Playbook

Buying ski boots usually involves stepping into a few boots off the rack to find the ones that don’t hurt, and picking whichever boots look best with your skis. Greg Whitehouse says you’ve been doing it all wrong.

On day two of bike camp, our intrepid roadie learns how to steer. Turns out you don’t turn in the direction you want to turn.

Knowing your limits, keeping your head and using the right gear will keep you alive when — not if — you get caught in an avalanche skiing the backcountry.

Oliver Percovich didn’t set out to help kids heal from the ravages of war or bridge socio-economic divides between ethnic groups or create safe havens where 1,600 children ride skateboards. He just wanted to teach kids how to skate.

When you have crazy contraptions with big engines that make a lot of noise, you get guys with a lot of bravado and something to prove. And that, naturally, leads to racing.

Why would we do this? For one thing, the possibilities are endless when we go beyond our all-too-fragile wetware towards more hardy software. Software is limitless. The human body is not.

Wins are everything in college football, and a coach who fails to deliver is usually fired so someone else can turn things around. Trouble is, that rarely works, according to a new study.

The U.S. Bobsled and Skeleton Foundation hopes BMW North America can help it bridge “a technology gap” with a radical new sled that could bring its first first two-man gold since 1936.

It was every CEO’s nightmare. Just about a year ago Hosain Rahman and his San Francisco-based company debuted Up, a personal health gadget. The slim, rubberized wristband had buzz, the early-adopter set was loving it, and on Black Friday the …

Jawbone’s Up was one of the hottest gadgets on the market in 2011 — until it cratered and had to be recalled. The activity tracker — an Yves Behar-designed wristband that sent data to a slick iOS app — was …

Using a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone, an electronic gearbox and a few sensors, engineers have built a bike that shifts gears itself without the need for a flywheel. The setup, designed by Cambridge Consultants, places sensors on the main crank and wheel …

Flying a homemade blender airplane is no different than riding a bicycle, but it’s a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes. And the “flying” machines that competed in Red Bull’s crazy contest can only loosely be called …

What makes a footballer’s slide-tackle realistic in a videogame? Newtonian physics.

In part three of our ongoing series, an experienced road rider discovers he doesn’t know jack squat about riding on the dirt. His lessons begin with learning how to sit on a bicycle.

An MIT computer geek has hacked a bicycle helmet with an EEG sensor that displays the wearer’s stress levels so that idiot in the Escalade behind you knows to back off.

What’s cooler than a humanoid robot? Why, a humanoid robot that plays soccer, of course. And you can get one for just 25 grand.

Moots has, since 1990, built nothing but titanium bikes. This isn’t to say the company didn’t consider straying from its path. During the darkest days, when it seemed carbon might rule the world, Moots experimented with all sorts of titanium-carbon …

NASCAR? Pffft. Boring. We’re down with Crash-A-Rama, which has a whole lot more noise, destruction and thick plumes of burning rubber.

Sometimes big ideas come from small, unexpected places. Products like Velcro and teflon coating came about as results of happy accidents rather than direct research. Along those lines, a team from the U.S. Naval Academy studying the vibrations inside of …

In part two of our ongoing series, a n00b to the wonderful world of dirt seeks out a local mountain biking guru so he might tell you everything you need to know when choosing a mountain bike.