Hasta La Gadget!

A lot of parents find it difficult to strap their kids into the car seat because, well, the kids don’t really want to be strapped in for the ride in the first place. Safety comes first though, so the car seat is a non-negotiable issue.

One thing parents can do, though, is find ways to make being in a car seat more enjoyable and fun – like getting a Batman car seat that features everyone’s favorite Caped Crusader prominently.

The Batman car seat is designed with comfort and utility in mind. It’s got all the standard safety mechanisms in place plus a few little extras that’ll keep your little crusader snug and content in the backseat.

For starters, your kid will be wrapped in the cushy, protective embrace of Batman once he’s strapped in. Batman will also hold two cups in his hands, in case the ones already in your car aren’t enough, and his cape doubles as a blanket just in case it gets too cold or chilly for your child.

This powerhouse of a car seat is available online for $150 from Toys’R’Us.

[via Oh!Gizmo]

From time to time, I wish I had one of those tiny city cars that could park almost anywhere, because it would make living in the city a lot easier. However, most of the time, these tiny cars are a bit boring to drive because of their lackluster performance. Renault sought to change this with their new concept car.

If you can believe it, the Twizy Sport F1 Electric concept borrows technology used in Formula 1 race cars. This single-seater race car comes with a front splitter, side pods, a rear wing, and a diffuser to give it a sporty look. It uses a Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) to recover lost power, which is similar to the one used by Renault F1 cars. It allows this little car to push out almost 100hp, making it as fast as the Mégane Renault Sport 265 (which has 265 horses!).

The car even comes equipped with an F1-style steering wheel, which would provide access to the vehicle’s various functions.

I’m curious to see if or when they’ll use this technology in a production vehicle. I’m sure that many city dwellers would be interested in driving one.

[via designboom]

Researchers at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology have built a small humanoid robot. Nothing unusual there. Everybody is building robots these days, and one day soon we will all regret it. But this robot plays baseball. Or, at least can hit a ball.

Granted, the ‘bot holds a fan-like bat that even I could hit a ground-rule double with, but this robot is about more than just hitting balls. Like a human, it may miss at first, but with each new pitch it adjusts its swing accordingly – just like how a human learns. That’s because this robot has an artificial brain with 100,000 neurons. This complex “brain” is actually based on an Nvidia graphics processor, along with software developed by the chipmaker.

For now, the scientists have programmed these neurons for this specific task, but this will help them understand how to create a better fake brain in the future. Great. I can’t wait for actual thinking robot ball players who also want to make millions of dollars a year. And then beat us with bats when we don’t.

[via WIRED via Botropolis]

Back in 2010, Ed Fries – former Vice-President of Game Publishing in Microsoft and one of the co-creators of the Xbox – created a “demake” of Halo for the Atari 2600 called Halo 2600 (Fries also talked about how the project came about on the linked page). Previously Halo 2600 was playable on PCs using an emulator or via its Flash port, but now the game is out as a legit Atari 2600 cartridge.

Here’s some gameplay footage of Halo 2600 courtesy of YouTuber dsdude1107:

Atari Age worked with Fries to release a cartridge version of the game. The first batch of cartridges were sold in a limited run in 2010, but they seem to be back in stock. You can order them from Atari Age for $50 (USD) each.

That’s pretty expensive, but at least each cartridge comes with a glossy label, a box and even a full color 8-page manual, all of which feature art that are waaaay better than how the game itself looks. Seriously kids, if you think the videogame trailers are misleading, imagine the crushing disappointment some of us suffered back in the day.

[via Retro Treasures]

I love a good amusement park ride as much as the next guy, but even I might have some second thoughts about riding on this unusual double ferris wheel if it ever showed up at my local Six Flags.

Designed by the frequently whimsical, always creative team at Art Lebedev Studios, the Attraktsionus concept would link two ferris wheels together with a single set of cars that can travel between them.

Presumably, some sort of giant belts or cables would drive the cars between the two wheels, thus combining the sensation of riding a ferris wheel with that of a gondala ride. Thanks to the different wheel sizes, the whole thing looks like a giant bicycle chain when viewed from a distance.

I’m doubtful that we’ll ever see this ride turn up at real world amusement parks, but I do think it would be cool to create a whole series of fantastic and impossible rides like this. Oh yeah, there already is…