This next-gen electric wheelchair operates for about four hours per charge.
(Credit: Veda International Robot R&D Center)
Sometimes function can successfully follow form. That may be the case for Japan’s Veda International Robot R&D Center, whose electric wheelchair for the immobile and elderly might be giving scooters …
Originally posted at News – Health Tech
Too busy following in the tracks of Snow Leopard this week to keep up-to-the-minute on the rest of the Crave goings-on? Don’t fret. Here are just a few of the stories you missed.
• Sony upped the ante on its e-book readers with the Reader Daily Edition.
• And …
Sony’s PlayStation 3 already only does everything, so what more could you possibly need? Australians can find out for themselves with the Ultimate Blu-ray Movie Kit. Don’t let the name fool you, it’s really just the PS3 remote and two discs, but at $60 AUD (that’s $51 for US), it’s only one Banjo Paterson / $10 AUD more than what the remote retails on its lonesome. Both bundles include 300 as the first film, so you’re really choosing between 10,000 B.C. and Batman Begins. Not exactly a tough decision unless you already own Batman, but then again, you still might opt for a second copy instead.
[Via Kotaku]
Read – Batman Begins / 300 bundle
Read – 10,000 B.C. / 300 bundle
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment
Australian PS3 Ultimate Blu-ray Movie Kit isn’t as ultimate as you might expect originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 06:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We aren’t going to do this every day, but I have thousands of photos that I always thought I would use for client projects or blog posts I never got around to doing. Thought this one would be good since it’s an election week.
Torihada Minoru is the coolest right-wing, nationalist, uyoku you’ll ever meet, precisely because he’s none of those things but does a damn good job parodying them. I ran into him at the Prada store of all places, and he asked if he could take a picture with me, which I thought was odd, but his car his pretty nice, no?
Watch this video after reading all about him!
Something about Le Petit Prince, the mobile, plant-loving greenhouse robot makes us indescribably sad. Is it his one, massive adorable eye? Or merely the fact that he’s named after one of the most depressing books ever written? Either way, we can’t really argue with his usefulness — the concept can carry about plants and care for them, all the while ravaging the terrain for further specimens. He’s also designed to learn about the optimal growing conditions of the plants he collects, which really makes us want one to care for a certain, finicky houseplant we won’t call out by name (but we’re looking at you, Venus Flytrap). Check out the darling video after the break.
Continue reading Le Petit Prince roving greenhouse robot is overwhelmingly cute, useful
Filed under: Robots
Le Petit Prince roving greenhouse robot is overwhelmingly cute, useful originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 04:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Pentax may not be the first name you think of when scouting a new DSLR, but it’s certainly closer to the top now than it was prior to the K-7’s release. The semi-pro cam saw positive review after positive review flow in, giving even the Nikon and Canon faithful reason to pay attention. At right under $1,300 for just the body it didn’t come cheap, though the high-def movie capture mode, ability to snap HDR shots natively and 14.6 megapixel sensor help to justify the MSRP somewhat. What we’re really after here are your thoughts; for those that bought in, have you been pleased? Is the low-light performance sufficient? Is the autofocus snappy enough for your tastes? Or more importantly, how happy are your clients with the results? Comments are all yours, so get to it!
Filed under: Digital Cameras
How would you change Pentax’s K-7 DSLR? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 Aug 2009 01:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
This article was written on October 14, 2008 by CyberNet.
Over the last several weeks, you may have heard people talking about “supposed” changes Apple was going to make to their MacBook laptops. Some of what we heard turned out to be just rumors, but much turned out to be true. Today Steve Jobs, along with a few of his pals from Apple took the stage to unveil the new laptops. At the end of the day we were left with a new 13-inch MacBook, a new 15-inch MacBook Pro, a MacBook Air with better graphics, and a new LED Cinema Display “made especially for a MacBook.”
The “better” of the two “new” MacBook’s, the 2.4GHz model, comes with features you’d expect from a MacBook Pro, like an LED-backlit display. In looks it has definitely changed, and now the MacBook’s and MacBook Pros look a lot alike.
New MacBook Features:
Pricing of the new models is $1299 for the 2.0GHz model and $1,599 for the $2.4GHz model. One of the best moves Apple could have made was to drop the price of the white 13-inch MacBook (no aluminum casing) to $999.
The biggest change here is in looks. You’ll see what I mean when you take a look at the image below:
A black rim around the edge of the screen is new, and reminds us of the iMacs.
Other features:
*Note: The 17-inch MacBook Pro was not updated
If you’d like more information, checkout the following:
The New MacBook
The New MacBook Pro
The New LED Cinema Display
We’re thinking that with the update, the new products look great. However, it’s not enough to entice someone to go out and buy a new computer if they updated within the last year or so.
When we were purchasing the MacBook Pro’s in April, there were rumors back then that Apple would be releasing updated models in the Summer. We thought long and hard about whether it would be worth waiting but all of the rumors at the time pointed to the idea that the new laptops would be equipped with the MacBook Air style keyboard (also known as the Chicklet keyboard). After playing with the MacBook Air, we realized that we preferred the “old style” keyboard without the spaces between the keys. After today, we are definitely happy we didn’t wait to make our purchases, seeing as the keyboard has changed.
