As you'll see, existing innovations take our tongues, fingers, vulvas and penises to the next level. But the future of sex augmentations appears to lie in biometrics and in networking. Soon toys will learn from and interact with our bodies' responses, with or without a partner, while teledildonics will help people separated by vast distances get closer (and wetter).

Tongue, Extended
Whoever made women's genitals certainly made them tricky to stimulate—especially orally. Enter the Tongue Joy, a vibrating tongue enhancement to help human tongues do what no human can in terms of sensation and endurance. Strap the silicone-banded vibe on your tongue (or, if your tongue is pierced, use the barbell piercing attachment) and proceed with awesome. It's battery operated and comes with multiple band sizes in case you want to strap it around something bigger. Four silicone sleeve attachments enhance the size and texture of the vibrating yummy-ness. Lovely for oral sex on a man, too, particularly those who are into hummers that aren't cars.

Bionic Fingers
The vibrating three-finger power pack and glove by Fukuoku enhance the size and function of one's digits, transforming your fingers into vibrators that run at up to 45,000 vpm (that would be vibes per minute). They're more particularly cyborgy than most sex toys, if that's your thing. (Ahem, Malebots subscribers!)

Unnatural Male Enhancement
The Ride On (pun intended) blows most penis extenders (pun not intended) out of the water. It's more comfortable, less bulky and stays on in more positions than other models—all while fulfilling its purpose of enhancing the size and function of a man's penis. Function? Yes. Some men use these not for length or girth but to keep having sex during half time. Available from Vixens Creations, the Ride On gets men around that annoying "refractory period" that is the curse of many a man's sexistence. It's also useful for men with severe or chronic erectile dysfunction (ED) who want in.

Electronic Condoms?
Given the perception that condoms may reduce sensation, sex-loving scientists have been proposing vibrating condom designs since at least the 1990s. Given the enormous improvements in vibrators since then, it's unclear what a vibrating condom—if ever brought to market—would ultimately look like. Will it have an awkward external wire and power pack like the one in this 1995 patent image? (Here's a PDF of the actual patent.) Or will it be built into the condom itself, as thin as a BandAid, as in my dreams? The design will have to depend on functionality: The vagina is not as sensitive as a woman's vulva (clitoris, labia, etc) so the value of a vibrating shaft may be more for a man than his partner. That is, unless it vibrates at the base by a woman's vaginal opening or clitoris, like the Trojan Vibrating Ring or the Bo—a favorite.

The Hydraulic Penis
As potentially borgy as it is, this pre-Viagra augmentation is for now only available for men with ED that is unlikely to respond to medication or sex therapy. This type of penile implant lets men pump themselves into an erect state whenever they want—note that pump in the scrotum—and deflate on command. There's none of those scary erections lasting longer than 4 hours that we hear about in commercials starring Bob Dole. Though many men may dream of having this much control over their erections, the ones who use this do it as a last resort. Once it's been in use for a while, some men lose their natural erectile reflex because their body no longer has to work at it. Moral of the story: Enjoy what you've got.

Hymen Again
Fake hymens give the illusion that one is going where no man has gone before. One option is a hymenoplasty—a surgical procedure that "restores" a woman's hymen. This is done only rarely in the US, but is performed increasingly in other countries, often for women who who feel they need to prove their virginity to their fiancé or his family lest they risk shame or, scarily, even violence. Sometimes, the operation is requested by women who want to give their partner the "gift" of taking their virginity, like as an anniversary gift (for serious—and to think I'd go with golf clubs or a Garmin).

There is a mail-order product that a woman places inside her vagina which simulates the loss of virginity, fake blood and all. Gigimo's Artificial Virginity Hymen, has come under fire by some Egyptian politicians, who even called for a ban on it. Meanwhile, women everywhere are still calling for an end to practices that insist they "prove" their virginity to anyone or anything. On a different note, a quick word to Gigimo: When you write that you can "have your first night back anytime," does that include the awkward fumbling, 20-second staying power, and the two weeks of worrying about being pregnant?

Biometrics: Gadgets That Get You
I've seen (dreamed?) the future of sex toys and It. Is. Awesome. Ideas are swirling about how to create sex toys that rely on digital biometrics. No, we're not talking fingerprint-activated toys that prevent women's husbands from getting curious when they're home alone. We're talking about products that respond to vaginal temperature, pelvic contractions leading up to orgasm, heart rate, even pelvic blood flow. Sexual Aids of the Future may be able to learn a person's sexual response and alter stimulation patterns based on the data.

Maybe there will eventually be a gadget that will help men to last longer (so long, baseball!) or women to come more quickly. Maybe it will build sexual tension in such a lovely way that pleasure and orgasm are on the "better than average" side of the mountain more often than not. The technology is there, the ideas are there, all it takes is execution, I'm betting sooner rather than later. When the day of biometrically enhanced stimulation comes, I guarantee we will wake ‘n gadget with more than our iPhones.

Teledildonics: Long-Distance Yearning
Though most sex toys enhance in-person play, some toys facilitate sex between people across the miles. Take the PenisTron, for example, which looks and probably feels (thanks to vacuum effects) like a Fleshlight version of a vagina—and it can be controlled, tightened or slowed to a seductive drag by a man's partner out in the ether to simulate the two of them having sex.

There's also the Communication Hole Rider (which involves vacuum effects) and the Joystick (vacuum effects on the penis and a joystick up the butt)—all which can help to connect two people for interactive sex play.

It's not sex with a toy; it's sex with a person via a toy: Big difference. Sure, you miss out on the kissing. (The mostly male sex toy designers never seem to create toys that make out with you, except for some freaky robot girlfriends.) On the other hand, there's no risk for infection or pregnancy when you're doing it teledildonically.

My dream for teledildonics is that we eventually fine tune toys to produce more variety and transitions. IRL sex tends to move, for example, from sucking (vacuum effects) to licking (hey there, Sqweel) to mouth kissing (freaky robot girlfriend) to intercourse (vacuum again) to hand play (toned down version of the Fukuako glove) or whatever else you're into (furniture play?). And if it were me playing with a partner over the internet I'd want to touch, to kiss, to lick, to play in varied teasing ways—not just yank their junk with the PenisTron (though it's a good start). Who's with me?

Debby Herbenick, PhD is a Research Scientist and Associate Director of The Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, a sexual health educator at The Kinsey Institute and author of Because It Feels Good: A Woman's Guide to Sexual Pleasure and Satisfaction. She blogs at MySexProfessor.com.

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

If you want to view this gallery as a list, click here

Point Inside: Fact: stepping foot in a suburban mall can drain your vitality in a matter of seconds. And though I don't think a deep disdain for the concept of indoor shopping complexes and what they've done to the very fabric of the American town was the driving inspiration behind Point Inside, they're definitely onto something: With hundreds of mall maps that look a lot like those big directory signs, this app gets you in and out of your local mall as quickly as possible, all for free. Could use a few hundred more maps—some of my old tweenage haunts weren't there—but if yours is listed, PI is great.

Agile Messenger: I've always been a little leery of Agile Messenger, since it's usually priced at around $10, up there with the likes of Beejive, and it's a little ugly—though the multi-account and push features are more than adequate. For a few weeks, though, it's just two dollars. And they've just added a new feature called "Walk and Type," which overlays your text over a live camera view, so you never have to take your eyes off you AIM conversations as you walk down the street. In theory. In practice, you will still die. Ranked for feature-bloat audacity, and shitty late night joke/newspaper cartoon potential.

Full Browser: As with every alternative browser in the App Store, Full Browser isn't really its own browser, since it's still using Mobile Safari's WebKit renderer. That said, FB's added features are worthwhile: the tabbing system, which is more traditional and desktop-like than Safari's, makes up for its rough looks with efficiency, in-app email makes life ever-so-slightly faster if you spend most of your time browsing, the favorite sites speed dial is a mite faster than using Safari's favorites, and inline text search is just, well, useful. A dollar.

WhatsApp: First, let's try this: WhatsApp is like BlackBerry Messenger for the iPhone. Cool, right? If that doesn't mean anything to you, it's like an instant messaging app, tied to your number—not a screen name or PIN or anything—that integrates with your contacts. If you have the app, your friend has the app, and you're both in each others' phonebooks, you're ready to go. Push notifications make this even more like BBM, in that you don't have to keep the app open. Free for now, so GO GO GO.

PicTranslator: Translates text from photos, from whatever language you want. I love it because it fits nicely with my vision of what smartphones should be doing for us in the next few years, and it seems to work pretty well most of the time. I don't love it because results are much, much better on the 3GS—you're basically limited to signage with the 3G and 2G, because they can't focus on small text—and because your $2 only gets you one language. Still though, extremely neat stuff, as long as you're aware of the limitations. And now you are, so!

PocketBlu/FoxPop: From Universal and Fox, respectively, these are the new Blu-ray companion apps. PocketBlu, available now but not really compatible with much yet, is like an enhanced remote control for compatible titles, making navigating various BD Live features a bit more intuitive. It'll also stream bonus content to your handset over Wi-Fi, which is pretty cool. FoxPop, which isn't quite out yet, does things a little differently: It's like a Popup Video feed that plays back trivia, photos, video, and other content to supplement the film. Bonus cool feature: it figures out where you are in the DVD or Blu-ray by listening to the soundtrack, and matching it to a timeline. Both should be coming soon to select releases.

