holidays
Latest
Big-name talent and bad CG made for the worst holiday special ever
The original “film” was created in four months in 2002 by a barebones team of animators on a budget of about $650,000, and director Colin Slater hoped it would be the first in a line of extremely popular, extremely cost-effective holiday specials. Apparently, all it took to get Luke Skywalker himself onboard was to hire a limo that would ferry him to and from recording sessions.
Zoom will continue its unlimited free calls for upcoming holidays
On several key holidays running through New Year's. free Zoom calls can go as long as you want.
Introducing Engadget’s 2020 holiday gift guide
Introducing Engadget's 2020 Holiday Gift Guide. Here you'll find the best tech gifts you can get this holiday season, as chosen by Engadget editors.
Lenovo’s Legion Slim 7i gaming laptop weighs less than four pounds
Lenovo's new Legion Slim 7i gaming laptop has the slimmest chassis of any Legion laptop and weighs less than four pounds.
Best Buy takes on Amazon with free next-day deliveries
Best Buy is offering free next-day deliveries over the holidays. The expedited shipping will be available to almost everyone (99 percent of customers) and include almost everything (except heavier items like big-screen TVs and refrigerators). If customers are outside of the next-day zone, they'll still get free standard shipping.
Netflix reveals its huge lineup of holiday movies and specials
Netflix is full of holiday spirit this year. to say the least. It's revealed its massive lineup of holiday movies and specials. Among them is a release date for the third installment in the popular Christmas Prince saga. A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby will drop December 5th.
So, you got an IoT device for the holidays
IoT devices are at once a grotesquerie for the security- and privacy-conscious, and a delicious, convenient poison. And chances are pretty good you got one as a holiday gift. You might say we're in the heyday of IoT — though a significant number of infosec professionals might be more inclined to call it the apex of the Internet of Shit. They have a point. Even just a glance at recent headlines is enough to convince anyone that the so-called smartness of these products is a bit lacking.
Drones cause holiday chaos at one of London's busiest airports (updated)
Drones spotted over the UK's second-busiest airport have halted flights since Wednesday evening (December 19th), heavily disrupting the holiday travel of tens of thousands of passengers. Flights at London's Gatwick airport couldn't take off or land, and airport authorities said that 110,000 passengers on 760 flights were affected yesterday. Operations briefly resumed at around 3 AM, then were halted about an hour later when the drone was spotted again. The airport finally reopened this morning, though the Gawick airport authority has advised travelers to check their flight's status before traveling.
Google Assistant gets visual lyrics and more in big holiday update
Google is bringing a bunch of new features to its Assistant for the holidays, though you can probably thank Jeff Bezos, rather than Santa for them. The most notable feature is "visual lyrics" that will let you see and learn the words to your favorite songs on Google's Home Hub or another smart display device. Amazon has had such a feature for quite awhile, having introduced it over a year ago with its Alexa-powered Echo Show smart display. To sing along with Google's device, you'll need a Google Play Music subscription, and it will only work with select songs.
Spotify's holiday discount on Premium works for lapsed users too
Spotify is offering a couple of holiday deals and they're not limited to new users like these sorts of discounts typically are. First time Spotify Premium users in the US can get three months for $0.99 as long as they haven't used a 30-day trial before or provided credit card information in the past. And any Spotify Premium user that cancelled their account prior to October 16th of this year can get three months for the price of one ($10).
eBay's toy catalog includes a $100,000 'Magic: The Gathering' card
eBay is following in the footsteps of Amazon (despite an ongoing beef between the two) and attempting to revive the old holiday shopping tradition of the toy catalog. The online retailer is putting together a Toy Book containing the hottest items of this year and all the retro playthings that will make your nostalgia kick in. eBay is sending physical copies of the catalog to millions of homes, but the whole thing can be viewed online. If you're in New York City, eBay is also opening up an interactive storefront called Toytopia where kids can come in and play with the toys.
Amazon drops its free-shipping minimum for the holidays
Amazon is making rivals like Walmart sweat a bit more over the holidays by offering free shipping with no minimum purchase to everyone. The company announced that it's waiving the usual $25 minimum fee required for non-Prime customers in a US-only promotion -- the first time it's done that, according to Reuters. The deal is effective starting today, and will last until just before Christmas, when Amazon can no longer promise free delivery in time for Christmas.
