R200 -- a jetpack-like design -- as well as a later spin on the idea: the Flyboard, which with its foot- and hand-level water jets, might make for more of a skiing-like experience.

Well, now it looks like the concept has been applied to a form factor all of us can more or less relate to: the cycle. The Jetovator lets you ride the wild hose as if it were a bike or motorcycle. And for that reason, it looks a little less squirrelly than the other devices (though watching the embedded video does make us wonder about the fine print in our health insurance policies).… Read more

Was Russia's discovery of water on moon in 1976 ignored?

One day, when our children live on the Newt Gingrich Lunar subdivision, they will know just how watery the moon truly is.

As far as we in the West have been concerned, the first proof that there might be water up there came in 1994, when the Clementine mission returned results suggesting that there must at least be watery ice beneath the moon's surface.

However, a Columbia University astrophysicist, Arlin Crotts, has declared that the Russians had secured evidence of moon water as far back as 1976. This evidence was simply ignored by the high-fallutin' West.

A pulsating treatise … Read more

The 404 1,056: Where you don't win friends with salad (podcast)

The Netflix video streaming player finally gets an overhaul, but most of the upgrades to the navigation and video thumbnail layouts feel vaguely reminiscent to us, but we can't put a finger on it.

Speaking of streaming video, we'll also made a plea to HBO to broadcast episodes of "Game of Thrones" to non-subscribers. The show has quickly become the most pirated show of 2012 so far, and although we understand HBO's rights to keep the episodes in-house, we can't help but wonder why the network isn't taking advantage of this opportunity to get more money. Related: this week's Low Latency comic.… Read more

WaterField's CitySlicker MacBook Air case is slick, but the handle costs extra

WaterField Designs makes some swanky cases for laptops, tablets, e-readers, and even the PS Vita. The company's latest edition to its catalog is the CitySlicker, a compact carrying case for the MacBook Air and presumably smaller Windows ultrabooks.

Although I haven't gotten my hands on one, the nice thing about it seems to be that while it's slim, it does offer more storage than a laptop sleeve, with a few pockets on the inside and one on the outside for storing the Air's AC adapter and charging cable.

The downside is the price.… Read more

AT-AT computer walks on the wild side

One could safely say Dutch computer modder Sander van der Velden adores the behemoth AT-AT vehicle from "The Empire Strikes Back." The self-confessed sci-fi addict recently stuffed a water-cooled computer inside a large Hasbro toy version of Star Wars' most infamous four-legged Rebel annihilator.

The AT-AT computer measures 2 feet tall (plus several more inches for the dock), and contains some spicy hardware, including a Zotac Z68-ITX (Mini-ITX) motherboard running an Intel Core i7 2600k processor, SSD, and built-in Wi-Fi. The water-cooling system (radiator and XSPC pump) uses water blocks to cool the CPU, GPU, and other components.

The designers at Hasbro probably didn't expect someone to take the largest action figure AT-AT ever made and fit a bunch of computer parts into it. … Read more

Marine Life Aquarium Animated Wallpaper is a drag

Animated wallpaper sounds like a good idea, but all too often, it's not; it can be a serious drag on your system's performance, slowing down critical processes all for the sake of decoration. That's definitely the case with Marine Life Aquarium Animated Wallpaper. Although we liked the idea of having sea creatures swimming about on our desktop, in practice it didn't work out very well at all.

The program installed easily, launching a configuration menu that let us select whether we wanted the wallpaper to run automatically on startup, set the execution priority at high, normal, … Read more

Water-resistant G-Go plunges into Bluetooth speaker arena

A few of us here in the office have been looking for a portable Bluetooth speaker that will work in the shower. Alas, G-Project's new $69 G-Go speaker, which just became available in Target stores, is splash-resistant but not waterproof, so it might not quite fit the bill, but it's close.

The speaker comes in three colors and has an integrated handle for carrying it around. There are no built-in rechargeable battery like some portable Bluetooth speakers have, but you can get up to 8 hours of on-the-go use with four AA batteries, according to the company. You can stream music to it from any Bluetooth-enabled device, which includes virtually all smartphones and many tablets, including the iPad and higher-end Android tablets (the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet do not offer Bluetooth). … Read more

Portable UV-C bottle lights the way to clean water

This portable water bottle offers a bright solution for sterilizing water on the go.

Portable beverage containers come in all shapes and sizes. Their proliferation has been for good reasons: they are efficient, economical, and easy to use. Specialized containers exist for coffee, smoothies and water, with each variety having its own set of capabilities. Usually though, they don't come with a built-in light.

Designed for the great outdoors, the CamelBak All Clear is UV-C portable water bottle that treats water from a variety from a variety of sources. The ultraviolet light interacts with microorganisms, destroying their DNA, which … Read more

Rotate and reorient pipes to solve the plumbing puzzle

In Plumber for Android, your job is to rotate and reorient pipes in order to get a water line to flow correctly. It's simple to play, but challenging to complete.

To play, just tap a pipe to rotate it. Each level is filled with disconnected pipes scattered across your screen, so in most cases, you'll have to tap away at dozens of pipes in order to create a continuous line. And to make things a bit more challenging, not all pipes are used to solve each level, which can leave you concentrating on a bunch of useless plumbing … Read more

Guide the water to Swampy!

Where's My Water? is a charming physics puzzler, in which you funnel clean water to the bathtub of a fastidious little alligator named Swampy.

Where's My Water? ranks among the better arcade puzzlers, sharing some similarities (fast-paced levels, an intuitive interface, and a winningly cartoony protagonist) but with a central schtick that's mostly all its own: you dig paths through dirt, creating channels for liquid to flow from one place to another. Ideally, you'll get enough clean water into a pipe to fill Swampy's tub, but along the way you have to contend with various … Read more