Navigon Traffic: $90 for a navigation app is feeling more and more expensive by the day, and $20 for the new traffic function doesn't feel like a steal either. That said, there are no monthly fees after that initial charge, the traffic data is crowdsourced and rich, and Navigon is one of the best nav options out there. Worth your consideration, if not your dollars.

Priceline Negotiator: Priceline's main gimmick/selling point has always been its instant bid feature, and it's well-suited to the iPhone. Give it a location, make your hotel room bid, and you know if you've got it or not pretty much that second.

ARGH: I somehow missed this one in yesterday's augmented reality app roundup, so here goes. ARGH cheesily superimposes ghosts over your 3GS's camera view, as if there were actually there. Upon seeing ARGH, most of your friends will groan and tell you you've wasted your money. But! Your senile grandmother will be legitimately spooked, your pet dog will be mildly confused, and your little cousin will probably chuckle a little. Two dollars.

iVIP: This thing is basically I Am Rich, except it offers (some?) services, in the form of memberships to various clubs and societies. It sounds a bit like a scam (A Cineworld membership? Really?) and the concept is inherently deplorable, but in separating a special, horrible kind of rich person from their dollars, iVIP is doing the world a service. $1000, or $450 for the "Blue" version, which is blue.

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!

Remember handwriting? We have all but abandoned it, but the torch is being taken up by robots like Kuka, who has been put to work writing out copies of the Martin Luther bible. [BotJunkie]
Developed by Aberystwyth University and the University of Cambridge, Adam the robot was the first machine to independently discover new knowledge.

Using artificial intelligence, Adam hypothesized that certain genes in baker's yeast code for specific enzymes which catalyse biochemical reactions in yeast. The robot then devised experiments to test these predictions, ran the experiments using laboratory robotics, interpreted the results and repeated the cycle.

The results of the experiment were later replicated and confirmed by a team of human scientists. So, it appears that computers are not only doing our calculations, but they have begun thinking for us as well. [Scientific Blogging and Link]
Are you lactose intolerant? Do you have frequent heartburn or constipation? Perhaps one day your defective digestion system could be replaced with a more advanced version of the Cloaca machine. This thing simulates actual human digestion and, in the end, produces a turd you would be proud of. [Cloaca via Link]
Dishwashers have been around for decades, but we still have to physically put the dishes into the machine. This is completely unacceptable. Panasonic's robot takes care of the entire cleaning process from start to finish. [Link]
Seriously, what don't smartphones do for us these days? At the most basic level, these phones are how we communicate, how we entertain ourselves and how we gather information. Thanks to apps, smartphones are taking on even greater roles—like helping us keep our girlfriends happy without actually having to do any work. Girlfriend Keeper sends automatic texts and emails to your significant other depending on the intensity of your relationship. [Girlfriend Keeper]
If you are tired of your co-workers being promoted over you, just wait until a robot becomes your new boss. JAST or the "Teamworkbot" has the ability to observe and mimic human behavior. As you will see in this video, JAST already knows how to complete the task, so it observes the human's actions, anticipates his next move and dresses him down when he gets it wrong. [Link]
I'm pretty sure that allowing robots to take a critical role in surgery qualifies as crossing a Rubicon with respect to our level of trust in machines. The Da VInci robot enables a surgeon sitting at a console to control movements and equiptment with greater precision—resulting in a procedure that is minimally invasive. [Wikipedia]
It's only a matter of time before technology becomes advanced enough to allow lazy parents to turn over the duties of child-rearing to robots. In fact, it's already happening in Japan where robots like Tmsuk babysit kids in shopping malls thanks to RFID badges. They even have robot teachers like Saya that terrify elementary schoolchildren into doing their work.
The Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA) was developed by MIT to help drivers navigate, bitch about their driving when necessary, and keep them company on long trips.

"When it merges knowledge about the city with an understanding of the driver's priorities and needs, AIDA can make important inferences," explains Assaf Biderman, associate director of the SENSEable City Lab. "Within a week AIDA will have figured out your home and work location. Soon afterwards the system will be able to direct you to your preferred grocery store, suggesting a route that avoids a street fair-induced traffic jam. On the way AIDA might recommend a stop to fill up your tank, upon noticing that you are getting low on gas," says Biderman. "AIDA can also give you feedback on your driving, helping you achieve more energy efficiency and safer behavior."

[MIT via Link]
While the AIDA robot helps you navigate, there are plenty of engineers working on cars that do all of the driving for you. Chevy's "Boss" Tahoe is one of the higher profile projects that have come out in recent years, winning the DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007 after successfully navigating a 60-mile course littered with obstacles. [Link]

Specter, who covers the science beat for The New Yorker, is pissed off. Forces on both the left and right have been coming down on good clean science like never before. Yes, this "denialism," as he calls it, comes from both sides. People on the left might think of it as Bush-flavored Intelligent Design agendas and bans on stem-cell research, while those on the right would recognize liberal whining about vaccinations and genetically modified food. It's all of these factions, and plenty more.

And in his new book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, Specter demonstrates that ignorance is death.

For our discussion—fitting the theme of This Cyborg Life—we singled out synthetic biology, a pursuit, as Specter describes it, that "by combining elements of engineering, chemistry, computer science and molecular biology, seeks nothing less than to assemble the biological tools necessary to redesign the living world." Here's an edited version of our discussion:

So we're talking about, synthetic biology, the ability to take cells or small organisms and turn them into machines?

Yeah, that's essentially where building machines, unbelievably complex ones, that will eventually be able to do whatever we want, out of cells and chemicals.

Yeah, so we just mix some chemicals in a pot and suddenly we got a car manufacturer?

Well, it's a little more complicated than that, but that's the direction we're moving in—you put some chemicals together and you get an organism, and then you get a more complex organism, and you get organisms that'll do things, and you can get drugs, or chemicals, or plastics or fuel... These [scientists] are trying to take basic sugars, basic chemicals, and make it so they can digest carbon (which is kind of exciting though we're not there yet) or just diesel fuels, plain fuel, that doesn't emit any sort of greenhouse gasses. That has happened in small scales—we're there. It's just a question of scaling.

So why is this kind of low-level synthetic approach better doing than, say, the guys making fuel from algae?

I think the hope is that this will be cheaper and more stable. I don't know that it's better. I'm sort of agnostic on that, I think you'd rather have a lot of different approaches that are kind of greenhouse gas neutral. And whatever works, you'll use. And you know we're not gonna have one source of energy, we're gonna have a bunch. We're gonna have wind, we're gonna have solar, we're gonna have chemicals.

When we look at the malaria drug [one of the first products that can be manufactured through synthetic biology—and a project funded by the Gates Foundation], they are going to be able to make all the drug that is needed in the world in a couple of vats. One of the reasons that's exciting is because it's a stable, easy way to regulate the manufacturing, to make sure that it's done properly. We have a big problem with malaria medicine because it's misused, it's taken the wrong way, it's counterfeit—and this is a way of regulating it. I think we'll see that with energy sources too. It'll be solid.

In the book, you refer to the opening of the Will Smith film I Am Legend, when doctors say they've harnessed the measles virus and turned it into a cancer killer, a mutant virus that eventually turns everybody into zombies. But two years after the movie comes out, real doctors from the Mayo clinic say that they're using measles strains as a real cancer treatment, in real life.

The point I'm trying to make is, these things are a little scary. Anything that powerful has to have a downside. And we need to know what the downside is, we need to talk about the downside. And we need to acknowledge it exists and say to ourselves—and sometimes we won't agree—but say to ourselves, "Gee, you know what, the potential benefits outweigh the risks." Sometimes we won't think that. But I do believe that lots of times, given the information, we would think that way.

We're on the verge of creating our own viruses that go into the body—I mean, is that right?—they go into the body and they do something good rather than bad.

Yeah, but the thing is, that has a bad connotation but it ought not to. There's a guy named Eckhard Wimmer who created a fake version of the polio virus, and lots of people screamed, because why would you do that? I even trashed him in an article once and I was wrong and so were those people. What he had been trying to do was to make synthetic vaccines. In order to make totally synthetic, rapidly reproducible vaccines, you need to understand the viruses. Wouldn't it be great if, for H1N1, instead of growing tons of this stuff in eggs in Pennsylvania, we could just gear up instantly, making in factories all around this country, so that we could have millions of doses in two weeks? That's not a pipe dream; that can happen.

Who says whether this kind of research happens or not? Who pounds the gavel?

If you live in America, it'd be some sort of Democratic process. We need to have some sort of regulatory framework. Who approves a new drug? It isn't just a pharmaceutical company that says, "Hey, I've gotta drug, let's put it out there." No, there are tons of hoops to jump through, and we need to have some hoops. And we need to make those hoops reasonable so that they're not so ridiculous that no one bothers to try to jump through them but not so easy that we're endangering our citizens.

But the scientific progress will probably continue regardless of whether there's a discussion or a regulatory framework?

I've never seen anything in the history of our planet where human progress has stopped. People have gotten in the way, people have slowed things down, but yeah it continues. People do the work. And so I think we kind of need to get on board and harness that work. Some people said, "We need to stop some things," but I don't think that can happen. I don't think we can turn information back.

Right. In your book, you mention that Bill Joy's argument was to just put a padlock on certain venues.

Yeah, and I understand why he said that, I just don't think it's realistic. I don't think that's the way the human animal is built or has ever acted.

