Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Miniature humanoid robots are getting more impressive by the day: this video shows the Darmstadt Dribblers team in action in the recent 2008 Robocup. And if you notice, they’re really playing like proper autonomous soccer teams. It’s the first year that three-on-three playing action has happened, and thus required some nifty role negotiation and info…
I’m glad the Germans got rid of the funny moustaches, the kinky uniforms, and they are on our side now, because these mini-tanks and mini-trucks—which could be deployed inside standard transport helicopters—give a new meaning to the word blitzkrieg. They can be rolled out in any location in a matter of seconds, as this recent…
Advanced CPU cooling may be mainly the domain of extreme overclockers or case-modders, but this new Damamics CPU cooler may tempt you anyway just for the thought of the tech involved. The upcoming LM-10 is the world’s first commercial CPU cooler based on liquid metal. Yup: liquid metal. Liquid metal has thermodynamic properties that apparently…
My girlfriend Malorie sometimes tells the story of a robotics video she watched in 8th grade Science class. One particular robot in this video had a broken wheel and found itself unable to turn. (Or, more appropriately, the robotics team that was steering the hunk of metal found themselves unable to turn the robot.) Malorie…
CherryPal’s cloud-based computer is unique because it offers the technology without subscription costs, and only draws two watts of power. The machine has no moving parts, and uses hardware encrpytion to provide a secure link to the cloud (which is run by Amazon). To offset the costs of the cloud server, short ads are inserted…
Is the end of the venerable computer mouse at hand? Analyst firm Gartner seems to think so, and says its case is bolstered by the meteoric rise of technologies found in, and made popular by, Nintendo’s Wii controller and the Apple iPhone. Piling on is the slowly maturing field of facial recognition technology, which companies…
Rounding out our Nintendo news trifecta today is the annual Famicase art exhibition. It’s like many other art exhibitions from around the world, made infinitely cooler by the fact that the artwork is composed of imaginary games pasted to old 8-bit Famicom carts. More than 50 designers, illustrators and authors contributed to event this year,…
Put simply, the Jinsei Game of Life won’t let you play the simple game contained inside it unless you exercise. It’s part pedometer, part Tamagotchi, part Lap Around Japan, and a little bit of masochism mixed in for good measure. To complete the “stages,” you must take 300 steps, at which point you’ll be granted…
Are your coworkers always giving you a hard time about being away from your desk and not knowing where you are? Grab this $27 LED Message Board from Brando and always have a sign showing where you are. Sure, a Post-it or a mini-whiteboard would accomplish the same thing, but are they USB? Do they…
Still smarting from Nintendo’s half-ass, arm waving train wreck of an E3 press conference? Yeah, these retro Famicom-inspired Classic Controllers for the Wii Virtual Console won’t help at all with that, but they’re still a pretty cool collector’s item. They come in two red and gold Famicom versions, two Wii white versions, and will retail…
This DIY hack does what modders have been doing with NES controllers for years, and then adds an awesome twist. First of all, it’s a USB controller that lets you play classic Nintendo games on your laptop. The cool part is there’s an emulator crammed inside the controller and it contains all the software and…
The researchers at Purdue University are just full of bright ideas these days, and this weekend was no exception. Thanks to a major breakthrough, they may have overcome a major obstacle for “solid state lighting,” which laymen like to call LED (light emitting diode). That obstacle? Cost. LEDs are expensive, mostly because their innards are…
Timepiece designer Arny Kapshitzer is a big fan of Star Trek, and that shows in his latest creation, the HMS Automatic Warp Watch. While it won’t take you Warp 9 anytime soon, it does have a ton of carbon fiber, and the perfluorinated, hypoallergenic rubber wristband is impervious to “all acids.” From the sound of…
Is Microsoft continuing their SideWinder brand revival—started with a mouse—with the release of a keyboard later this year? Perhaps, but this SideWinder X6 seems to be a pretty interesting keyboard in any case. It’s got red (perhaps glowing?) keys, a detatchable num-pad, programmable buttons and TWO gigantic knobs on the right. We’re thinking those knobs…
Next time you’re headed to a rave and want some additional protection when things start to heat up, consider throwing a pair of these Rind disposable earplugs alongside that other well-known wallet-based protection. And because these plugs lie flat like a credit card when not in use, there will be no embarrassing ring-shaped mark pushing…
The guys at iPhone Hacks just found a way to take the iPhone Pwnage release yesterday and figure out a roundabout way to get the unlock and jailbreak to work on Windows machines. It’s only applicable to first-gen iPhones with 2.0, but if you’re really desperate to get your phone hacked, but not quite desperate…
For those of you who know what a space elevator is, you also know how difficult (some would say impossible) it will be to create one. Well, don’t tell that to the starry-eyed guys in Redmond this weekend, who are attending the annual Space Elevator Conference 2008. And they have a blog! And in this…
If the PlayStation 3’s Eye of Judgment ever got drunk and made some bad decisions in Tokyo’s nefarious Kabukicho district, the resulting offspring would probably resemble this Cyber-Maid Augmented Reality device from Geisha Tokyo Entertainment. The “Dennoh Figure ARis” (Cyber Figure Alice), on sale this fall, will come with all manner up alternate reality upskirts,…
So some jackass hit your parked car and didn’t leave a note? Who cares! You have GPS and Brickhouse Security’s Car Camera Voyager Pro on your side to log pretty much all you’ll need to bust their ass and collect your insurance money. The unit contains a G-sensor that detects fender benders, as well as…
Forget the opportunistic naming conventions for a moment, and focus on the tech and potential of the iShoe. Designed Erez Lieberman, a graduate student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, the iShoe could one day help doctors and NASA scientists detect balance problems before a fall occurs. Currently, the iShoe only diagnoses…