Gadget Ogling: Wrist-Saving Keyboards, Resource-Saving Smartphones and New Angles on Reality

Welcome to another edition of Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that discards the minnows of terrible new gadget announcements in the hopes of landing the catch of the day in the form of a world-changing gizmo.

Hooking my attention this week are a flashy ergonomic keyboard, a modular smartphone, a wide-angle virtual reality helmet, and a complex game controller.

Be advised: These are not formal reviews, -- they relate only to

Lexus announces that it’s made a real hoverboard you can ride

In the race for a real hoverboard that you, the happy consumer, can actually get your hands on and ride, Lexus may be the emerging winner.

In this video, the subsidiary of Toyota says that they have made a real, rideable hoverboard. It’s called SLIDE, and this skateboard-size hoverboard is the

You can now use Facebook Messenger without a Facebook account

Facebook is opening up its messaging platform to anyone.

The social networking giant today announced that users in the U.S., Canada, Peru and Venezuela can now use Facebook Messenger even if they don’t have a Facebook account.

Previously, Facebook required that users log-in with their Facebook credentials in order to use Messenger.

Now, though, you can sign up for Messenger with a name, phone number, and photo.

Facebook created Messenger in 2011 and briefly allowed non-Facebook users to

Microsoft debuts new Windows 10 ‘Hero’ default desktop image

This is a far cry from the rolling green hill many of us grew up with on our desktops. Microsoft’s updated operating system will come with a new “hero” desktop image, the default option when Windows 10 is first installed. The company debuted the image today in advance of

Programmers are copying security flaws into your software, researchers warn

Many software developers are cribbing code, and its flaws, that someone else created. And the problem is only getting harder to keep up with.

Security researchers say that many software flaws are
 simply copied by programmers from other sources.

 It's easy to assume that hackers work way above our pay grade. Electronic intruders must be able to exploit vulnerabilities in the software we use because they're evil geniuses, right?

That may be the case in some very sophisticated attacks, experts say, but in others, not so much. Programmers -- the people who create the software -- don't write all their code from scratch, instead borrowing freely from others' work. The problem: they're not vetting the code for security problems.

Working more as code assemblers than as writers, programmers are sourcing about 80 percent to 90 percent of the code in any

The US Army is getting hoverbikes

Malloy Aeronautics, a UK-based company, has been slowly and publicly developing a hoverbike over the last few years — it even used Kickstarter to raise funds. But it looks like the project is now headed in a new direction, because the US Department of Defense just announced a deal with Malloy to develop the

Samsung makes big trucks transparent in the name of road safety

Art Lebedev's Transparentius is brought to life in new Samsung prototype

Back in 2009, Russian design house Art Lebedev introduced the dramatically titled Transparentius concept for improving road safety. It was remarkably simple: put a camera on the front of large, slow-moving trucks and connect it to