The point I think that you make in the book is that, if American science infrastructure bans certain researches, it's not gonna stop people who are outside America from doing the research, and maybe won't stop people who we definitely don't want to be doing this research.

It's true. Look at the stem cell ban. People went elsewhere to do it. It set us back, it set the world back. But it isn't like it stopped. That's a good thing, but it could be a bad thing. If we're gonna do sort of high-end synthetic biology, and be creating all sorts of exciting but theoretically scary things, let's do it in this country. Let's not have it done in some place with no regulatory system.

What's the worst thing that could happen here?

You mean like in terms of?

I mean in terms of messing around with this particular biological technology.

Look, the worst thing that can happen when you mix genes around is you can let something loose that you can't bring back that destroys, you know, fill in the blank. Humans? Animals? Life? That is the worst thing. That is the doomsday scenario and it... it can happen, these things can happen.

We have had agricultural biotechnology for 35 years and we've planted two billion acres. And people still talk about how it's untried and untested. It isn't untried. It isn't untested. It doesn't make people sick. It doesn't mean there aren't problems with it. But to go right to the idea that the worst thing will happen, it's crazy. There's always a worst case scenario. We don't need to assume it. We need to think about it.

And then obviously the upside, this is the point of the book, the upside far outweighs the downside.

Yeah, you know, the worst case scenario is something goes awry and destroys the universe. OK, that's the worst case scenario, and it's a pretty remote likelihood.

Now, a pretty good likelihood is, if we continue living the way we live, my kid, who's 16 years old, maybe she won't live a whole life because people are dying of skin cancer like crazy in 50 years. This isn't so long from now. We have really severe problems we need to address instantly. And those are the potential benefits of this research. We don't talk about that very much. We need to do the work and find out and make our decisions and not decide beforehand that it makes no sense.

If this has piqued your interest, or if you're just tired of people bitching about stem-cell research, genetically altered foods or the alleged evil that lurks in vaccinations, be sure to pick up Michael Specter's amazing book Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, and meanwhile have a look at his most recent piece on synthetic biology in The New Yorker. Thanks Michael!

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

Special thanks to Kyle the Intern for transcribing the interview

The game, which hits in Japan on Dec. 17, will include a new battle system, a "dramatic story" focused on the emotions of the character and will feature a Leona Lewis single as the game's opening theme.

Also, holy crap, are you looking at this video? Because it's spectacular. The video also gives us a better look at the game's Paradigm system.

You may want to watch this video full-screen, just click on that button in the bottom right corner.

The company behind the living, petri-dish-grown substance known as Apligraf hates my new name for it: meat band-aid. "It's living," Dr. Damien Bates, Chief Medical Officer at Organogenesis, corrects me. "Meat isn't living."

But no one argues with me that this substance is really just a band-aid. A living, $1500 band-aid, I should say.

Apligraf is a matrix of cow collagen, human fibroblasts and keratinocyte stem cells (from discarded circumcisions), that, when applied to chronic wounds (particularly nasty problems like diabetic sores), can seed healing and regeneration.

Unlike the research of Dr. Atala that we explored yesterday, Organogenesis is not interested in creating boutique organs for proof of concept scientific advancement. They're a business in the business of mass tissue manufacturing—and the first of its kind. So when researchers like Dr. Atala develop their science to a threshold of duplicable outcomes, companies like Organogenesis will be scaling the process into Ford-esque mass production models.

I gave Dr. Bates our now-traditional to-the-point Q&A. Here's what he said about the future of his field:

What can we do now?

Organogenesis was the first company to successfully mass produce and commercialize a living, cell-based product. Our flagship product, Apligraf, is the only living cell-based product that is FDA-approved to treat two types of chronic wounds—venous leg ulcers and diabetic foot ulcers.

Apligraf secretes proteins including growth factors and cytokines which are believed to underlie the clinical improvement in the rate and quality of healing. Organogenesis also has licensing agreements for our biocompatible extracellular collagen matrices to be used as scaffolding for a variety of biosurgery procedures, including heart and tendon repair.

With more than 250,000 patient applications, our products are one of only a handful of regenerative medicine products that are already used around the world.

What will we be doing in 5 years?

The next foray for our platform technology is to deliver the first living cell-based product to induce the regeneration of site-appropriate oral mucosa (i.e., gums). CelTx has been studied extensively, and recently completed a pivotal clinical trial. We expect to launch the product once U.S. FDA approval is secured. We are also developing the next-generation of our platform technology that has the potential for multiple indications.

Over the next five years, Organogenesis expects to continue to pioneer regenerative medicine by completely automating the manufacturing process using robotics. This is expected to be a first within the field.

In 10 years?

We expect that cell-based technologies used to improve healing will have become widespread. The idea of a "systems-based" approach to treatment will have replaced the traditional drug-based approach to many diseases.

We will have a better understanding of which cells or cell combinations to use for what types of medical conditions. Regulatory agencies (such as the FDA) will have a more streamlined approach to dealing with cell-based therapies enabling a more efficient approval process.

This will translate into more cell-based products being available on the market. Parallel discoveries will help us understand how to optimize the patient's response to cell-based products. Matrix-only products will be optimized to serve as a totally biocompatible scaffold with physical properties equal to native tissue.

In 20 years?

It is difficult to predict exactly where we will be in the next 20 years. However...we expect that cell-based products will be able to direct site-appropriate differentiation of tissue without scar formation.

We will be tantalizingly close to actually unlocking the body's true regenerative potential, in addition to our current abilities to improve the rate and quality of tissue repair. This new era may see the successful regeneration of entire appendages (e.g. fingers). With Regenerative Medicine, the field is so new and there are exciting developments announced almost daily. It really is a new frontier and the future is wide open.

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine. We met Dr. Damien Bates at this year's TEDMED.

True to their title, augmented reality apps add something to what you see, using a combination of camera, GPS, and sometimes, in the case of the iPhone 3GS, a compass. The result is something like a real-life heads-up display on your phone, and it's spectacular.

It's been a few months since Apple enabled AR apps in the iPhone's firmware, and as you might expect, there's been an explosion of new takes on the concept. Here are ten of the best:

Note: Most of these apps will work best with the iPhone 3GS, and some explicitly require it. It's worth checking into exactly what you lose without the compass before downloading. Also, here's the article in one page.

Layar: Layar was one of the first augmented reality mobile apps to hit any platform, so by the time it made the jump from Android to the iPhone it'd had some time to mature. Layar is an augmented reality framework, not a single purpose app—it's fed by a growing library of "layers," which range from Wikipedia to Flickr to apartment listings in your local town. Plus it's free, so it's a great way to see how the hell this augmented reality thing works in the first place.

Wikitude: Another straightforward overlay app, this one hovers little text bubbles over the locations of geotagged Wikipedia articles. What differentiates this from something like Layar is that through the app's website, Wikitude.me, you can add your own points of interest. Most of the data sets used by AR apps are broad and not that useful outside of large cities, so this is a good way to build your own hyperlocal augmented reality.

Robotvision: A location-based point-of-interest app like Layar or Wikitude, for contrarians. Why? Because it uses Bing local search, like a badass* OK? It's a nice change of pace if you're getting tired of browsing through local historical sites with Wikipedia, or watching local Twitterfiends broadcast their locations every eight minutes. A dollar.

*Person who prefers not to use Google. (You can use Google if you want, too.)

Nearest Subway: Overlays your camera's view with floating, labeled avatars of your nearest subway stations. This one's local to NY, though there are similar apps for other cities (Nearest Tube for London, Bionic Eye for Tokyo, etc). But it doesn't matter, because the experience of actually using this thing borders on sexual, especially if you're used to compass-less Google Maps. Two dollars.

Assassin FPS: Remember that old Kids in the Hall skit, where Mark sits back and pretends to crush everyone's heads with his fingers? This is that, except more modern, less funny and ever-so-slightly sinister. It's essentially an FPS HUD, gun included, superimposed onto real life. You know, so you can shoot your boss in the face because he's got coffee breath, or rocket-blast your wife's silly porcelain dog figurine collection, because you hate her so so so much and wish she would just die, that harpy. Healthy coping, for a dollar!

Pocket Universe: Pocket Universe is a mixed bag. It's not a camera overlay app, so in a way it's the least pure augmented reality app of the bunch. The effect, though, is the same: A compass-equipped iPhone 3GS can use Pocket Universe to display a labeled map of the cosmos matched to wherever it's pointed. It's a heavy-duty astronomy news and reference app in addition to the AR feature, which helps justify the $3 price.

cAR Locator: This concept has been around in one form or another since the advent of GPS in phones, probably because it's extremely simple to execute. Also: useful! Tag your car's location when you get out of it, then later, just point your camera at the parking lot to see your spot. Two dollars, which to be honest. is probably too much.

Yelp: Yelp is my go-to service for new local recommendations in the first place, but the addition of augmented reality adds a layer of whimsy to your typical "where can can a guy get a decent wax job and/or hamburger around here?" adventures. This one's secret—you've got to shake your phone to activate it. Free.

Urbanspoon: Like Yelp, except with an explicit, specific food focus. The augmented reality implementation is much slicker here too: tilt your iPhone down to switch to 2D map mode, and tilt it back up to switch to THE FUTURE. Free.

