Hasta La Gadget!

On today’s show, it’s the last day of the Becks Beer sponsorship, so we end on a high note. Joining us in the studio again is Caroline McCarthy, bringing her wit and charm, and we also have Timothy Geisenheimer, who always has something clever to say. So apparently, CNET broke during today’s live stream, which is why some people are getting 404 error pages when they visit our Web site. Today’s Audio Draft is sponsored by Becks Beer in Conjunction with Last.fm, a subsidiary of CBS Corporation, 5000 XP GTS, is a rising European pop-rock star, Paolo Nutini.

(Credit: MuffinDeluxe/Last.fm)

After featuring mostly Indie bands, we’re going to bring in some pop from across the pond. Paolo Nutini has a surprisingly sultry yet mature voice for a boy of only 22 years old! Trust us, you’ll get knocked off your feet when you hear a dulcet voice come out of what seems to be a skinny Scottish kid. On today’s show, we feature two songs from his album Sunnyside Up. The first is “Coming Up Easy”, which is a nice tune about waking up in the morning to your significant other. Rounding out the show, we finish with “Candy,” a slow-going song about getting some “sweets” from your lover before they leave. Yes, Paolo Nutini is “geting-down” music.

The Semi-Weekly Audio Draft has become so popular that we’re going to list our previous picks so you can find the great, new musicians we’re featuring here on The 404:

• Paolo Nutini
• Koufax
• Why
• Priscilla Ahn
• Mayer Hawthorne
• The Hold Steady
• Grizzly Bear
• Matt Pond PA
• The Twilight and the Sound

On top of some great music, we have some great stories on today’s show. At the top of the show, we discover the coolest invention ever: the dissolvable bikini! We wonder why it took so long to create this! All this is courtesy of Tim Geisenheimer’s German descendants. It might be something you should give your date if you live in New York City! According to Forbes.com, NYC is the best place to live for singles. Caroline really disagrees, but that probably has to do with the fact that women in their 20s outnumber guys by a heavy margin. Wilson loves this, but bemoans the fact that a lot of these ladies are always trying to find the next best one.

In more technology-related news, AT&T and Barnes & Nobles have announced free Wi-Fi in their coffee shops. Sounds like a great idea at first because we’ve all hated paying $12.95 for an hour of Internet access, but imagine all the start-ups and college students crowding what used to be a nice place for conversation. Also, Twitter and Facebook are coming to Xbox 360, while we don’t really have any interest in Twittering while we’re playing Resident Evil 5, we kind of hope we can hook up with other gamers through Facebook Connect. Finally, there is a movement that we can all jump on! David Pogue’s campaign to bring back the “BEEP”, rather than the freakin’ 15-second long voice mail message that we all love to hate. If we can call you from our phone, we know how to leave you a message!

EPISODE 394

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Originally posted at The 404

Our good friends over at TechBargains.com alerted us of some of today’s best deals on tech products. Enjoy!

Computing and Peripherals:
Lenovo IdeaPad U350 for $599 (normally $749) with free shipping. Enter code USPTHINLIGHT to get the $150 off discount at Lenovo. Expires 8/12. Features include an Intel Pentium SU2700 ULV processor, 13-inch screen.

Dell Studio 15 for $679 (normally $1,012) with free shipping at Dell. Features include Intel Core 2 Duo T6500, 15.6-inch LED screen, 4GB of RAM, 500GB drive.

LG GGW-H20L 6X Blu-Ray Burner + HD-DVD Player + DVD Burner Combo for $139.99 (normally $199.99) with free shipping

HP Personal Media Drive HD10000s 1TB External Hard Drive for $89.99  (normally $149.99) with free shipping at HP. Enter coupon code AC1874 (expires soon) to get the discount. Unfortunately, it’s currently out of stock.

Consumer Electronics:
Canon PowerShot SD780 IS 12MP 3X Digital Camera for $209 (normally $249) with free shipping at Dell.

Aliph Jawbone 2 Bluetooth Headset for $47.99 (normally $59.99) after 20 percent off. Use coupon code techbargains20.

Canon EOS Rebel T1i with 18-55mm IS Lens and FREE Canon MP980 Printer and 4GB SDHC card for $809 after rebate at Buydig.com.

Like an aspiring indie band, the Cybraphon has many instruments, plays them on an irregular schedule, likes to have an audience around it — and obsesses over comments on its blog, the number of friends it has on Facebook and how many fans follow it on MySpace.

The difference is that it is a handcrafted musical robot and one whose emotion meter swings from delirium to desolation based on its online popularity at any given moment.

“The Cybraphon has an almost egotistical desire for fame,” says Simon Kirby, one of the creators of the robot.

