The “Will It Blend” iPad edition.
Category Archives: Tech
MeBot: Meet your future workplace robot assistant
Sigurdur Orn's MeBot
Who wouldn’t love to have a likeness of yourself to take care of boring business while you sit in your pjs and eat poptarts? The technology is out there. Telepresence robots are on the rise, and may be taking over the work world. Okay, that may be exaggerating, but it’s still a cool concept.
MIT student Sigurdur Orn has unleashed an interesting little bot called the Mebot, that features expressive gesture abilities which Orn is calling “socially embodied communication.”
The robot was debuted at the Human-Robot Interaction Conference in Oskaka, Japan. It has a little screen that sits on a moving neck. This screen displays the user’s face. The robot also has two moving arms as well. To top it off, the robot also has a wheeled base, which allows it to move about. Although this little thing looks like some sort of strange alien bug person, these moving parts help to convey user expressions to the other party.
Maybe these avatars are the future of business, but for now, your best bet for success is still face to face contact (for those of you who didn’t learn this lesson from Up in the Air).
You can now buy a jetpack. For $86k. That is all.
Rocketman. This could be you.
So you want a jetpack. Get in line. Now you can get one. If you have $86,000, that is.
Martin Aircraft, a New Zealand-based company that has been working on their jetpack since 1998, have announced they finally have a version stable and safe enough to sell commercially as well as for private use.
That’s it really. Jetpacks. They’re legit now.
Stalkers’ Delight: Facebook Allowing Users to Share Their Location
Facebook stalking just got literal! Wee!
Facebook is set to “let” users publish their location, just as you and 400 million other users update your status, photos, Farmville fences and chickens, etc. Remember that privacy policy update back in November? Well, pay attention to this line:
“When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post.” It’s unclear as of now how much control users will have in how location information will be published. There will be location features directly through Facebook, as well as through third-party developers with Facebook’s API.
Basically: Facebook wants to start to compete with Google for small, targeted local business advertising. And they’re willing to jeopardize your privacy, much less your safety, to do so. The feature is expected to be rolled out in April after f8, Facebook’s annual conference.
Hey, Twitter! I'm away from home, come take my stuff!
If Please Rob Me based on Twitter’s API is any indication of the good things to come, Facebook’s location tool should be just dandy.
Remember that one creepy guy from high school that friended you even though you haven’t spoken to him ever or laid eyes on him (intentional or not) in years?! Well now, instead of simply stalking you via your Spring Break photo albums, he can just come on down to the beach with his X-ray binoculars and piano wire! Thanks Facebook!
Gizmodo has the new iPhone after someone left it in a bar
Apple's new iPhone.
Someone’s in trouble. Picture yourself being trusted to test the new iPhone. Then you head to a bar in Redwood City, get ham-boned and forget your phone. Whoops. What’s the worst that could happen?
Gizmodo getting their hands on it would probably rank high among the worst-case scenarios for Steve Jobs. Somebody’s in trouble.
Complete with secretive X's and such.
There are several new features, mainly regarding design — it’s now squared instead of curved — and the camera, volume control, etc.
From Gizmodo (read the whole article with more pics here):
What’s new
• Front-facing video chat camera
• Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS)
• Camera flash
• Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad)
• Improved display. It’s unclear if it’s the 960×460 display thrown around before—it certainly looks like it, with the “Connect to iTunes” screen displaying much higher resolution than on a 3GS.
• What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack
• Split buttons for volume
• Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic
What’s changed
• The back is entirely flat, made of either glass (more likely) or ceramic or shiny plastic in order for the cell signal to poke through. Tapping on the back makes a more hollow and higher pitched sound compared to tapping on the glass on the front/screen, but that could just be the orientation of components inside making for a different sound
• An aluminum border going completely around the outside
• Slightly smaller screen than the 3GS (but seemingly higher resolution)
• Everything is more squared off
• 3 grams heavier
• 16% Larger battery
• Internals components are shrunken, miniaturized and reduced to make room for the larger battery