Loz Blain

Speed radar technology has become pretty much ubiquitous for traffic law enforcement around the world, but there are times when you and I would quite like to know how fast something is travelling too. PocketRadar is a hand-held personal speed measurement device about the size of a mobile phone that can get you a speed reading on a car half a mile away (or a baseball 120 feet away) in less than a second from being fully shut down. It's initially targeted at sports fans and athletes, but the company has flagged the possibility of a law enforcement version as well.  Read More

It's early January - you're probably looking to work off some of your Christmas kilos and shed that festive spare tyre. For millions of people around the world, that means making a New Year's resolution, buying a new pair of runners and hitting the road for a jog. But a new musculoskeletal study has concluded that the average modern running shoe is significantly more damaging to your knees, hips and ankles than running barefoot - or even walking in high heels. With osteoarthritis of the knee representing the biggest cause of disability in the elderly, this is a serious finding that's worth taking into account if you want to protect your joints.  Read More

Enviro-warrior stealth boat the Ady Gil has reportedly been rammed by a security vessel employed to protect a Japanese whaling ship. The crew of the Ady Gil had been launching projectiles at the Nisshin Maru whaling vessel and attempting to entangle its propeller with rope, when the 1.5 million dollar craft was suddenly approached and rammed by the Shonan Maru, one of the Japanese security vessels. The attack smashed the sleek biodiesel-powered trimaran in half, and it sank, although the crew of six has been rescued uninjured.  Read More

Gibson is pushing forward in its quest to build the most technologically advanced guitars on the planet, undeterred by many guitarists' disdain for its Robot Guitar technology and recent design choices. The New Dusk Tiger is an evolution of the Dark Fire, and it maintains and expands upon the Dark Fire's ability to tune itself in seconds and produce a huge range of tones. While it's a fully analogue instrument, the Dusk Tiger can be plugged into a PC to change tone, EQ and tuning settings to provide a range of customisation and gig setup options that simply dwarf the capabilities of any guitar that's come before it. Pity, then, that behind that glowing Master Control Knob it's packing a face only a mother could love!  Read More

For millions of commuters around the world, motorcycles are a compact and cheap way of getting around town in congested traffic. The Victory Vision is the absolute opposite - there's only been a handful of production bikes ever made that are bigger and heavier than this 400-kilogram, 1740cc American behemoth. It's built to eat up thousands of open-road miles with Harley-beating performance and buttock-coddling luxury - but in a surprise twist, this retro-futuristic mammoth can actually handle surprisingly well to boot. Loz Blain discovers how 10 days on one of the top five heaviest production bikes ever built can change your perspective on motorcycling in our video road test.  Read More

Gizmag is hardly a movie review site, but when a film comes along that advances the art form in such a revolutionary way as James Cameron's Avatar, it becomes entirely relevant to fans of emerging technology. I saw it last night in IMAX 3D - and despite ten years' worth of building expectations and a frenzied hype campaign in recent months, I was still unprepared for the enormity of the technical and artistic achievement this film represents. If you haven't seen it yet, read on, we've kept spoilers to a minimum.  Read More

Remember that zany Irish company Steorn, who claimed to have built a working perpetual motion machine that could produce clean, free energy out of a few magnets and some plastic discs? Well, they're back again. Undeterred by the fact that their own hand-picked jury of scientific judges unanimously agreed that the technology didn't work, Steorn has put its Orbo perpetual motion machine out for public display, and set up web feeds through which you can watch the thing in motion. But the demonstration has failed to impress critics, and for good reasons.  Read More

And to think I crack a self-satisfied beer after fixing the lawnmower... Wu Zhongyuan, a 20-year-old farmer from China, cobbled this working helicopter together out of a pile of steel pipe, some Elm wood and a 150cc scooter engine using his high-school physics knowledge and researching the rest on the Web via his mobile phone. I don't know whether to line this kid up for a Nobel Prize or a Darwin Award. This article comes with two Christmas bonuses: Bonus 1: a quick lesson on how to fly a helicopter. Bonus 2: five short videos demonstrating exactly what happens when helicopter dynamics go just a tiny bit wrong.  Read More

Screaming around on the surface of a lake or the ocean is great fun, but anyone who's had a crack at scuba diving will understand that it's a whole new world below the surface. Which is why the Scubacraft is such a sensational invention, even if you're not James Bond. It's a fully functional speedboat that'll scream along the surface at up to 50mph, but at the touch of a button it submerges and becomes an open-top electric submarine. Awesome.  Read More