Junaio: Augmented reality on phones is still a fairly new concept, and most other apps fit a fairly simple template. Junaio is more ambitious, letting users construct 3D scenes in their cameras' viewfinders, place them on a map and share them with others as pictures or as part of explorable layers. The current implementation is kind of rough and the aesthetic is cartoonish, but Junaio captures the spirit of AR better than most. Free.

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

The Amazons, after all, amputated their left breast so it wouldn't impede their skill in archery. Though athletes have taken some truly crazy stuff to have an advantage, nobody's gone so far as elective amputation.

I've spent the better part of my lifetime trying to get out from under an idea of being "disabled," and the baggage that comes with that label. (Look it up in a thesaurus if you want a taste of what I mean.) As of yet, the best prosthetic available is not as efficient and not as capable as what Mother Nature gives us—or, what she was supposed to give me, and South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius. The revolutionary design of the woven carbon-fiber Cheetah Leg, nicknamed for its design inspiration, has been in existence for nearly 15 years—and after my initial triumphs with them in the mid 1990s, it has been the leg of choice for nearly all elite amputee sprinters. But in one instant, after Pistorius entered a summer 2007 track meet in Rome and placed second in a field of runners possessing flesh and bone legs, he and I were deemed too abled.

Commence the comical nightmare of being told that we now possess an "unfair advantage" in wearing prosthetic limbs to run. The scores of amputee sprinters who had competed with the limbs for the previous 13 years—and were still comfortably categorized as "disabled"—were virtually ignored. What is fascinating is the immediate shift in society's regard of a disabled athlete as an "inspiration" (cue the patronizing "awwwww") to a legitimate threat to other athletes ("Uh, what the hell do we do now?").

The first obvious issue for me was the deliberate ignoring of the truly excellent athletic feat performed by Pistorius and the insistence that if he could beat able-bodied athletes, "it must be the legs." Look, I also beat a few able-bodied athletes when I ran Division I track in college, and so have plenty of other well-trained amputees in the last decade. The difference is, none of us have ever posted his times. Bottom line: If it were just the legs making us superfast, I would have done a decade ago what he's doing now, and so would others. Oscar's not running with any different technology than what I ran with 14 years ago.

The modern sports ethos that we've constructed is based upon increasing advantages. Because certainly, in so many sports, we have pushed past natural human function to facilitate a more exciting game—better times, better performance. But where does an advantage become unfair? The crux of that question lays under the umbrella of ethics, which should indeed govern our rule structure within the competitive arena, but there's something in this story which specifically points toward a deep-seated fear, one we don't want to talk about in polite conversation, one which parallels historical instances of racial integration of sport and gender integration of sport. If we allow a person, one who we view as our inferior (in whatever way), to play with us, and then that person beats us, what does that say about us?

In the 1930s, Jesse Owens and Joe Louis blew the lid off common thinking of how "capable" an athlete of African descent was compared to an athlete of European descent, although the beginning of league integration took a decade more to achieve, and in some sports another three decades. It was as recent as 2003 when some members of the PGA balked at Annika Sorenstam's quest to compare her talent to the best men in the world, admitting their fear of how it might feel to have a woman beat them, an embarrassing display of archaic thinking.

In 2001, golfer Casey Martin, who played with a degenerative circulatory leg condition that made it nearly impossible to walk an 18-hole course, successfully won a Supreme Court decision allowing him to use a cart as an acceptable assistive medical device. The PGA Tour fought Martin for years, saying all pro golfers must walk because uniform rules are essential for the integrity of the sport. "Accommodating Martin with a golf cart will not fundamentally change the game," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for a 7-2 majority.

What keeps percolating for me is this perceived discrepancy between advantage and "unfair" advantage. It's absurd to look at a star line-up of athletes and think that they all have an equal shot. We don't cry foul play when an athlete from the United States, with the best access to training facilities, coaching staffs, and nutritional science is up against someone from say…Uzkbekistan. It's tough luck that 5' 11" Tyson Gay has to line up against a 6'5" Usain Bolt.

It makes me twitch when we talk about "a level playing field." No two athletes are the same genetically and environmentally, and the mental and emotional factors they've endured in their life are relevant in their performance, too. The only reason athletes today are better than those of decades ago is because of science and technology: We know exactly what and when to feed our bodies for maximum energy, we have lighter shoes and better bikes and new rubberized track surfaces and (legal) supplements and altitude training. We are upping the ante each Olympic year with "smarter" design of an athlete's tools, both inside and outside the body.

A whopping 74 world records were broken last year between March and November with the Speedo Fastskin LZR Racer suit. 74! Do you wonder if Mark Spitz is annoyed that his times are compared to those of athletes using something he didn't have the opportunity to use or wear?

My interest was piqued in the latest version of the Fastskin LZR suit, an R&D collaboration with NASA. From the initial press releases to subsequent monthly articles, whatever I could find describing it was overwhelmingly celebratory: Writers cooed about the sharkskin-inspired biometric fiber panels for less drag in the water, and its corset-like torso construction, enabling a swimmer to compress their physique and keep better, more supported form during fatigue, making them markedly more efficient in the water.

Very, very few writers brought up any kind of ethical concern of such a tool like this suit until after the Beijing Olympics, choosing to focus on the race between swimwear companies to develop their own supersuit. Even then, the majority of articles on swimming were marveling at how Michael Phelps says he "literally felt like a rocket coming off the wall" using the device. Jason Rance, the lead designer on this Speedo suit, commented, "It's part of the evolution of the sport, and it's really exciting for swimmers. They say they feel like Superman."

After the ensuing arms-race to out-do the performance of the Speedo, the Americans and Australians led a protest to FINA, the governing body of swimming. In July of this year, FINA banned the full-length suit, having the suit stop at the knee instead, and mandated that all must be constructed of a "textile," which is in itself an incredibly ambiguous, vague rule. The ban will take effect in January 2010, and—most intriguing—FINA will allow all records set with the suits to stand.

Let's think about Tiger Woods having not one, but two LASIK surgeries to achieve 20/15 vision, when what we consider the best of natural vision to be is a mere 20/20. Before his first LASIK surgery, Woods had lost 16 straight tournaments. Immediately following the surgery, he won 7 of his next 10. Advantage through technology, or not?

On a company website he endorses, there's a quote from Tiger after his first LASIK surgery, and I found what he said remarkable on a few levels. He said:

For years I played golf with an invisible handicap, invisible to everyone but me. It was my contact lenses. My eyes would sting burn and water all the while I was trying to concentrate on championship golf. I had the Lasik procedure with a TLC laser eye center surgeon and the results were fabulous. I'm 20/20 with no contacts. My vision is so crisp I feel I can read all the subtleties of the green and look down the fairway hundreds of yards and focus perfectly on the fly. I'm very happy with the results, and grateful for my TLC center experience.

The first remarkable aspect of this is that for him, the "handicap" was the ineptitude of the contact lenses, and not the fact that he was visually impaired. (He suffered from -11 nearsightedness, considered the worst 1%, legally blind without corrective glasses or contacts.) The second is his own literal description of being able to now clearly see—without the impediment of burning, stinging eyes—hundreds of yards down the fairway thanks to his technological altering. He himself declares the advantage.

"Invisible to everyone but me." So is that why nobody's up in arms, the fact that you can't see his augmentation? Is that why nobody's challenging this medical method which assists him in achieving dominance in golf? Of course, in the same way that my running legs don't power themselves, Tiger's new eyes don't power and execute a beautiful swing. His athletic talent is further revealed and enabled than what it would have been under the limits of nature, thanks to technology.

Advantage is just something that is part of sports. No athletes are created equal. They simply aren't, due to a multitude of factors including geography, access to training, facilities, health care, injury prevention, and sure, technology.

I really don't know how we compare world records of today to those of 50 years ago. A modern climber's ascent to Everest has innumerable inherent differences than an ascent of a climber who didn't have access to lighter tanks, comfortable breathable fibers against the skin, medical support at base camp, etc. The competitive benchmarks in that sport have changed from simply being, "Can you climb the mountain?" to "Can you climb it with oxygen, or without?" A wooden tennis racket isn't the same thing as the graphite ones used now. We wholeheartedly accept titanium golf clubs, LASIK surgery, the invention of new pitches, better injury prevention and repair, titanium knee and hip replacements, Tommy John surgery (surprisingly even in Youth Leagues), and a notable shift in the size of the average NFL player.

Where do we draw this ethical line on performance enhancement? I'm not sure I can answer that right now. What I will say is that I don't think it's useful to have this discussion around the existing Cheetah Leg, confusing the current non-enhanced technology with future prosthetics that will indeed provide augmentation. As with all evolution in sport, let's decide the parameters of competition when the technology actually exists, when we have metrics that inform us as to what extent augmentation is a certainty. Conjecture has no place in this discussion.

Maybe our acceptance of Tiger's LASIK super vision is really answered in the question, "Can everyone have access to it?" In other words, perhaps because the average citizen out there on the street can get laser surgery, it's okay for Tiger to get it, too, whereas the nature of a bionic prosthetic is still viewed as exclusive, and having to wear one isn't exactly a position the average citizen covets.

What's going to happen in the future, especially with the rise of more capable prostheses? The human leg is actually a series of internal motors and springs, so the fact that external motors aren't allowed in track is kind of interesting. (Case in point: Dean Kamen placed 14 motors in his new design of the artificial arm to simulate human function.)

