Electronic Toy World

Posted Jan 14th 2008 1:08AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Robots
We guess it was only matter a time until it happened. Still, we can’t help but feel a bit sad and creeped-out at seeing Pleo splayed in a Santilli-esque display of sideshow curio. Inside, the evil doctors over at ifixit reveal a single-piece, rubbery skin covering 14 motors, more than 100 gears, 15 circuit boards, 1 color camera, 2x microphones, 1 IR transmitter, 1 accelerometer, and 8 touch capacitance sensors. Plenty of high-res shots just beyond the read link. Man, aren’t there laws against this kind of thing?

Finally… INSTEON, the DIYer Home Automation Technology, has released a Thermostat Adapter to work with Totaline and Venstar thermostats.

Turn the temperature up or down from anywhere in the house! INSTEON Thermostat Adapter allows you to adjust your thermostat from any INSTEON-compatible controller. Faster than grabbing a blanket, you can use your coffee table RemoteLinc to bring the room to that perfect temperature. When turning off your lights for the night from your bedside KeypadLinc, you can also save some energy and money by turning the thermostat down a few degrees. Because you can program any button on an INSTEON controller to any temperature on the thermostat, the possibilities are endless.

Gimmie!

Suggested Price: $99.99

Posted Jan 14th 2008 2:56AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable VideoIt wouldn’t be the first time a company has used the press to bolster their negotiating position. Nevertheless, after saying the “iPhone model was not suitable for China” back in November, a spokesperson for China Mobile now says they’ve “terminated” discussions with Apple to bring the iPhone to China. China’s largest carrier gave no reasons for the decision though the fee sharing agreement is likely a contributing factor. Well Steve, there’s always China Unicom.

Posted Jan 14th 2008 3:36AM by Thomas RickerOh noes. An independent investigation launched last week into an alleged multi-million-dollar slush fund has raided the homes of Samsung chairman, Lee Kun-Hee, and six other Samsung execs. The chairman and the executives are already banned from leaving the country. The investigation saw some 50 investigators seize documents and a laptop from Lee’s Seoul villa after a search lasting several hours. Samsung, for its part, has denied the long whispered bribery claims, made formal by its former chief lawyer last year.

At CES, the company SkullCandy unveiled a pretty cool new pair of headphones that have a unique feature. It comes with a SD slot so all you have to do is load in a SD card filled with music and you can listen to it without the need of an MP3 player.

It can even work with any type of SD cards, so if you own let’s say an 8GB or even a 16GB one, it will work and then you have access to loads of music. It will also come in 3 different colors, orange/brown, yellow/white, and black. Furthermore, it comes with a rechargeable battery, and all the controls on the side of the headphones. This pair of headphones look to be pretty cool and I’m not sure why SkullCandy kept it so low profile during CES.

Expect it to start shipping in March/April for an unspecified price.

Via [Ubergizmo]

Sure, that Legend of Zelda quilt was pretty nifty, but this has got to be the best Nintendo-inspired item I’ve seen this week.

The t-shirt just shows the ubiquitous pixelated question mark block from the Super Mario games, along with the caption “I’d hit that!”. A word of caution: once you do hit that, you don’t know if gold coins, 1-up mushrooms or something else will come out, so you may want to wear some sort of protection.

There’s not much else for me to say here, except that you can pick yours up from 80sTees.

read more about:

block, funny, mario, nintendo, question, shirt, t shirt

Posted Jan 13th 2008 10:13PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Granted, there are some out there who’ve been dodging the whole “limitation” aspect of Netflix’s Watch Instantly feature for a good while, but for the honest, upstanding citizens abiding by the rules, things are (seemingly) about to change for the better. According to a recent report from the AP, Netflix is gearing up to banish the time limits for online streaming on all but its el cheapo $4.99 plan, meaning that subscribers to every other plan will be able to watch online content as much as they’d like. In case you haven’t connected the dots quite yet, it’s being suggested that the move will be made to fend off the looming competition from Cupertino, and while this would undoubtedly increase costs, it doesn’t seem as if the firm plans on hiking rates (at least initially) to compensate. Now that’s a change we can live with.

Posted Jan 13th 2008 7:46PM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Portable Audio
Last we heard from Intempo, it was busy grasping for business with a slew of ho hum iPod docks, but it’s getting ‘08 started by offering up a slightly (keyword: slightly) more attractive item. The Daisy internet radio can access “thousands” of online and FM stations, and it can reportedly last for around 20 hours before needing a recharge. You’ll also find a pretty basic LCD, but outside of that, we wouldn’t expect a whole heap of extras. The Daisy is slated to hit production by next April and will land on store shelves with an admittedly steep £149 ($292) price tag shortly thereafter.

[Via TechDigest]

If you have money to burn, you might be interested in purchasing this project, which is sure to excite and whelm all who behold it size and/or shadow (as Mel Brooks used to say). The larger-than-life Gundam robot is expected to stand 60 feet tall and the unbelievable price tag doesn’t even include the cost of labor or the necessary infrastructure!

You can forget about flying this technological wonder or even taking it for a ride. The most you can hope for is a simple promenade with your new 43-ton robot.  And even that could present problems, as a simple walk is sure to result in the destruction of the ground surface beneath its enormous and very heavy feet. (Look on the bright side. It’s one way to excavate, one can suppose.)

The cost breakdown has been estimated by the Science Portal website run by the Japan Science and Technology Agency. The Gundam’s computer system, which is an IBM Blue Gene supercomputer, comprises only a fraction of the total cost ($1.5 million). The robot’s movements would be driven by 30 giant 400KW motors; 12 in the legs, 2 in the torso, 14 in the arms and 2 in the neck. The motors would cost $7.8 million. Other costs include: a cockpit for $450,000, sensors for $910,000 and gas turbine engines which are a steal at $364,000,000!

According to the folks at Pinktentacle:

“But perhaps the greatest challenge of all would be to find the funding for an enormous walking machine with no apparent practical or military application.”

Simply a robot for the love of robots.

Read: [New Launches]

Last year, all the rage was due to a pink taser presented during the CES. Well, in this year’s CES, Taser has presented three new addition to their Taser C2 line. I blame it all on Charlie’s Angels.

Fasion Pink, Leopard print and Red hot are Taser C2’s new colors, which I’m sure would cause a stir, although perhaps, not as much as the first pink taser did. Women nowadays won’t only match clothes with shoes and bags but also with their Tasers. The company is even developing 1GB MP3 player holsters to go with these tasers. The taser alone costs USD$380 and the music-playing holster — an additional USD$73.

Tasers are a great tool for protection, granted they don’t fall into the wrong hands *insert creepy music here.* Ladies, don’t forget tasers are still weapons — use them wisely and if possible, sparingly.

via Yahoo Tech