When the needle hits rapture, the Cybraphon’s built-in orchestra of mechanized acoustic instruments clang in harmony to belt out an upbeat tune. But without online attention it slips into dejection and spews out a sad melody.

Three U.K. based artists — Kirby, Ziggy Campbell and Tommy Pheron — built the robot over eight months using a £5,000 grant. It’s a mechanical marvel that stuns with its attention to detail and construction. An antique wardrobe houses more than 60 robotic components including musical instruments such as cymbals and an organ as well as electronic parts including a PC and a controller. Kirby and his colleagues first created a sketch of what they wanted and then sourced the parts from antique stores, junk shops and donations.

The Cybraphon’s emotions are accessible via a Twitter feed but also appear on a on a 100 year-old galvanometer housed in the wardrobe (pictured above).

Kirby says the Cybraphon is devised as a “tongue-in-cheek comment on people’s obsession with online celebrity.”  And it is almost Julia Allison-esque in its quest for atttention. The device scours the web all day looking for mentions of itself and tracking how many friends it has on Facebook and MySpace.

“It is happy when it feels its popularity increases but is miserable if it is being ignored,” says Kirby.

The musical instruments inside the wardrobe include an Indian classical instrument called a Shruti box, an organ and cymbals. But they had to be tweaked to play on their own. The team attached a motor-driven crank to the drives of the Shruti box and modified it with 13 robotic servos.  The organ was retro-fitted with robotic keys while a fan pumps air through it. Cybraphon includes 12 chimes that are struck by suspended solenoids and percussion instruments that are hit by beaters attached to motors. A custom made vinyl record is cued to play through antique brass gramophone horns.

The Cybraphon also has infra-red based motion detectors to sense when there are people around it. It then comes alive, playing the music that is driven by its current mood.

“The Cybraphon is switched on all the time but it really wakes up when someone walks up to it,” says Kirby.

The brain of the system is a Macbook Pro notebook hidden inside one of the drawers of the wardrobe. “That, a few Arduino boards and lots of wire,” says Kirby.

The computer runs software written in Python and MAX/MSP to monitor the web and update Cybraphon’s emotions according to its rate at which its popularity is changing. “The software takes email alerts from Facebook, Google and so on, processes them and compares the current activity to that in the last 24 or 48 hours to calculate the rate of change,” explains Kirby.

But no matter how much attention the Cybraphon gets, it always eventually slips into depression, says Kirby. That means online attention could cheer up the Cybraphon in the short term but once the initial excitement dies down, the robot is disillusioned. “We modeled it on an insecure, egotistical band,” he says.

Though the Cybraphon’s current mood is accessible via Twitter, and you can follow it on Facebook or MySpace, its music is not available online. However, you can watch a demo video of it below.

“A streaming feed, although perhaps a nice idea, is possibly too literal,” says Ziggy Campbell, one of the creators of the Cybraphon. Regular bands don’t stream live performances all day long and neither does Cybraphon.  It keeps things more exclusive.”

The Cybraphon will be shown at the Inspace gallery in Edinburgh during the Edinburgh Art Festival in August.

Campbell says the Cybraphon’s continued existence amuses him. “Bands by their very nature tend to be volatile and prone to implosion,” he says. “I’m surprised that the Cybraphon, a highly neurotic beast with some questionable electrical wiring, hasn’t hit self destruct yet. ”

Cybraphon Demo Song from Cybraphon on Vimeo.

See more photos of the Cybraphon

A closer look at the Cybrphon galvanometer

Artist’s sketch of the Cybraphon

The Cybraphon on display at the Inspace Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland where it will have its first showing from Aug. 5 to Sept. 5

Additional photos of the Cybraphon on Flickr. (Remember just visiting the page affects Cybraphon’s mood!)

Photos: Cybraphon

Yeah, we were pretty bummed that Nintendo’s super-hot black Wii wasn’t coming to the US, but fear not, fanboys — it looks like the stealth console has hit the gray-market import scene. Sure, you’ll have to pay a bit of a premium at $333, but surely that’s a reasonable price for exclusivity, no?

[Via DCEmu UK; thanks Craig]

Filed under: Gaming

Black Wii now available from importers for $333 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure, we know you get most of your hot, breaking fridge news from our pals over at Fridgegadget, but if you’ll excuse us just this once as we bring to you news of LG’s latest and greatest: the “Ultra-Capacity 4-Door French-Door Refrigerator.” This little number not only has the “world’s largest” water and ice dispenser, but has push-button automatic sliding freezer drawers. Check out the enthralling video after the break — you won’t be sorry!

Continue reading LG’s magical sliding fridge drawers: how did we ever live without them?

Filed under: Household

LG’s magical sliding fridge drawers: how did we ever live without them? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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