In the not-so-distant future, designers will be able to build a prosthetic leg with a chip in it that they can program to accurately simulate human performance thresholds. (Since we know that no two "able-bodied" athletes have the same bodies, and therefore what they can achieve with their bodies are different, will they average out individual "able-bodied" thresholds to get those metrics? Will they cap how fast they imagine the fastest man on earth to be at 9.58? That time was unimaginable even 18 months ago, when Bolt then set the new WR at 9.72.)

The chip used in a prosthetic that will dictate "acceptable human" metric-based output is what will be allowed in the Olympic standard; meanwhile, the Paralympics will be no holds barred. In an ironic, amazing cultural flip, you will see runners in the Paralympics going faster than those in the Olympics. Now won't that be an interesting comment on "dis"ability?

Aimee Mullins is an athlete, speaker, actress and model we met at TEDMED. She's also the guest editor for our theme week This Cyborg Life. Read her bio here.

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

LASIK image: Stefan Zaklin/Stringer/Getty; Tiger image: Lucas Dawson/Stringer/Getty Images; LZR image: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images; Aimee images: Howard Schatz, Greg Kadel

Update: For everybody asking for full-sized pics, you can grab 'em here, off my Flickr page.

I call it a temple because the architecture conveys a nearly religious aesthetic, a place to worship Apple, beyond any other Apple store you've ever been to. The top floor's a vast open space, enclosed by spartan stone walls which support a massive glass ceiling. The rows of tables in the main room feel like pews.

I can't tell you—and the pictures can't show you—how utterly open and expansive the room feels. Apple says it has more demo units than any other store in the world. To give you an idea of the space, the walls are 45 feet tall, and could fit 11 Apple 5th Avenue Cubes inside. It's the spareness that's breathtaking. It's cold. Not literally, but the stone walls, the glass, the sheer space rob it of any sense of warmth or feeling. The only sense of life in room is the products. It's a temple to them, really.

The beating heart, where things actually happen is tucked underground. The Genius Bar and personal training space is the biggest ever in an Apple store, able to handle up to 100 customers at once at 45 feet long. It's pretty much like any other Apple store down there, just bigger.

It's impressive. The store, at 67th and Broadway, opens Saturday. And they're giving away 2500 commemorative shirts if you're that kind of crazy.

Apple Store Upper West Side Opening on Saturday, November 14

NEW YORK-November 12, 2009-Apple® will open its newest retail store on New York's Upper West Side on Saturday, November 14 at 10:00 a.m. Set beneath a breathtaking all-glass arched roof, the street level of the Apple Store® Upper West Side offers more Macs, iPods and iPhones than any store in the world for an incredible hands-on experience. The lower level features the largest area ever created by Apple for personal training and technical support, including a 45-foot Genius Bar. Located on Broadway at 67th Street, the Apple Store Upper West Side is just minutes from Lincoln Center and Central Park.

"We opened our first store in Manhattan seven years ago, and the response has been incredible," said Ron Johnson, Apple's senior vice president of Retail. "We hope our new store on the Upper West Side will become as much a part of the community as our stores in SoHo, the Meatpacking District and on Fifth Avenue."

A highly trained team of more than 200 employees brings the unique Apple retail experience to the Upper West Side, offering the same legendary services that Apple stores provide around the world. At the Genius Bar, customers can get free advice and expert tech support from knowledgeable experts. Customers who buy a Mac® at the Apple Store Upper West Side can join the popular One to One program for personal set-up service and personal training for just $99. Visitors can also get free tips from Specialists who are on-hand to help shoppers find the perfect gift or choose the right Mac, iPod® or iPhone® for themselves.

In time for the holiday season, customers can now reserve their favorite Apple product online at www.apple.com/retail/reserve and pick it up at their local Apple store between December 15-24. Apple retail stores will also gift wrap any iPod or portable Mac for just $5.

The Apple Store Upper West Side is the fourth in Manhattan and Apple's 15th in the New York metro area, joining the hugely successful Apple Stores SoHo, West 14th Street and Fifth Avenue. Nearly 170 million people on four continents have visited Apple retail stores this year. Apple now operates 280 stores in ten countries including the US, UK, Italy, Australia, Canada, Japan, China, Switzerland, Germany and France.

The Apple Store Upper West Side is located at 1981 Broadway, on the corner of West 67th Street. The first 2,500 visitors to the store will receive a limited edition, commemorative t-shirt.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

The footage below is from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, one of the world's largest labs dedicated to regenerative medicine—a field interested in repairing or replacing human tissue so the body can self-heal.

This collection is sort of a greatest hits of Dr. Atala's last 20 years of research (no, none of this was done overnight on a whim), though almost none of what you'll see has left the lab for clinical trials. Karen Richardson, Sr. Communications Manager at the lab, walks us through the videos in the gallery below. Watch the clips, then scroll down for our Q&A with mad (but completely sane) scientist Dr. Anthony Atala.

Interview With Dr. Atala

What can we do in organ growing/generation today?

Laboratory-grown organs and tissues are already benefiting patients today. For example, laboratory-grown bladders are being tested in children with spina bifida and adults with spinal cord injuries and will soon be tested in patients with bladder cancer. Tissue engineering technology has been used to repair narrowed urethras, the tube that empties urine from the body.

What will we be doing in 5 years?

We are currently working to engineer 22 different tissues and organs in the laboratory, including blood vessels, heart valves, bone, muscle, kidneys livers. Scientific progress isn't always linear, so it's impossible to predict how long it will take to reach our goals.

In 10?

In addition to tissue engineering, our lab and others are working toward cell therapies to benefit a variety of conditions, from diabetes to urinary incontinence and heart failure. There are many challenges to overcome—and the timeframe is impossible to predict—but we do see promise in these technologies.

In 20? (I know, totally nuts, but that's what makes it so fun.)

I don't know how long it will take, but I do foresee a future when organs will be available off-the-shelf, ready to "plug in" and replace injured or diseased organs. I believe we'll have a boutique of technologies that will includes tissue engineering and cell therapies and doctors will select the ideal treatment based on the patient's needs.

[Final image: A human bladder is engineered in the laboratory using a biodegradable, three-dimension scaffold that supports bladder cells while they multiple and develop. A technician is "seeding" cells on the scaffold. (Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine). For more information on these projects, go here.]

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

OK, the last one isn't super interesting, but the Facebook feature would be nice. Looks like Sony caught on before we had the chance to confirm the pics ourselves, but ScrawlFX says it found the them here, here and here. [ScrawlFX via Kotaku]

Besides processing power, price and battery life improvements, our preferences for gadgets and the direction of those desires point towards three things: Richer displays, more seamless inputs and smaller packages—the first two being in direct conflict with the last. Looking at where we've been and where we are, I don't think we can keep pursuing these goals without going gadget prosthetic.

Now here's a trip: For the first time, this decade, design choices are being made to limit resolution in screens to show mercy to the human eye. Apple's recent iMac revision increased the desktop monitor's pixels per inch rating to about 110. That's the equivalent of a laptop levels of density, but on a big 27-inch screen, and it was so sharp, it hurt. Any desk jockey can tell you that as displays get sharper, the strain goes up. On mobiles, which are already the most pixel dense of the gadget kingdom, designers are frequently bashing into conflicting goals of fitting lots of pixels onto pocketable devices. Resolution-independent operating systems (that rely on vector-based graphics) are important but if we don't take displays inside the human body, gadgets can't get much smaller—there's no way for them to become as pixel rich as desktops while continuing to get smaller than they already are.

The the idea for hybridized HUDs featuring reality and computed interfaces has been around for ages. Science fiction has already dreamed up what it is we want to see in animations like Ghost in the Shell. But the recent explosion of augmented reality apps—powered by smartphones with directional compasses, internet connections, location awareness, cameras and the power to draw data driven overlays—are simply prototypes for real HUD and in-eye/mind displays. It's not a conceptual problem as much as it is a question of how.

Keyboards and buttons are easier to understand as a limitation, as we type on increasingly baby-finger sized keyboards on smartphones with appendages that look like hot dogs. Keyboards just need to go away. Towards that trend, software keyboards may be error prone but when used by the proficient, the typing is way faster and the devices are way smaller. Further away from traditional keyboards, Microsoft Research's projects point towards gesture and voice commands. I don't see how we could get full work days done that way, though, and there's the rub. There's not even a good concept for controlling a PC to the level we need to without keyboards and pointers now. Mind control is a joke.

In user-interface design, we've always trended towards the invisible. Instead of seams, we want the seamless. Instead of four clicks, any given major task is better with three. Maybe one day, none—the blink of an eye. Funny enough, the only mentally controlled gadgets these days are toys. And usually the low-end QVC valley where high-end tech ends up after dripping down from the peak of military or space program development to gadget fiends, and finally their kids. I would guess the sloppy capabilities of such toys, like the Mindflex Brainwave, make it inappropriate, unsafe and unusable for anything but hovering a ball in mid air.

It's funny looking back at attempts of strap-on computing. We always thought these clunky setups—"wearable" PCs velcro'd to our arms or slung over our backs—were the predecessors to in-body computing. I've long assumed that getting to prosthetic gadgets was an issue of micronization. "When we can fit a computer into the profile of a Bluetooth headset, people will use 'em," we thought. But it's clear to me that it's about the interface; the inputs and outputs.

Gadgets don't have much more room for revolutionary improvement unless we bypass our own natural limitations of fingers meant to peel bananas and eyes designed to spot prey and predators, and get these damn things we love and depend on so much routed directly into our brains.