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Filed under: Displays
Sony’s newest digiframe sports Swarovski crystals, little else originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Hey, our main dudes over at Joystiq sat down with Xbox’s Aaron Greenberg recently, and there are some great bits of info in the interview. Aaron says the big Xbox price cut has been planned for months, so it’s “just a coincidence” that it happened right on top of the PS3 Slim — and he also says he’s an avid Joystiq reader, so if Redmond had wanted to get the jump on Sony, they’d have been prepared. Other nuggets: the $99 WiFi adapter isn’t coming down in price, the Netflix relationship is going well, and getting Hulu or Amazon Unbox on the 360 is like “asking out a really hot chick on a date, they don’t all say yes.” Yeah, it’s a pretty great interview — hit the read link for the whole thing.
Filed under: Gaming
Xbox’s Aaron Greenberg: Hulu on 360 like “asking out a really hot chick on a date” originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We have done some research, and it appears than the rumors of iPhones exploding all around the world—”world” as in “France, UK, and Belgium”—are greatly exaggerated. Here are all the known cases, and Apple’s official answer. Updated
In France
• 26-yo security guard Yassine Bouhadi claims that his iPhone exploded when he was texting his girlfriend. He claims that “a little bit of screen hit me in the eye and I had to remove it with a tweezer.” Obviously, Yassine Bouhadi is a pseudonym for Chuck Norris.
• French teen Romain Kolega’s mom claims that her son was also hit in the eye by a piece of glass from the handset, when it “suddenly broke.” Reportedly, Romain’s mom had an affair with Chuck Norris.
• A young guy called Raphael claims that his iPhone exploded too, but he was not injured. Allegedly, he watched a Chuck Norris movie once. Or maybe it was just a Steven Seagal one.
• 80-yo Roland Cauffman claims that he was injured too, according to this report. Perhaps the shockwave from the explosion broke his hip.
• The same happened to Valentine, a Parisian girl who claims her iPhone cracked when she was writing a text message. Maybe the phone self destructed after Valentine used LOL and XXXOOOXXX for the last 542 messages.
• Unlike Valentine, supermarket manager Fabrice Lerebourg got the same effect while—attention, s’il vous plaît!—downloading an iPhone app.
• Frank Benoiton says his iPhone 3G’s screen broke suddenly while using it. One moment it was ok. The next, broken. Such is life. One moment you are here, the next you are gone.
• 40-yo Olivier Milano said that his iPhone “self-destructed” in his hand. Unconfirmed sources point that Milano likes to be called James by his friends.
• 20-yo Edward—in Marseille—says his screen broke too, also automagically.
• A teenage couple said that their iPhone’s screen did the same after doing a “crackling” sound. One of them also got a glass shard in his eyes. His name was Richard. I call him Richard the Fake One-Eyed Pirate.
• Finally, a cellphone seller working for SFR claims that he has seen two iPhones imploding. Somehow, the iPhone owners managed to create black holes inside their handsets.
One thing is clear from all these cases: The iPhone hates French people. And really, who can blame it? I know I can’t—but then again, I’m Spanish, and we hate them by default*. Like the rest of the European countries.
But that aside—looking at all these reports—it seems that a lot of people are trying to get free replacement iPhones following a media craze. At least, according to the Agence France Press, who has reported on Apple and the French consumer affairs minister’s statements on the matter.
Talking to the AFP, Apple France declared that the reasons for the alleged “explosions” in this country is not the battery, but “external forces”:
To date, there are no confirmed battery overheating incidents for iPhone 3GS and the number of reports we are investigating is in the single digits. The iPhones with broken glass that we have analysed to date show that in all cases the glass cracked due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone.
Apple France’s commercial director Michel Coulomb met Herve Novelli—the French consumer affairs minister—to talk about the investigation by the state’s consumer safety agency. According to Novellin, it seems that initial findings give the reason to Apple:
The first results show that the iPhones weren’t damaged by a battery defect leading to an explosion, but that there had been a prior shock that cracked the screens.
So at least in France, the exploding reports seem like utter bollocking. However, we don’t know yet about the following yet:
In the UK
• A girl said that her iPod touch exploded and Apple offered money to zip it. Obviously, she didn’t. It’s unclear if she asked to be a page 3 girl in The Sun. Oh, you little minx you.
In Belgium
• A boy called Salvatore said that his iPhone exploded “inside” when he was making a call. It’s like when I eat too much pizza. Something always explodes inside. Then I poop it out. In his case, the iPhone kept it all inside, making the screen black.
Looking at all these cases, it doesn’t seem like iPhones are exploding all over the world. More like there are a couple of alleged cases, and a bunch of people whining.
In other words: You don’t need a bullet-proof vest to operate an iPhone or iPod touch. Carry on, people. Nothing to see here.
* OK, not all the French. Just the snotty ones.
Update: Check the inside testimony from an iPhone Tier 2 support agent here.
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