Author: Duncan Geere
Voice-controlled toy helicopters coming later this year
Evil geniuses, take note. Your army of drone planes that currently need to be controlled by an army of assistants will, in March, become obsolete when Tokyo-based Taiyo corp releases a voice-controlled toy helicopter. It’s going to understand English and Japanese, and understands “”start engine,” “up,” “hold,” “down” and “stop”. No “forward”?
It’s battery-powered, 18cm long, and can fly 10m away from the operator. You need to wear a headset to control it, too. Still, it’s likely you’ll be able to mod it to carry tiny miniguns, and hack it to fire on voice command, too. If everything goes wrong, you can control it by conventional remote, too. It’ll cost $60 (£42 or so).
(via CrunchGear)
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SHINY VIDEO PREVIEW: Medion Akoya P8610 media centre laptop
Here’s the Medion Akoya P8610 which I got a sneaky look at just before Christmas, but only just remembered to post. To recap from our original post, it’s a good, cheap, multimedia laptop, with oodles of features. High specs, too – with a dual core processor, 4GB of RAM, dolby audio system and dedicated graphics. Impressive, and perfect for hooking up to a home cinema setup. Yours for £800.
Medion Shop
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USB Wristband makes fashion history
Although having a USB drive around is very handy, they’re a bit annoying to carry around. If you wear them on a lanyard, you look like you’ve just stepped out of a computer scientist’s convention, and they’re a bit too bulky to carry on a keychain.
The wristband pictured above, sold by tinyliving, remedies the problem somewhat, providing 512MB of storage wrapped around your wrist. It’s still not the coolest-looking bit of kit in the world though, giving me flashbacks to 2005’s Make Poverty FashionableHistory campaign. Still, if you want one they’re just $30 (£21) so we’re not exactly talking a massive outlay for this addition to your wardrobe.
Flash Drive Band (via LikeCool)
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Sony surveys fans on PSP2 features
Sony has been roundly beaten in the handheld and the… er… non-handheld markets by Nintendo (seriously, we need a better name for full size consoles than that – suggestions in the comments). What’s the best way for them to fight back? That’s the question that Sony is asking its fans, with a survey floating several new feature ideas for the PSP2 and asking people to rank them.
Some of the new features include GPS, bluetooth, internal storage, touchscreen, a content download service and a social network including home support. Personally speaking, I’d rate GPS and social network features high, if only to compete with the growing influence of mobile phones on the gaming-on-the-go market. Adding in Skype features could just make the fightback possible.
(via Kotaku)
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Niche of the Week: Trukz – a haulage-based MMO
There are some people who go mad over simulation games. It’s a bit like having a train set, but taken to the next level. Well, now you can ‘simulate’ driving thousands of miles across the American midwest, central Europe or the Australian outback in a text-based MMO called Trukz.
It’s got an amazing 16,368 players, who can haul different kinds of cargo through different places, join a company, monitor the weather and a wealth of statistics like fuel efficiency. There’s even accurately modeled driver fatigue and damage to the truck. It’s astonishingly detailed – but I’m sure that’s what its fans love the most about it.
If you fancy having a go, truck on over to the website, and register. There’s even a handy New Players Guide. Let us know your escapades in your cab in the comments below.
Trukz (via RPS)
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Facebook bans Burger King ad campaign
A week or so ago, Burger King announced an advertising campaign where deleting ten friends would get you a voucher for a free whopper. It spread quite quickly, and 233,906 friends were removed by 82,771 people in less than a week.
Facebook, unsurprisingly, isn’t too happy – it knows its value lies in those friend links. As a result, it’s banned the campaign, citing privacy reasons. Turns out that Facebook isn’t keen on apps notifying users when they’ve been ‘cut’ by another friend. Full statement over the jump.
Steve Jobs steps down… for a bit
Whether or not you think that Apple’s celebrity CEO Steve Jobs’ health should be a matter of public concern, the company’s stock price seems to be intrinsically linked to his heart rate. That’s why Apple stock took a dive of about 10% in 14 minutes last night, following the disclosure that Jobs will be stepping down as CEO for medical reasons until June. Tim Cook will be taking on Apple’s day-to-day running in the meantime.
I’m on the fence about this one. On the one hand, it’s ridiculous to think that Apple’s fortunes are the sole result of one man, and his absence will tumble the company into ruin. On the other hand, though, Jobs rules the company with an iron fist, and his absence will leave a big hole in the company’s management. It’s going to be an interesting six months, that’s for sure.
Apple Media Advisory (via Silicon Alley Insider)
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Google adds tube map to Google Maps
Google Maps launched its new ‘Transit’ section of Google Maps this morning, which focuses on public transport. Wonderfully, included in the update is a tube map that you can turn on and off on the display – immensely useful for planning ya route across the capital.
Be aware though – because it’s tied to real geographical locations, it might be a bit confusing, and not as intuitive as using the regular tube map. On the other hand, you might find out something useful, like how close Lancaster Gate (on the Central Line) is to Paddington, or Canon Street to Bank, saving you some trouble, and going miles out of your way to change tubes.
If you’ve got a local metro/tube/underground system of some sort, is it shown on Google’s new layer? Let us know in the comments. Now… if only Google would release street view in the UK…
Google Maps UK (via TechCrunch)
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GODLIKE GENIUS: CD-Rs that look like floppies
Yesterday, we had floppy disk posters, before Christmas we had floppy disk gift tags, today we’ve got floppy disk CD-Rs. Evidently the humble 3.5″ floppy, subject of much mockery in the school playground, is now the coolest kid on the block.
Sure, they only hold 200MB of data (though that’s 13789% more than the originals) and they’re a little on the expensive side – at $10 (£7) a CD, but you can’t put a price on retro-cool, right? Right? What do you mean “28p and a blackjack”?
Designboom (via Technabob)
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Atari 2600 lamp will light up your life
The Atari 2600 defined a generation of videogames – from Pacman to Pitfall. From Atlantis to Adventure. And now you can remember it by lighting your room with a supersize joystick.
It’s been created by Instructables member Seamster, and although I’m a little too young to have owned a 2600 myself, I can appreciate the lamp’s best feature – the big red button will turn it on and off. Awe-inspiring. Now to craft a lampshade shaped liked a Pac-man ghost…
Giant Atari 2600 Joystick Lamp (via Kotaku)
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