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

[Image from Stuart Moore]

In case you missed the news, the S1000pj is an utterly unexciting point and shoot camera from Nikon, except for one minor detail: it's got a projector—like a real, don't-look-straight-into-it lamp projector—built right into its face. This is why it's funny, why it's interesting, and why we're writing about it. Moreover, it's why this camera exists in the first place: as a sort of high-profile tech demo for Nikon.

But first!

And for that matter, foremost! This is a standard point and shoot camera, with generally standard point and shoot camera specs. Nowadays, that equates to 12.1 megapixel photo resolution, a 5x lens that's 25mm equivalent on the wide end, built-in vibration reduction and SD storage. A/V connections are served by a single microUSB slot, and the rechargeable battery juices up on a separate charger.

Taking photos on the S1000pj is extremely simple, almost to a fault: ISO and white balance controls, for example, are hidden behind two layers of menus. But for lack of a better word, the point of a point and shoot is to make taking OK pictures as easy as possible, which the S1000pj certainly does.

As you can see in the sample gallery, the shots are never spectacular, but never terrible. The Nikon rarely finds a situation where it can't return a decent shot in auto mode, be it in a dark room, a sunbleached roof or a tungsten-lit kitchen. High ISO performance was a pleasant surprise as well, since Nikon opted for the S1000pj's sensor to automatically draw down to three megapixels during ISO 6400 shooting, which keeps the results from being too spectacularly bad. In fact, ISO 800 shots are clean enough to print, while ISO 400 returns crystal-clear photos, even during longer exposures.

That said, this is still a point and shoot, and not even a very high-end one. The lens isn't spectacularly sharp, and the colors are particularly vivid. The VGA video is dull and mostly lifeless. Button-press-to-shoot time is quick, but still not quite instant. That's the biggest problem for this camera: It'd be a perfectly acceptable—even above average—point and shoot for, say, $250. It costs a good deal more than that, becauuuuuuuuuuse:

Yes, It's Got a Projector

My love affair with the S1000pj didn't start until the day after I got it. It was early evening so my room was dim, and I'd only taken a few photos with camera the day before, as I was unboxing and summarily dismissing the camera in a well-lit office. "This projector looks like ass," I believe I said. "Human ass."

But when I flicked the little projector button this time—it's a dedicated switch on top, next to the projector's manual focus slider—I was stunned. It looked fine. I shut the windows. I backed up, stretching the image to about 40 inches. Now it looked great. This dinky little projector, and hacky and ridiculous as it looks and sounds, is legitimately useful.

It's an instant wow-piece for anyone who uses it, and a great way to show off photos (and yes, videos—though sadly not external inputs) in a bind. And by bind, I mean any time you don't want to ask everyone where you are to crowd around a computer screen and awkwardly watch while you import photos. Now, you just tell them to dim the lights. That'll do fine.

Oh, But You Probably Shouldn't Buy It

It was a tough call not to recommend this outright, but I really can't, unless you've got a wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket, or don't mind paying a $150 (rough) premium for the projector. Yes, the camera itself is capable enough. And yes, the projector concept isn't nearly as ridiculous as most people make it out to be. What's so appealing about this camera is that it's nailed what will be, if not a universal feature, something we'll come to expect in a certain class of camera before too long.

But that makes this product admirable, not buyable. For the Nikon to be a worthy purchase, we'll need to see a change: Either the photographic experience itself gets a little closer to what you'd expect for $430—about how much you're going to end up spending on this now—or the camera drops significantly in price.

Nikon is charging a classic early adopter tax, and you won't just be paying for it in dollars: battery life is predictably bad when using the projector (I could easily lose a quarter of my charge just showing off a set of photos to friends). And this thing isn't particularly svelte, considering the specs. But if you know what you're getting into—and now you do—it's your call.

You will have fun with the Nikon s1000pj, even through the pangs of buyer's remorse.

The projector is surprisingly decent in low light

Chunky design

Adequate photography

Battery drains very quickly when projecting

Hefty early adopter tax

Price

$300 with 2-year AT&T contract, $600 à la carte

Verdict

Nokia has built a great netbook, but they've done nothing to redefine the genre. Their 10-inch Booklet 3G has your typical 1.6GHz Atom, 120GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM. Running Windows 7, that means the performance is just passable. I'd be this close to pounding my head against the wall when a program would begin installing or a video would load.

That's typical.

What's ever so less typical is the sharp, sub-3lb unibody-esque construction (complete with sweet MacBook-like under-hatch battery and a hinge that bends nearly 180-degrees), HDMI output (not that you can really playback HD videos smoothly on an Atom) and, of course, solid integrated 3G and integrated GPS (though Nokia's bundled Ovi software apparently requires a phone or PC to activate, and after 30 minutes of fiddling, I honestly gave up on mapping.)
The battery life is impressive, too. In nonstop 3G browsing and app running with the screen at 80% brightness, the machine's svelte 16-cell battery ran for a bit over 6 hours and 30 minutes. That was a strenuous test, and dimming the screen and/or browsing through Wi-Fi should truly be enough to get you through the workday sans-recharge. (For instance, CrunchGear's John Biggs reported a pretty remarkable 10 hours of movie playback.)

But alas, even for a nice netbook, the Booklet's price is a bit too opulent for what you're really getting: an ever-so gussied up version of the same machine you could buy from Acer, Asus, HP, etc, for half the price (before subsidies). Meanwhile, there are plenty of ULV systems in the $700 range with bigger screens, better performance and portable-minded design (of course, they'll mostly require 3G dongles).

Give me some rhinestones and a bit more power, and we'll talk. Or just hand me back my iPhone.

Quality build

Long battery life

Plastic monitor back makes whole thing feel cheaper

It's still a $600 netbook

It has got two spindly black legs attached to a backpack with long rectangular batteries on the shoulder blades and an armored computer in the small of its back. Amusingly, it has radiator fins instead of buttocks. The whole machine looks sort of like a human skeleton, because the legs and hips have joints that mimic the movement of human limbs.

In fact, when you strap your legs into its legs, you can walk, run, kneel, squat, dance, or whatever—the exoskeleton has a range of motion equal to that of a human being. You move, and it moves with you. But once on, it allows a regular geek to haul a 200-lb. backpack as if it weighed as much as a couple of physics textbooks.

Now we're talking.

Let me explain how I got here. In late 2007, a production company called me and asked if I'd like to host The Works, a show for the History Channel. My job, they said, would be to "explain, uh, how things work." During my cable TV stint, I raced lawn mowers in Florida, was shot at with a rifle while inside an armored car in Texas, and—best of all—I piloted an honest-to-God lower-body exoskeleton with the researchers at Berkeley Bionics in California.

And so, on an otherwise perfectly normal summer day, I dropped by a nondescript brick building where a group of former graduate students from the University of California at Berkeley were busy making last-minute tweaks to a dead-black titanium exoskeleton, and they invite me to try it on.

My first impression: The straps are too big. The HULC was built with military money and it is designed to fit army guys. And soldiers have big thighs, apparently. I yank the Velcro straps as tight as possible, then strap my shoes into its open-toed boots. I shrug on the backpack and clasp the chest strap. I am now wearing an exoskeleton. Turned off, the device is heavy; it's like wearing a scuba tank on dry land. But once the researchers switch it on, HULC stands up on its own—with me inside.

At this point, I'm still hanging from the ceiling, so I can't fall down. I can't feel any extra weight because the exoskeleton frame supports itself (about 30 lbs), as well as any attached backpacks. We turn on the treadmill and I cautiously bend my knee. Nothing happens. A half-second later, force sensors detect my leg pushing against the exoskeleton and the machine jerkily bends its knee. The delay is disconcerting; I can barely walk.

A couple minutes later, the treadmill is rolling and I'm humping along like Forrest Gump in his special shoes. Like a video game that breaks the human face down into just a few polygons, my new exo-walk consists of just a few gross movements. Knee lift, foot out, foot down. Repeat. It lacks the fluidity of my normal walk, but I don't fall. And oh yeah, every movement is accompanied by the loud whine of electric motors. Each step sounds like reeee (that's the motor) followed by ker-thump, as my foot touches down.

Reeee-ker-thump. Reeee-ker-thump. "Drop the gun," I say. "You are under arrest." (Yes, that's a Robocop joke, and it is hilariously funny.)

After the practice run, it's time to hit the hallway. I immediately notice that my gait is becoming more fluid. I can even balance on one leg. This is because the machine is learning to anticipate my every move. The HULC is no dumb brute. It is constantly sensing the force of my movements and forming a model of how I walk. It's getting to know me, exoskeleton-style.

The HULC is a finished product, along with a slew of other exoskeletons, such as the full-body Sarcos and the medically oriented Hal-5. But make no mistake, scientists have been trying to build robotically augmented limbs since well before Sigourney Weaver used a power lifter to kick alien butt.

Designs for wearable mechanical skeletons have been evolving since the 1960s, when General Electric foresaw using the Hardiman for heavy loading in factories. Sadly, the original designs were infeasibly power-hungry, requiring heavy batteries that pulverized the payload-to-system weight ratio. Even worse, the old designs didn't degrade gracefully, which is a nice way of saying that when the power failed, they would fall to the ground and rip your limbs off. Ouch.

But today, exoskeletons have become a reality and, according to the researchers, they don't suffer from the limb-ripping drawbacks of yesteryear.

