TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

3D printing used to mean intricately-shaped chunks of plastic or resin, but the range of materials available to churn out one-off designs has grown, through glass and stainless steel to – now – titanium.

The service only comes from I.Materialize right now and is done using a process called Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS). The machine lays down a layer of titanium powder and a high-powered laser sinters it into a solid later. Sintering is the process of turning powder into solid using heat, but without liquefaction.

This is repeated layer after layer until the object is ready, just like the 2 x 2-cm ball you see above, looking like something between a golfball and a microphone you might see in front of a blues singer.

Remember Virgin Mobile’s amazing MiFi plan which gave truly unlimited mobile internet for just $40 per month? It turns out that Virgin couldn’t handle it, and has decided to cap the plan at just 5GB.

This isn’t just for new customers, either. A Gadget Lab reader forwarded us an email he received from Virgin (pasted below) telling him that his service will be crippled as of February 15th.

It’s surprising to us that it took almost a month since the wide release of Tron: Legacy for a light-cycle–inspired Segway to come, but come it has, nonetheless.

In true fanboy fashion, Ricky Brigante tricked out his Segway i2 Personal Transporter to look like one of Flynn’s grid-gliding beauties, pimping a ride that Xzibit himself would be proud to cruise in.

For something so flashy, Brigante’s method was relatively easy and low-tech.

Pac-Man sucks on a touch-screen. Unless you have a proper joystick to yank your yellow-pizza avatar from the clutches of Clyde and co, then you’ll get bored (and frustrated) in minutes. Help is at hand (or at finger?) from ThinkGeek, in the form of the JOYSTICK-IT, a handsome stick which sticks straight onto a tablet screen.

LAS VEGAS — We’ve seen more than a few “wireless boomboxes” that can stream music from your computer to a set of remote speakers. Few promise as much as the inMotion Air from Altec-Lansing.

Announced here at CES Wednesday, this unit seemingly has all the bases covered. It can stream your music library from your computer up to 300 feet away using its own wireless adapter, and it can stream the songs stored on your phone or your iPad over Bluetooth.

by John Timmer

Consumer electronics companies are betting that 3-D is going to be the next big thing, and several are heavily promoting the latest 3-D televisions. But the advent of consumer-level 3-D has been accompanied by concerns about what effect the hardware might have on the human visual system. Although there’s no evidence of harm, most of these companies have issued disclaimers warning against the use of this hardware by children.

There’s no doubt that the Boattail Racer is gorgeous, its “aerodynamic” lines recalling automobiles designed before the wind tunnel, built to look fast rather than be fast. What is also certain is that it takes a lot of promotional bullshit to get away with selling a wooden toy car for $350.

Toss away up to four chunky USB chargers and replace them with one small, slick charger. That’s the promise of the Green Wall Charger from VogDuo.

At its heart the VogDuo box is a pocketable four-way charger for any and all USB-powered gadgets, and for that alone it probably deserves a place in your travel-bag (you’ll need an adapter, though, as the handy fold-out prongs are US-only).

Flipboard, the iPad app that turns Twitter and Facebook into a personalized magazine, has just gotten a huge update. Earlier today, our own Brian X Chen profiled the app and its creators, and briefly mentioned the main new additions: support for Google Reader and Flickr. These have turned an already compelling app into possibly the best way to browse all your online sources.

You add the new sections just like any other, only you need to log in to these accounts the first time.

When I saw the Float I wanted to grab it and start twisting the cubed faces like some kind of gigantic, wooden Rubik’s cube. Sadly, that’s not possible, not least because all the pieces are the same color: wood. The reality of this table, though, is somewhat cooler than Ernő Rubik’s brain-frying puzzle.