The Gadget Lab crew chats about iPods, Apple TV, tablets, femtocells and Dylan's fugly shoes.

The kids may be ditching wristwatches for time-telling smartphones, but manufacturers and designers still have some tricks just barely up their long sleeves. The trick seems to be making watches more like smartphones by packing in extra functions or forgoing utility altogether for pure aesthetics or prestige.

We're living in an age of multiple connected screens, where even our media-savvy televisions demand some occasional typing to search for a videogame, TV show or Netflix rental. Problem is, typing (more like hunting and pecking) with a game controller or remote control is a pain in the butt — and that's the world into which the TiVo Slide is being born.

Artist Theo Kamecke has taken vintage circuit boards and transformed them to adorn furniture and sculpture that can be used in homes and galleries.

Keeping tabs on your allies — and hunting down your foes — has never been easier, thanks to an app for iPhones and Androids. If your war zone is within range of a Wi-Fi hot spot, that is.

How can you make tiny, flexible materials that conduct electricity more efficiently than today's batteries? You can engineer expensive, high-density carbon nanotubes. Or you can use the original nanobots, made by nature itself: viruses.

Remember the McFly 2015s, the Official Shoes of Gadget Lab? They were a fairly faithful rendition of Marty McFly’s amazing self-lacing sneakers from Back to the Future 2, forced to the market by the tireless work of the Maloof brothers who spent years badgering Nike into making them.

Sure VW made some concessions to drop the sticker price of its 2011 Jetta. But you probably won't even notice.

Apple this morning invited members of the press to a special event scheduled for Sept. 1. Rumor has it that Apple is preparing to announce a major revamp for the Apple TV and upgrades for the popular iPod Touch in an event scheduled for early September, according to multiple reports.

Oh, won’t you look at this: A spy video of the mysterious new Samsung Galaxy Tab, the seven-inch Android 2.2 tablet to be announced next week at the IFA show in Berlin.

Virgin Mobile has just upended the entire US mobile internet market. While other carriers continue to limit data and charge per Gigabyte, Virgin has just revealed a new unlimited plan for $40-per-month.

If this ain't the Droid you're looking for, we're not sure what is. The Motorola Droid 2 makes some modest improvements in hardware and software to make for a (mostly) winning follow-up to the original.

Google this week released an update for its Google mobile app for iPhone, which introduces push notifications for Google's calendar and a barely functional push feature for Google mail.

Your next iPhone might listen to your heartbeat or scan your face to identify its rightful owner — and it could react with anti-theft measures if it ended up in the wrong hands, according to a patent recently filed by Apple.

An Indian company is showing a $50 prototype device using the Android operating system that could take the low-cost tablet dream one step closer to reality.

Motorola has sent cease-and-desist letters to websites that hosted a leaked version of the Android 2.2 Froyo update for the phone.

The iPad is an almost perfect travel computer. It’s easy to carry, works as a guide, a map, a book and it’s crazy-long battery life will let you sit back and watch another movie while your laptop-toting companions search for a power outlet. But as convenient as it is, a little preparation will make things even smoother. Here are some things you should do before you leave the house.

The third generation of the Kindle offers higher contrast, better battery, and a graphite colored chassis. But is it worth it to upgrade? And can it hang it with tablet computers? Steven Levy has the answer.

Surveys reveal that a substantial chunk of U.S. customers plan to buy a tablet in the next year, and it's not necessarily going to be an iPad.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Texas Advanced Computing Center created an app that can take simulations from the powerful Ranger supercomputer and solve them on the phone.