Toys

‘The LEGO Build-It Book, Vol. 1: Amazing Vehicles’ is the latest how-to LEGO book by Nathanäel Kuipers from No Starch Press. Available next month (July 2013), this 136 page book offers step-by-step instructions with full-color renderings for 10 vehicles ranging from a simple go-kart to a rescue truck. The idea is to use your existing […]

To me, LEGO bricks represent childhood, imagination and fun. This new book from Starch Press on the other hand, does not. The 232 page BrickGun Book by Jeff Boen has step-by-step instructions for building five handgun replicas from readily available LEGO pieces. Model plans include the classic Berreta 92FS and a rubber-band-firing MAC-11. Maybe it’s

If you’ll be at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in the next few weekends, you can have yourself immortalized as a 3D Stormtrooper figurine for only $99.95 (plus shipping and taxes).  The D-Tech Me experience is a 10-minute process that uses the “world’s highest-resolution, single-shot 3D face scanner created by [Disney’s] Imagineering scientists with Disney Research labs. That

Nearly everyone who’s familiar with electronic games has heard of Tetris, and ThinkGeek has capitalized on this to make a nostalgia-inspiring Tetris Stackable LED Desk Lamp. You can customize your lamp into various configurations using the seven interlocking pieces, which are of course, shaped like classic Tetris shapes. The base shape is the four-block straight

When I think of robots, I think of Rosie the Robot from the Jetsons cartoons or ASIMO, Honda’s robot. The folks at Romotive have a different idea; it’s called Romo, The Smart Phone Robot. Romo is basically a small, tracked vehicle that measure 5.6″ long x 4.5″ wide x 3″ high.  You plug either your

HBO’s popular fantasy series Game of Thrones is back tonight with episode 1 of season 3. You can get in on the fun with the Paper Flying Dragons book by Pat Murphy. This book includes fully illustrated punch out parts that will allow you to create 12 paper dragons includes: 5 foot long flyers, 5

Google has announced that they are starting a contest for non-developers to purchase Glass ahead of the retail release.  Explorers are required to submit in 50 words or less to Twitter or Goggle+ what they would do with the interactive, web-enabled glasses.  The deadline for applications is February   27th, 2013.  It is not cheap however!  If

Ever wanted to make one of your doodles come to life, just rip it right from the page? That childhood fantasy is shortly going to become a reality. The 3Doodler is up for funding on Kickstarter; it’s a 3D “printing” pen that utilizes the same base ABS plastic used in 3D printers to physically create

Adafruit , run by the 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year Limor “Ladyada” Fried, has announced the Gemma, a wearable micro-controller board with just a 1” diameter. The Gemma uses an Atmel Attiny85 and is programmable with the Arduino IDE through a micro-USB cable. It has three programmable I/O pins, one analog input, and two Pulse-Width

The Electric Imp is now out of beta and shipping developer kits. The Imp is an SD-card sized WiFi (802.11b/g/n) module with built-in antenna, 6 I/O, Arm Cortex M3 Micro-controller, and a Cloud-based infrastructure for programming and control. The I/O supports serial, I2C, SPI, A2D, D2A, and PWM interfaces. The Imp uses the Squirrel programming language,

Did Santa bring you a bucket of LEGO bricks and now you have no idea what to build with them? Never fear my brick snapping friends, I have 4 books that will have you building cool stuff (or dreaming about building cool stuff) in no time.

If you like origami – or just Star Wars – you’ll enjoy folding your own Yoda or Millennium Falcon.  The Star Wars Origami kit is a bit of a cheat, because it uses special paper printed with the details.  It comes with a book with complete instructions for folding the papers to create 36 different

I have been a builder all my life. To this day, I still love playing with LEGOs and Erector sets. So, it is exciting when folks use modern technology to take these classic thinking-toys to the next level. The designers and engineers at The Seamless Toy Company have created the ATOMS Express smart block system to bring