Are you reading?

By Andrew Liszewski

I doubt anyone will realize this innocuous-looking keychain is actually capable of recording 640×480, 29fps videos or 1280×960 stills while it’s hanging from your keys. But something tells me they might get suspicious when you’re constantly holding it at weird angles trying to get the lens pointed in the right direction. The keychain’s got 4GB of internal memory, which is enough to store 65 minutes of video or about 3,000 photos from the 1.3MP CMOS sensor, and it charges and syncs to your PC via a simple USB cable. However, I think the $177 price tag from Geek Stuff 4 U is a bit steep.

[ Key Holder Spy Camera ] VIA [ Akihabara News ]

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We’ve already seen a fair bit of evidence suggesting that humans can quickly form bonds with robots, and it looks like ITP’s Kacie Kinzer has now thrown some additional, adorable fodder into the mix. Apparently, she’s spent the past few months sending a robot, or “Tweenbot,” aimlessly wandering through New York’s Washington Square Park in the hope that passers-by would take time from their busy day to help guide it from one corner of the park to the other — or at least point it in the right direction. As you may be pleased to know, it turns out that plenty of folks were more than happy to help out the little bot, and it was even able to complete its journey in as little as little as 42 minutes with the help of 29 people. Of course, no one sends a smiling cardboard robot out into the wild without capturing a bit of video, so head on past the break for it, and hit up the link below for glimpse at some future Tweenbots.

[Via MAKE]

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By Evan Ackerman

I’m sure that some of you are stalwart, law abiding citizens who always drive at 5 mph under the speed limit. That’s great, but you should know that you really, really annoy the rest of us who actually have places to go and people to see and need to drive damn fast. Outrunning cops is usually not a problem, but outrunning speed cameras is a little bit trickier (although not technically impossible). What to do?

The MicroGO, from RoadPilot, is a tiny little GPS system that knows the location of every speed camera everywhere. In, um, the UK and Europe. The MicroGO also knows the speed limit, and it’s smart enough to only alert you if you’re going too fast and in the right direction to get tagged by a camera. As new cameras are installed, the MicroGO can be synced with an online database to keep it up to date. Plus, the screen can be changed to 64 different colors, awesome!

The MicroGO costs the equivalent of about $120, with an update subscription cost of less than $6 a month.

[ MicroGO ] VIA [ Navigadget ]

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By Evan Ackerman

Back in April of last year, we posted about a video camera that you could strap to your dog or cat for a pet’s eye view of their wanderings. Jose Luis Ortiz had the same idea, except his pet happens to be what looks like a Golden Eagle:

If you thought that was cool, you can watch a Peregrine falcon with a video camera strapped to it perform a stoop here. It’s from an episode of Nature called Raptor Force, which is definitely worth watching if you ever accidentally change the channel to PBS.

On a side note, if you’re interested in birds of prey (or just think they’re badass), there are lots of zoos and rehab facilities that need volunteers to help care for and train their birds. After you’ve committed some time, you may get to hold and even fly or release some of the birds, which is an experience like nothing else. I’ve been doing it for years, and believe me, having a raptor stand on your arm and look at you never, ever gets old. If you contact your local zoo, they’ll probably be able to point you in the right direction.

[ Jose Luis Ortiz ] VIA [ Fark ]

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Symbian may be the most popular smartphone platform in the world and there may be tons of interesting mobile apps for it out there.

The problem is – there’s no way to easily find and get them on to your handset. And when it’s too hard to do that, the users simply do not bother.

All the  handset vendors were making an excuse for years that mobile apps are just too different and probably won’t ever be as popular as the desktop software apps.

Well, with 500 mil downloads and counting, Apple App Store certainly disproved that notion. So it’s time for the handset makers to start scrambling with their own easy to use App stores as well. Samsung already has one.

And today we learned that during MWC 09 in Barcelona, Nokia is going to announce it’s own mobile applications portal as well.

According to Eldar Murtazin, the new Nokia app store is already up and running in a closed mode:

At first glance, for now, the app portal looks so so, there is some confusion. But they are trying, polishing it and a lot has changed for the better in a matter of days. A right step in a right direction… And the distribution and revenue sharing model between app makers and Nokia looks very attractive.

I’d say it’s high time for a budding “Internet company”, which Nokia strives to be, to have it’s own easy to use applications portal. I hope they will get it right this time.

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Kodak’s 7.6-inch OLED WiFi digiframe, which we just saw in the flesh yesterday, has already been listed for a full $150 cheaper than expected. Of course, an immediate price drop was definitely in order given the $1,000 starting tag, but we can’t even say we’re tempted at a few bucks under $800. Ah well, at least we’re headed in the right direction.

[Thanks, Ron]
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In an effort to keep up with the “fierce competition” in the mobile phone market, Microsoft is said to be working on retooling and beefing up the Windows Mobile operating system which runs on many popular devices such as the Samsung Omnia.

According to Todd Peters, the vice president of marketing for the Windows Mobile division, Microsoft is planning on making a major announcement at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) this year, which we’ll be in to cover, so expect updates on that front. Peters didn’t get specific with what’s going to happen at MWC in February, but he did make it clear that Microsoft is about to give it to the competition.

In an interview with the New York Times, Peters also revealed that Microsoft plans to become more competitive is by limiting the number of devices built with the Windows Mobile OS. No specific number of devices was mentioned, though it’s probably going to be a lot lower than the current number of Windows Mobile smartphones out in the market, which is at around 140.

Why Microsoft would want to do this is obvious: to maintain focus on development instead of bug fixes and keep its efforts from being diluted over too many devices. However, when you think about how Microsoft will still charge licensing fees to have Windows Mobile run on devices when there are other free alternatives (such as Google’s Android and soon, Symbian), one could infer that a number of others would quite voluntarily leave on their own, anyway.

In any case, Microsoft has definitely taken the right direction. I’ll sure be looking forward to that “major” announcement they’re planning February.

Via NYTimes

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Sure, you’ve got an iPod Nano in your pocket and a VIA Nano in your custom PC, but we’re willing to bet you don’t have any nanomachines in your arteries at the moment. Two scientists from the Universities of Sheffield and Barcelona, Ramin Golestanian and Pietro Tierno, hope to change that by turning your bodily fluids into pathways for their tiny devices. The things are comprised of two beads, measuring 1 and 3 micrometers, attached to each other using strands of DNA. A magnetic field gets ‘em spinning in the right direction and the increased surface area of the larger bead moves the contraption forward at a blistering 1 micrometer per second (shown in a short but sweet video below). Now, if the good doctors could just build 11 of these things and get them in a 4-3-3 formation we’d finally know where to place our money for next year’s nanosoccer RoboCup Open.

[Via Scotsman.com]

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