Once my gait cycles a few times, HULC has formed a complete model. A researcher informs me that from this point onward, the exoskeleton can cycle through my walk all by itself. Yes, by itself. This means that I could fall asleep and it would keep walking, dragging my legs through the motions. Suddenly, I imagine a platoon of snoozing soldiers fast marching non-stop through dark jungles at an average speed of 7 mph, a fast jog.

That's creepy. Plus, I'm sweaty and exhausted; it's time to take off the exoskeleton.

A couple yanks on the Velcro straps and I'm out. But my legs feel dead, like I just spent an hour jumping on a trampoline. My helpful researcher lets me know that the goal of the exoskeleton is to minimize metabolic cost. Using your muscles costs oxygen, and the brain is stingy—it uses just enough oxygen to get the job done. Once your brain figures out that it needs less oxygen to move (thanks to the exoskeleton), it sends less oxygen. Without the exoskeleton, my brain isn't giving me enough juice to use my limbs normally, hence the weak legs. Luckily, it only takes a few minutes to go back to normal. Thank you, brain.

Despite the amazingness of it all, I have to say it felt clumsy and weird to lock my limbs into the machine's cold, robotic embrace. You won't catch me walking down any staircases in an exoskeleton. At least, not without a lot more practice.

Daniel H. Wilson is the author of several books, including How to Survive a Robot Uprising, Where's My Jetpack?, and Bro-Jitsu: The Martial Art of Sibling Smackdown. Wilson earned his PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. His first novel, Robopocalypse, is forthcoming from Doubleday.

Video from The Works courtesy of The History Channel

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

Eris is Verizon's other Droid phone. It really is a remodeled Hero, running Android 1.5 and HTC's vaunted Sense candy coating—documented CSI style here—a $200 phone stuffed inside a thinner $100 body, like a Corvette engine shoved inside a Saturn. It's admittedly less exciting than the titular Droid, an industrial beast running Android 2.0. But I have the feeling Verizon is gonna sell a lot more of these things, because, again, it's $100.

Designing for the Middle of the Road

The Eris is rubbery blob, a narrow oval that's as subdued as a phone could possibly be, but there is admittedly something comforting about the Eris's utter lack of personality—it's completely non-threatening, like a middle manager. It's so generic it's almost artful, actually, a design that is nearly perfect for a cheap phone.

The four main Android buttons are touch sensitive, bleeding into the black bezel, hovering over the dead-center trackball and hard chrome buttons for phone and end. I'd like a dedicated camera button, but a volume rocker is all we get. The camera lens stares out the back, disturbingly more reminiscent of an eye than most cameras sticking out the backs of phones, probably because of how stark the rest of the phone is.

Hardware and Camera

The actual guts and screen are the same as past Hero phones—which is to say, nearly the same as all of HTC's other Android phones so far. The 480x320 screen's still nice, even if it feels dated now that the Droid's massive screen, beckoning the next generation, looms large over it. Oh yeah, HTC? Can you get rid of your stupid, pointlessly different version of the mini USB port? Let's go to micro USB now, yeah?

The still camera's better than the Droid though, and about the same as the Sprint version of the Hero, performing pretty decently in low-light situations. Video, not so much:

Software and the Endgame

I've already covered HTC's Sense UI in depth, and it is the exact same on the Eris. It runs just as fast as the Sprint Hero, if not a teeny bit quicker. I will say that after using Android 2.0, it does feel like a step backward in some ways, mostly because of the single Google account limitation. But HTC's confirmed Android 2.0 is coming, so it won't be an issue for every long.

And really, the fact that Android 2.0—half the reason the Droid is excellent—is coming to the Droid Eris is why, in the end, it's such a steal. It's running on Verizon, it's going to have Android 2.0, and it's $100. It's a great phone now, and will be better still soon, making it kind of a perfect storm for people on Verizon looking to ditch their dumbphones—but not Verizon—for something more capable, but who are put off by the Droid, whether it's the steroids or the higher sticker price.

It's last month's darling. But it'll run this month's software. For cheap. And that's pretty spiffy, actually.

You're getting last month's killer Android phone for half price

We'll say it again: This is the best Android deal around

Android 1.5 feels a little dated

Video recording's not exactly amazing

Services like 23andMe (proponents of the above-mentioned "spit parties") and Navigenics both examine specific snippets of your genome for known severe genetic conditions like diabetes, bipolar disorder and certain types of cancers (as well as goofier stuff like freckling and "food preference").

Meanwhile, a boutique genome mapping company named Knome maps not just snippets of DNA but your entire genome, using a blood sample. When it's ready, they sit you down with a doctor to explain their findings.

This thoroughness comes at a cost, of course. Knome's service will run you the price of a Porsche, while their competitors bill up to only a thousand dollars, often less. And while we can technically map the entire genome, we certainly can't understand everything we see.

Ari Kiirikki, a VP at Knome we met at TEDMED, decodes the future of genomics in this brief Q&A:

Where's genomics now?

The first human genome, completed in 2003, took 13 years and nearly $3 billion to decode. Today, we can sequence and interpret an entire human genome in a matter of weeks for less than $70,000 (our current price is $68,000). New software and other analytical tools have put decades of accumulated scientific research at our fingertips, enabling us to analyze an individual's DNA in order to identify risk for thousands of diseases and other inherited traits and conditions.

What will we be doing in 5 years?

Within 5 years, the cost of sequencing an entire human genome is expected to plummet below $1,000, which will dramatically increase the demand for genetic sequence interpretation. The resulting increase in raw data will enable scientists to make new and important discoveries linking our DNA to health and disease, thereby further increasing the clinical utility of DNA analysis. This will enable us to finally deliver on the promise of personalized medicine by allowing scientists to begin the development medicines and individualized "cocktails" of therapeutics tailored to individual genetic profiles.

In 10?

Ten years from now, sequencing a human genome will cost less than $100. Within the decade, scientists are likely to have unraveled precisely how DNA interacts with our environment to impact our risk for developing disease. Expect DNA sequencing to become a regular part of your annual check-up along with the introduction of new therapeutics that can be prescribed to help delay or completely avoid getting specific diseases that you may be predisposed to.

And now we're stretching it, what about 20?

Every medicine you take will be tailored specifically to your genome. Every newborn child will be sequenced at birth, enabling future generations to use their DNA to guide the management of their health over their entire lifetime. Perhaps most amazingly, your DNA will be fully integrated into your everyday life. Genetics will move beyond the clinic, into a broad range of consumer products—snacks, vitamins, mouthwash, skin creams, dating services, etc., all optimized for your unique genetic profile.

I can't speak for everyone here, but I could certainly go for a stick of gum that, instead of being labeled "grape" or "spearmint," simply stated, "You'll enjoy DNA-certified flavor, fatty."

[Image: Human chromosomes "painted" by flourescent dyes to detect abnormal exchange of genetic material frequently present in cancer. Chromosome paints also serve as valuable resources for other clinical and research applications.

Human Genome Program, U.S. Department of Energy, Human Genome Program Report, 1997.]

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

First Place—Doc Brown
Second Place—Shaun Legacy
Third Place— Jon McGrath

Obviously, the role of a prosthetic is one far more intimate than that of a couch, and being fitted for a prosthetic is much more labor intensive than just picking out eyeglasses, and but the ideas aren't so dissimilar. From the 1930s to as late as the 1970s, the UK National Health Service mandated only one "choice" for their eyeglasses—considered solely as "medical appliances"—and the standard was a plastic frame formed in a rather horrid pinkish color, an attempt at "flesh tone," already problematic in that description: Whose flesh tone, exactly?

The NHS believed that people would want discretion in their vision correction—the social humiliation generally thought to be incurred by wearing glasses meant that no one would want their glasses to stand out. So there was one form of glasses made for everyone. Today, that sounds ludicrous.

Meanwhile, no one has yet to build a leg that does it all—I have to change legs when I want to wear high heels; I have to change legs when I want to wear different height high heels; I have to change legs when I want to swim, take a boxing class at the gym, or sprint on the track. I have 12 pair in all (though many are housed in museums).

Until that functionality is matched with one single prosthetic, you want to be able to have the fullest quality of life as deemed by you. For some people, it will never be important to swim, or wear a pair of high heels, or to have a prosthetic limb with a cosmesis that really replicates humanness. But for others, those things could be very important. For some people, like me, some of those things are important only some of the time.

In my functional daily arsenal, I have a general rotation between what I call the "Robocop" legs (Re-Flex VSP Legs made by Ossur) and my cosmetic, very life-like legs (by Dorset Orthopaedic).

As if we weren't already aware of the dire state of the American healthcare system, the lack of prosthetic opportunity and choice for most people is due to very limited coverage by insurance companies. To be frank, since my teenage years, I have pursued each and every opportunity to be a guinea pig, trading the use of my body as a testing ground for new technologies for the privilege of using them. Not one pair of my legs is covered by insurance; not one pair of my legs is considered "medically necessary."

What is considered medically necessary for the American insurance standard is whatever gets you from the bed to the toilet. I am not kidding. No other aspect of daily living other than using the bathroom is considered "necessary," which means your basic prosthetic given to most amputees—a stick with a rubber foot as a leg, or a stick with a hook on the end as an arm, has fundamentally not changed since WWII.

