When someone invents a robot specifically made to drill into the skulls of unconscious, immobile humans, you’d be forgiven for feeling a natural reaction along the lines of “for the love of God, why?” But trust me, this particular robotic trepanation station is a good idea. The issue surrounds what ...
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Apple is opening new stores in Downtown Miami, Cologne and Nanjing
While Apple’s retail team is currently remodeling all its stores, the company is also opening brand new stores around the world. Apple is opening a flagship store in Downtown Miami, a new store in a historic building in Cologne and a third store in Nanjing. Last weekend, Apple reopened the ...
Read More »Crunch Report | Intel Acquires Mobileye
Today’s Stories Intel buys Mobileye in $15.3B deal, moves its automotive unit to Israel Pandora’s on-demand music service finally arrives Facebook tells developers to not use data for surveillance YouTube launches Uptime, an experimental app for watching videos with friends New iPad models being tested around Cupertino, logs show Credits ...
Read More »PassivDom is a Zombie-proof “autonomous 3D-printed mobile house”
It’s rare that I quote a company’s marketing tagline outright, but PassivDom, makers of an “autonomous 3D-printed mobile house,” sounds pretty darn rad. The Ukrainian company wants to create mobile homes that can be made anywhere and are completely self-powered. Max Gerbut, a Ph.D. of Engineering Sciences of physics of ...
Read More »The Gameband is the ultimate wrist gaming solution for playing Pong
Ready for some XTREME WRIST GAMING ACTION? Sure you are. But here’s the Gameband, a new smartwatch for gamers that lets you play simple games on a tiny, wrist-mounted screen. Founded by Feargal Mac Conuladh, the watch has a MicroSD slot for storage of up to 256GB of games and ...
Read More »Pax is a smart tip jar for rideshare drivers
A while back, I reminded people that they should tip their Uber drivers. But a common response was essentially, “I’d like to tip, but half the point of Uber is not having to carry cash. And there’s no option in the app. So how do I do it?” Well, perhaps ...
Read More »Kuri the adorable smart home robot can now detect your face
Kuri, the smart home robot from Bosch internal startup Mayfield Robotics, won a lot of hearts when it debuted at CES in January. Now, the little domestic bot has gained some new abilities, which should help it win minds, too, when it launches officially to pre-order customers later this year. ...
Read More »Disney Research has robots matching verbal styles with kids
Roboticists at Disney Research are investigating how to improve the quality of human-robot interactions by studying how speech patterns affect engagement with a creepy anthropomorphic bot that imitates its playmates’ speech. It’s a natural enough line of research: computer-generated speech and interaction patterns are so wooden across the board that ...
Read More »The Fossil Q Hybrid smartwatch does wearables right
Do you really need a screen? That’s the question Fossil is asking with their clever and handsome Fossil Q Hybrid smartwatch, an analog watch that hides all of its smarts behind an understated face. This type of watch has become more common with watchmakers like Skagen and Michael Kors jumping ...
Read More »Meet the tiny phone company that’s making modularity sustainable
With retro phone brands Nokia and Blackberry remerging at Mobile World Congress this year you’d be forgiven for thinking Mistress Fortune was up to her old wheel-spinning tricks again. And as old tech becomes tech news again, it’s a sign — say some — that smartphone innovation is on the scrap heap. But a commoditized ...
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