Month: June 2006

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Wow Wee Announces Birth of New Bot

Our pals over at Nxtbot.com bring us news of a new addition to the highly successful line of Wow Wee robots. They link to a new site for the bot (currently sans content), a critter known as the Roboreptile, and they quote from a Sci Fi Channel blog item by a writer who got to see the US$120 robot in action:

“You can control the toothy robot directly from the remote control, but it’s more fun the let the little guy (2-1/4 feet long) roam around, relying on its infrared sensors to guide it. Set loose on the kitchen floor, Roboreptile will run speedily along on all fours, avoiding obstacles, until it encounters a potential threat (Fido, perhaps), whereupon it’ll switch to biped mode to ‘attack.’”

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Father Time Gets His Freak On

The robotic scriveners over at TechEBlog just LOVE the Top Ten Lists. Their latest rank offering is Top Ten Strangest Clocks. Must be a slow day in the blogosphere — well, of course it is, ’cause we find ourselves passing this titillating timepiece round-up on to you. But trust us, some of these clocks truly ARE strange, and some are downright cool. I mean, I wouldn’t kick this cathode ray clock off of my desk (or the Pong wallclock, for that matter).

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How-To: Get Your Ass Kicked

More ’70s van-worthy art from Alienware, with their “Daily Planet Edition” PCs and notebooks, emblazoned with vivid Superman imagery.

You better be 12 years old, tops, if you’re going to show yourself in public with that notebook in tow. Actually, now that I think about it, you’d likely get the cotton beaten out of you at any age.

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Jewelry from Electronic Components

You know we love the geekly fashion statements here at Street Tech Labs. I’m particularly fascinated by electronic components and how cool they look. They seem to be especially suited to making earrings and necklaces, as these “Nerd Jewerly” pics will attest.

[Via Boing Boing]

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Sergey Says! “We Were Evil”

And whether he was aware of it or not, he made his admission on “Satan’s Birthday” (as Letterman called it): 06/06/06:

“Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged the dominant internet company has compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censorship demands. He said Google is wrestling to make the deal work before deciding whether to reverse course…

“‘We felt that perhaps we could compromise our principles but provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and be a more effective service and perhaps make more of a difference,’ Brin said.”

From the Sydney Morning Herald.

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g-Smart, A Phone for All Reasons

No, you’re not hallucinating (tho we would advise you to stop after four Red Bulls), that’s a set or rabbbit ears on a mobile phone. MobileMag writes:

“The… g-Smart i Pocket PC smartphone is powered by Windows Mobile 5.0 and …It has a 2.1 megapixel camera… and WiFi connectivity… Bluetooth opens up the possibility of all sorts of peripherals… A built in FM tuner lets you listen to the radio, or… audio files or watch video files in several formats… If your own files don’t keep you entertained, a pleasingly retro set of antennas snap onto the side, allowing you to watch TV via the PAL/NTSC tuner anywhere in the world.”

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Clothes That Drain Your Wallet & an Available Power Supply

Which John Shirley novel was it where people walked around with sat TV feeds crawling all over the surface of their clothing? I think it was City Come A-Walkin’ Anyway, we’re one step closer to that surreality with these “interactive clothes” with “flexible micro-screen” electronics stitched into them, from Uranium-Jeans. Euro purchasers of the garments can have them pre-wired with scrolling phrases, icons, and shapes, or custom-designed on the website at purchase. And they can update their clothes’ screens via phone text messaging. The first Uranium-Jeans store has opened in St. Tropez (natch), with a second due to open in LA later this year (natch 2.0).

Um… I have a question: Does a woman with THAT body need to advertise that she’s “SINGLE” (that’s what’s scrolling across her ass) and have a flashing red rose on her back?

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Vex Robots Discussion Forum

If you’re interested in the Vex Robotics Design System, you might want to bookmark Vexfan.com, a discussion site dedicated to the building set. There’s not much going on there now (it’s only a month old), so stop by, grab a clipboard and a white coat, and try to look busy and important to help attract more wireheads.

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DIY Bellagio Fountain Show

You may have seen vids of the Mentos and Coke rockets and waterworks before, but this is a particularly spectacular one, with well choreographed geysers, soda bottles on swings, cool music, the works. These two backyard Bill Nyes burn through 200 liters of Coke and 500 Mentos in under 3 minutes! Crazy.

Thanks, Mikki!

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Box.net on Your Mac

Who doesn’t need a free 1 gig of offline storage (or 2 or 3)? TUAW has a link to a piece on getting a Box.net Internet drive to mount on your Mac (these accounts are officially PC-only), No extra software required. The 1GB accounts are free. More space can be purchased.