My Ossur legs are constructed of woven carbon fiber. They've got a shock absorber, springs, and a split-toe foot so I can navigate uneven terrain with a bit better balance-and basically there's nothing human-looking about that leg. I don't mind this aspect. I'm quite happy with this amazing construction looking like what it is: a good prosthetic that enables me to move around very well. I've embraced the sci-fi aesthetic of the sleek black carbon fiber, the WD-40 glistening on the shock absorber, and I feel rather cool wearing them. They're the prosthetic leg version of a motorcycle jacket. However, I am very aware that there are some vets—mostly female, but some male as well—currently coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan who aren't exactly thrilled about looking like the Terminator, and their consumer desire for choice should be respected.

My Dorset legs are designed more for style than utility. Far lighter than the VSPs, the skeleton or internal frame is made from a hollow carbon fiber custom made tube, and like my sports legs, the sockets are shaped to match my residual limbs exactly so I am able to wear the prostheses all day without discomfort. The carbon is used because it has tremendous strength and weighs very little, approx 300gms. The frame is then covered with a polyurethane foam that is then sculpted both to my specific requests and the aesthetic imagination of the prosthetist Bob Watts, who will ask me how I want them to look. (My last pair got a super flexed calf muscle; it serves as a reminder to get the rest of my body to the gym.) Finally, the prosthesis is sheathed in a 2mm custom-made silicone cosmesis. The cosmesis is a truly astounding work of art: a Kevlar-backed and vulcanized silicone sleeve is built up of many thin layers of differently colored silicones that matches my exact skin tone by combing through nearly 500 color swatches of silicone. You won't find any standardized pinky-beige hues here. Dorset will even map hairs or just hair follicles (I prefer mine smooth, thank you), capillaries, veins, moles, and yes… tattoos. The Cosmesis takes a technician 2 weeks to build and sculpt. The result, incredible.

When traveling, I try to always wear my Robocop legs mainly because the shock absorber makes traversing the airport halls more comfortable. I can also easily lift the legs of my yoga pants and pop them off easily on a plane, making air travel much more tolerable when sitting trapped in a confined space for a few hours. An additional travel hazard I face is with airport security metal detectors: wearing legs that look so perfectly human, like the cosmetic pair I have, is not ideal because generally people in airports hear the word "prosthetic" without registering what it means. Being laced with bits of metal, I set off the bells and whistles and it isn't obvious why, and it leads to a more complicated, lengthier interrogation and inspection for me. Anyone who has ever raced to make a connection in Charles de Gaulle airport knows that every minute counts!

I once wore my cosmetic legs while transiting in Portugal and (predictably) set off the metal detector. They waived me aside—this was right after 9/11—and in a pathetically muddled hybrid of Spanish and Italian, I was like "no, no, yo tengo…" and "ho due…," struggling to complete the sentence with the Latin root word of "prosthetic." I said what I thought sounded like a good approximation, and I immediately got hauled off to one of those strip search rooms replete with search dogs, because the whole time I was actually saying "leave me alone, I'm with two prostitutes."

Not eager to revisit my lost-in-translation experience, I've learned to keep the cosmetic legs in the suitcase. I wear the Robocop legs, and when I set the metal detectors off, I just show my carbon fiber limbs at the ankle, and it's automatic: we commence with the wanding, the bomb swab, the pat down—if at JFK they have an additional X-ray box with a battery of 10 scans I have to pass—they actually know me by name now.

So I guess that means when traveling, I do anything but try to look like everyone else—which is a bit different from what the UK National Health Service would have ever predicted in 1950. [Image by Nick Knight]

Aimee Mullins is an athlete, speaker, actress and model we met at TEDMED. She's also the guest editor for our theme week This Cyborg Life. Read her bio here.

What's New and Dandy

What makes it my favorite Canon so far is actually everything that's completely new to Canon—DP Review has a nice summary here, in pictures. But in short, while this might sound weird, it shoots more like a Nikon than any Canon DSLR I've used. This is primarily because of the new 19-point autofocus system and the color metering system that goes with it. You're able to select AF zones—clusters of AF points—while in the past with Canon you've been limited to a full AF blast or picking out a single point. The system is also more customizable, so it can be locked with different default focus points depending on whether you're holding the camera horizontally and vertically orientations. Against Nikon's D300s, Canon's new AF system mostly kept up, and definitely performs better than autofocus on the 5D Mark II.

The new viewfinder now provides 100 percent coverage, unlike previous Canons in this range, and it uses a new polymer LCD network for the graphical overlay to display AF points, grids and other displays, so it's more flexible and feels more fluid. (It also just looks swankier, and again, more Nikon-like.) Your other viewfinder (when you're shooting video, anyway), the LCD screen, is a 3-inch, 920k dot display like the 5D Mark II and it's still excellent, with a wide viewing angle, nice color and the right amount of crispness.

Sensor and Image Quality

Truthfully, I've been mildly surprised at the quality of photos that've come out of the 7D, which uses an absolutely stuffed 18-megapixel, APS-C sized sensor. (So, there is a 1.6x crop factor.) For comparison, the D300s has a 12MP sensor that's the same physical size (Update: For nitpickers, yes, Nikon's DX format is marginally larger than Canon's APS-C sensor, with the D300s's sensor coming in at 23.6 x 15.8 mm to the 7D's 22.3 x 14.9 mm.) The the D3 only goes for 12 megapixels on its bigger full-frame (35mm-equivalent) sensor. The 5D Mark II has a 21MP full-frame sensor. And typically, the more pixels you try to cram on a sensor of a given size, the more the image quality degrades, especially when it comes to low light, high ISO shots.

I was expecting a noisefest, or at best, seriously noticeable noise reduction employed by the camera's software. It is clear that Canon's using incredibly sophisticated noise reduction algorithms with the dual Digic IV processors onboard, though the effects are less drastic than I expected. It's most apparent, actually, when you directly compare photos taken with the D300s. Looking at photos taken with the 7D and D300s at 100 percent crops, the D300s's images are noisier, but they also preserve more detail. For web-sized images, the 7D's images look better, with less noise and more smoothness.

I've got two sample galleries—an array of sample shots, and then another directly comparing the 7D with the D300s in low light situations, using identical settings for photos. 100 percent zooms follow photos in both galleries. Or you can download full size photos from Flickr here and here.

Video

You can get sense of Canon and Nikon's philosophical differences with the difference in their buttons for video: Canon makes a distinction between Live View and video mode, while Nikon is ready to start shooting video as soon you tap the live view button on the D300s. Creating video is a separate, dedicated event for Canon, in other words, and there is a semi-serious video camera that happens to be built into a DSLR. Nikon's D300s, on the other hand, is a DSLR that happens to shoot video.

With video, the 7D simply has the upper hand—video is very much a legitimized use of this camera, not a secondary one like the D300s. (As expected from a company with an entire wing dedicated to camcorders for pros and consumers.) Not only does it have full manual controls, I find that it's slightly easier to use that the D300s while shooting video—not to mention the whole shooting in a real video codec at 1080p, yadda yadda. Three clips here: A melange of video above, and then by two videos, one from the 7D, one of the D300s, that mirror each other. Both were shot at ISO 6400, and you should be able to catch them at full res if you click over to Vimeo.

Build and Controls

The 7D is heavy, heavier than the 5D, but it's also slightly sturdier, with a build quality and weatherproofing that that's slightly in between the 5D and Canon's definitely pro 1D. It feels about the same in your hand, though. And it's roughly comparable to the D300s.

Controls aren't radically different from other Canon DSLRs of this caliber—that is, it's what you'd mostly expect from a DSLR that sits in between the lower end 50D and the higher end 5DMkII, though it's a bit closer to the latter. While the menu system feels completely unchanged—leaving more advanced features, like the orientation autofocus a bit inscrutable—a few things are new on the outside: The power switch is up on the top left, under the mode dial; there's a dedicated button for switching to RAW/JPEG; a quick action button; and a new toggle switch for Live View and video, which you engage by pressing a start button in the center.

You Already Know If You're Going to Buy This

The real question for Canon users who want something more than the lower end 50D is whether they go for the 7D, at $1700, or full bore to full-frame with the $2700 5D Mark II. The 7D has a 1.6x crop factor which is useful for sports, a better autofocusing system, shoots faster, is slightly more rugged, and is $1000 cheaper. The 5D is full frame—which I suspect is the real consideration for folks—and takes slightly better photos at higher resolutions.

Obviously, if you're locked into Nikon, with thousands of dollars in lenses, you're not going to jump to Canon, or vice versa. But Canon's dedication to DSLR video is proving formidable in carving out a new kind of market that Nikon might have some trouble competing in, since they're a dedicated still camera company, not a video company, too, like Canon. Really, both the D300s and 7D deliver for the money, though I think the 7D delivers more, since it's packed full of newer technology and for the people who want it, the video component is truly killer. Either way, it's proof that competition is good—it clearly wouldn't exist without the D300, and the D400 will be that much better because of it.

New 19-point autofocus and metering systems plus the new viewfinder rock

Excellent 1080p video with full manual controls

Not full-frame, which might put off some people

I'd like a secondary SD card slot, like the D300s

Noise reduction can get pretty aggressive at higher ISO speeds, obscuring detail

BTW, here are some Giz posts shot w/ the 7D:
• Motorola Droid Impressions
• Motorola Droid Review
• Blood Energy Potion Review
• BlackBerry Storm 2 Review
• S90 Review