Target removes minimum amount for free shipping over the holidays
Shortly after Walmart announced that it's expanding its free shipping program to cover items from third-party merchants, Target has also revealed how it plans to win you over this holiday season. The retailer is removing the $35 minimum amount requirement for its free two-day shipping offer from November 1st to December 22nd. That'll allow you to purchase items from its website without having to pay extra, no matter how small it is.
How the 'Grinch bots' stole Christmas
Resellers have existed since way before the internet. But with the surge of online shopping, they have found the perfect weapon to aid their business: bots, automated software that can add products to a virtual cart and purchase them faster than any human. Even if your browser autofills personal information, like your address and credit card, and it only took you one minute to get to the checkout page -- that's too slow. Bots can buy almost anything in a matter of seconds, which is why they've become the ideal tool for people who make money by snatching up coveted items and selling them on eBay, Amazon and Craigslist for a profit.
Google's Santa hub has you taking 'elfies' around the world
Google has brought back Santa's Village for another year, and this time it's particularly trendy. Fire up the Santa Tracker app on your Android phone and you can play Santa Snap, a game that has you flying around Google Maps to take "elfies" at famous landmarks around the world. Basically, it's Amélie with Santa's helpers in place of gnomes. Other activities will pop up daily between now and December 24th, including a equally of-the-moment AI drawing game (a festive take on Quick, Draw), an elf dance coding game and a virtual snowball fight.
Amazon is opening pop-up stores in Whole Foods for the holidays
This holiday season, you could step into a Whole Foods for some organic bananas and step out with a couple of Echo speakers instead. Amazon is already selling "farm fresh" Kindles, Echos, Fire TVs and tablets in 100 Whole Foods locations, but it's taking things a step further for holidays this year. It's opening pop-up shops in five Whole Foods stores across the US, which will do more than just peddle the e-retail giant's devices.
HTC gives Vive developers all app revenue for the rest of 2017
Now that HTC is all-in on Vive headsets and letting Google deal with its Pixel smartphone business, it has to deal with another reality: The public still isn't exactly sold on VR. To keep sales momentum going, it has announced a promotion aimed at attracting Vive app developers and keeping existing ones happy. Rather than taking its usual 30 percent cut, HTC will give 100 percent of app revenue to developers for the entire fourth quarter of 2017, starting in October.
This is the world's smallest and happiest snowman
The holiday season gets bigger and more hectic every year -- and maybe you're looking for a smaller, more adorable way to celebrate. Here's one: the world's smallest snowman. This microscopic frosty was built by the nanofabrication lab at London's Western University. He's adorable, but you'll need an electron microscope to see him in person: according to the lab's Tumblr page, the snowman stands at just three microns tall, or about 0.003mm. For comparison, a human hair is about 75 microns thick (0.075mm).
'Gears of War 4' marks the holidays with snowball fights
Destiny and Overwatch don't have a lock on over-the-top holiday gaming modes. Gears of War 4 just got a 99-cent Gearsmas Pack that adds some cheer to a mostly grim and dark game. The centerpiece is a special multiplayer event, Snowball Fight, where you have to fling snowballs at rivals using a custom Snowshot weapon. Akin to a real fight, you can't just reload -- you have to scoop up more snow ammo once you've run out of what little you have. There are also three ugly sweater-clad characters (JD, Kait and a Swarm Drone) and 24 holiday-themed weapon skins. Gearsmas lasts until January 4th, so you'll want to act soon if you're going to show off.
Apple's Jony Ive helped design a Christmas tree with no lights
Jony Ive and Marc Newson have designed a range of products that have little to do with their work at Apple, but their latest is something... different. They've worked with set designer Michael Howells on the Claridge's Christmas tree for 2016, and it largely lives up to your "if Jony Ive designed this, it would..." stereotypes. Just as your new Mac or iPhone is devoid of ports, there are no conventional tree lights in this hotel display -- you'll see 13-foot light boxes beaming images of snow-covered birches, but the actual tree arrangement is bare. It's like Ive was sent on a mission to destroy your holiday memories with his signature minimalism.
