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New Oslo Opera House Is Really a Stealth Skate ParkToday

For years, architects have gone to great lengths to protect their buildings from marauding skaters. But as aesthetic trends move toward folded planes that transition seamlessly from wall to ceiling and back to wall, designers have been looking to their former adversaries for a lesson in flow.

"We have this fascination with buildings becoming topography," says Alejandro Zaera-Polo, a partner at London's Foreign Office Architects, "and skateboarders have that physical experience." So for a park in Barcelona, his firm extended paving stones up the sides of small hills—to shield vegetation from salty sea breezes. At least that's what it told city officials. But skaters got the message. The resulting quarter-pipe landed on the March 2006 cover of Transworld Skateboarding.

Architect Zaha Hadid shares the love. She wanted her Phaeno Science Center in Germany to be an all-inclusive venue for pedestrians and skateboarders alike. Liability issues prevented skate-park designation—though you'd never guess it from the YouTube videos of pro skaters "visiting" the museum. "We design spaces that are flowing and continuous, and—just by coincidence—skateboarders look for that kind of continuity," Dillon Lin, an architect (and skater) at Hadid's firm, says with a wink.

And though the new Oslo Opera House

Gallery: Gizmodo Shows Off Gadget Prototypes From the PastToday

: Photo: Eliot Van Buskirk/Wired.com

NEW YORK – Popular technology blog Gizmodo has set up shop in a Manhattan art gallery to showcase some of the rarest and most intriguing gadgets from the past hundred years or so, including never-released Apple prototypes, the first Sony Walkman, a flying aerial surveillance camera and more.

The Gizmodo Gallery opened Thursday at the Reed Annex (151 Orchard St.), but we snuck in Wednesday night to photograph the most fascinating stuff on display here. The show runs through Sunday afternoon, giving New Yorkers, tourists and gadget freaks a chance to gaze upon important pieces of our technological history, and interact with some more recent gadgets.

: Photo: Eliot Van Buskirk/Wired.com

Nico Reyes of the Reed Annex sits blissfully unaware of the Draganflyer X6, a flying surveillance device that "makes crane shots obsolete," according to its creators. That may be the case, but we can't fight off our initial impression that this could be the last thing we will ever see.

With an expert at the remote control, the aerial carbon-fiber shutterbug navigates tight indoor spaces with ease according to Gizmodo editorial director Brian Lam, who said the beast is capable of holding steady in winds of up to 18 mph. A

King of Frame-Processing Makes Fast Images Crystal ClearToday

The Sony TK adds interim frames to make up the difference between 24- and 60-fps sources and its native 120-frame refresh rate, which can make movies with lame plots at least visually more appealing.

Imagining Tomorrow's Browsers — Oh, the PossibilitiesToday

It started with Google's Chrome. But where will it end? We may be entering a gilded age of browsers with special purposes and cool metallic monikers. Oh, the possibilities!

Browser Optimized for Wired Tired

Perez Hilton
Tintype

Celebrity news sites.

Delivers the juiciest gossip ("Lindsay did what?!") right to your desktop—no search necessary.

Draws snot and cocaine doodles on all the photos it displays.

Yahoo
Rust Bucket

Surfing job sites.

Helps you find a new career at Google, Facebook, or anyplace else in Silicon Valley (other than Yahoo).

For internal use only; doesn't work outside of Yahoo's Sunnyvale campus.

Brody Jenner
Iron Pyrite

Dudes.

Discovery tool for bars with VIP lounges, hot chicks, hair gel dispensers, and mirrors. Lots of mirrors.

Gets a little too friendly with your other apps, risking transmittal of a bad virus.

4chan
Radium

Serious business (all of the Internet).

Turns absurdly mundane images into more than 9,000 hysterical bons mots skewering mainstream society.

Won't stop Rickrolling you or hilariously redirecting you to fecal porn.

Hannah Montana
Gold

Tween girls.

It's the All-Digital Future — $100 Netflix Box Streams 15,000 FilmsToday

Roku's Netflix Player has proved a revelation for the web-streamed movie-watching experience, with its low cost and breadth of selection.