Massa-Bidal sells some of his designs on his online store, but these terrific book covers aren't available just yet. Perhaps if we all pester him enough he'll put them up? The Tumblr, Twitter and Flickr ones would look great on my wall. [Retrofuturs via Flickr via SuperPunch via Gearfuse]

While we've gotten a look at the MyDeskFriend gadgets before, Pingo is the first one to actually be released. He's bringing a lot of cuteness, an internal speaker, a microphone, some freaky LED eyes, two proximity sensors, three ground sensors, and a two-wheel drive.

Basically this penguin bot is a ridiculously interactive alert system for news, email, Facebook updates, and whatever else you set him to check for. I say "ridiculously interactive," because Pingo reacts to pokes, shakes, and voice commands and can be nurtured and played with as if a pet. I'm sure all of those things would turn more annoying than useful or entertaining quickly, but the damn thing is way to freakin' cute for me to care.

At $149, Pingo is definitely more expensive than the Furbies it acts and looks like, but—never mind the features—the minimal creepiness is worth the price difference.

A FACEBOOK FRIEND YOU'LL NEVER IGNORE: MYDESKFRIEND, A TINY ROBOTIC PENGUIN, PLAYS, READS, CONNECTS TO WEB AND FACEBOOK

New York, NY ( December 7, 2009) – Pingo is one Facebook friend you'll never ignore.

Tiny and irresistibly cute, Pingo is the first official mydeskfriend, a tiny robotic penguin launching today at www.mydeskfriend.com.

An ideal holiday gift for anyone passionate about the latest in gadgets, robotic toys, and consumer electronics, the interactive playmate can zoom around desktops, express moods, respond to voice commands, sing songs, and read aloud email messages, headlines, stock quotes, and weather.

The device integrates into its owners' Facebook account via a Facebook application that allows users to give their device its own name, profile, and personality, as well as nurture its moods and manage its daily life.

Owners can set mydeskfriend up to read RSS newsfeeds from their news sites and blogs, spoil it with food and vitamins from a Facebook gift page, and lull it to sleep by gently rocking it in their hands. Pingo can follow fingers around a desktop, while sensory devices ensure that it never falls off a desk when moving around on its own.

Friends who have their own devices can play and communicate via Facebook, including poking, sending messages, and giving Facebook gifts directly from one Pingo to another.

The device can fit in the palm of hand and displays its moods, like happy and angry, by changing the color of its LED-lit eyes.

mydeskfriend retails for $149.99 and is available for purchase at www.mydeskfriend.com. Orders must be placed before December 14th in order to arrive by December 23rd via priority delivery service. The device is compatible with the following systems: Mac OS (10.5 and 10.6), Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

mydeskfriend is developed by Arimaz, a Switzerland-based company specializing in creating entertainment robotic devices and Internet-connected toys.

"mydeskfriend is the first of a new generation of Internet-connected robotic devices," said Pierre Bureau, the CEO of Arimaz. "It's fun, entertaining, and helpful, keeping you connected to the Internet and Facebook even when you're not online."

About Arimaz

Arimaz SA is a company active in the fields of entertainment robotics and interactive toys. Arimaz creates, develops and market products integrating the latest technologies in domains such as electronics, wireless communication and artificial intelligence. For information, contact www.arimaz.com.

[Arimaz]

The thing is, Onxy was created more out of a sense of self-preservation amongst developers than it was keeping it real for people who game on the iPhone. As the App Store becomes cluttered with hundreds upon hundreds of throwaway games, Demeter told Wired the indie developer is in danger of being muscled out by big boys like Sega, who have the marketing budget to get their titles (for better or worse) to the top of the heap.

So by making games talk to one another, or by encouraging some competition among the players, a pack mentality begins to take shape with the smaller games. A rising tide raises all boats, or the saying goes.

"Right now games don't introduce the social aspect at all on the iPhone," Demeter told Wired. "If there is a social aspect it's an island. If these users are playing Trism, they're playing Trism; it's an island. How does that tie into other puzzle games? If players are still connected to a larger whole then they're more likely to keep playing other games."

Demter then claimed Onyx will "save" the App Store. For now, we'll agree that it could save something—Demeter's busines—but we'll be watching this one nevertheless. [Wired]

Other cool social stuff:

• Xbox Live-ish icons on your Zune Card that are like achievements, awarding people who listen to an artist the most or passing a total number of song plays.
• Dynamic friends' list that shows what everyone's listening to. Find out about the band Tokyo Police Club from your buddies.
• Windows Live Messenger "now playing" integration
• Album reviews! Tell everyone what you think about so-and-so's latest album, because the world needs to know.

But the big thing is the video store, which comes now with 4,800 music videos and downloadable TV episodes for $2. Their current partners are NBC, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and Cartoon Network. There's going to be future Zune Social integration for video, but nothing yet. Microsoft's also leaving the door open for original content and programming as well, but there's no video sharing/squirting as of yet on the hardware devices.

Other changes to the player include:
• Auto Playlists (smart playlists) are back! They're not as powerful as they were before—or as iTunes is—but they're automatically updating playlists that you can have based on your criteria.
• Gapless playback. Finally.
• Easy drag-and-drop song metadata editing.

The update should go live somewhere between 10PM PDT and 4AM PDT tomorrow.

Sending messages, browsing other people's music history, and listening to 30 second samples are super easy to do. If you've got a Zune Pass subscription, you can pretty much go nuts looking at other people's songs and downloading them directly to your player in a sort of crazy music buffet. The most interesting thing we found is that both "Zune" and "Microsoft" are restricted words. You can't have them as your "status" message if you wanted to say "Testing out the Zune." All in all, it's a pretty good start (the site's still in beta) to the internet social aspect of the Zune that Microsoft is trying to expand on. [Zune]

As some of our astute readers have pointed out, the Zune 2 looks like it will support a Wi-Fi text messaging service. The extract from the leaked support document details an inbox feature, which "is where customers can send and receive text messages with other Zune users." The added functionality would sure make the social a lot more social, but the exact details are not clear.

Apparently, there are three types of messages, including text, artist or album. What the artist and album message formats will allow is not clear. (Simply a message with the information seems unlikely, but anything beyond that also seems a little unlikely). What has not been touched upon is a method for text entry; we sure hope there is some form of a solution to make this doable. Given the hardware infrastructure we cannot see a solution, but we'd love to be proven wrong. [Zune Scene via Zune Boards]

What's supposedly special about this is its wireless connectivity (like the Zune), online radio station integration (presumably streamed over Wi-Fi), socialization (again, Zune, or perhaps Pandora-like services), and music recommendation.

What's also interesting is that they say "traditional" USB connections will "play a minor role in getting content to your device." We wonder which one of those three gets stuck being heart. – Jason Chen

Music Vets Prep Next-Gen Player [Wired]

So if you want to keep up with your friends and family from the office or on the go (you can view pictures on cellphones too) then give Radar a shot. It's of limited usage right now, but could be cool if you have a specific need for it. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Radar]

It's a similar story here in New York as a friend of mine went to Times Square and could not find one person to get all social with. Granted, Times Square isn't exactly a HOPE conference with a high concentration of technologically savvy people, but for heaven's sake, if you can't get social in San Francisco or New York, where can you? – Nicholas Deleon

Looking for Zune love [CNET]