Filed under: Robots

While we swear our Roomba reacts to our moods, researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology have developed a humanoid bot that can use communicate using gestures. The 187-pound robot stands about five feet tall and uses a 3D vision system to recognize gestures like pointing and bowing and determine their meaning — and then use the same gestures when appropriate. The researchers say they envision the tech being used in caregiver robots for the elderly, but we’re not trusting them until we see proof this thing recognizes the gesture for “Do Not Enslave.”

[Via The Inquirer]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Researchers develop robot with non-verbal communications skills

Regardless of what your Halloween plans might entail, chances are pretty good that you’ll eventually come face to face with the compressed, Lycra-silhouetted junk of at least one dude dressed as a superhero. Pretty on the Outside decided to grade some of the shrink-wrapped celebrity shlong on display this haunting season, giving head-of-the-class marks to Brody “The Hills” Jenner’s shapely, right-bending manhood.

The jury appears to be out on Adrian Grenier’s basket, however, as the elephantine mound on display suggests the star of Aquaman and Medellin either stuffed himself with one of Drama’s gym socks, or opted to tie his firehose into a sailing knot before leaving the house for his All Hallow’s Eve revelries.

• Happy Halloween. Now Let’s Talk Penises. [Pretty on the Outside]

Adrian Grenier’s Mystery Package Confounds Celebrity Shlong Scrutinizers [Bulges] - Read More

Filed under: Displays

It’s getting hard to distinguish all the different LED technologies out there from one another, but Light Beam Industries’ so-called LED-C system looks like it may have a shot at standing out from the crowd, with it promising to let you create any color LED you like. Light Beam managed that feat by creating a “monolithic component” that combines a standard monochromatic or white LED with a “solid state lighting source” that re-emits the light in the color of your choice. The system also promises to let you generate white light from 3000K to 6000K, and a broader light spectrum than other materials allow, including, as LightBeam points out, the deep red that “Coca-Cola and Budweiser require for their signage.” That should also tell you something about the technology’s target market although, from the looks of it, it seems like it could also find its way into an updated version of a certain childhood favorite “signage” system.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

LED-C turns Lite-Brite green with envy

Appearing on Late Show last night to promote a small, low-profile animated movie soon to make its way into select art houses across the country, Hubbardian dabbler Jerry Seinfeld used the opportunity to try out a tight, three-minute set of new material based entirely around the everyman premise, “So a billionaire comedian’s wife writes an Oprah-approved cookbook about hiding brussel sprouts in your kids’ mac and cheese, and some celebrity-stalking lunatic accuses her of plagiarism, just because the book she already wrote on that topic contains 15 identical recipes!”

Despite Letterman’s best, half-assed efforts at playing Seinfeld’s advocate, we think his fidgety body language and involuntarily groans (particularly after the part of the bit in which Seinfeld accuses the author of being a potential serial killer) tell us everything we need to know about whose side he takes on this matter. It almost made you long for someone to change the topic to something a little less awkward, such as all the wonderful voice-work Afro-American comedian Chris Rock did in Bee Movie.

• Late Show with David Letterman

Seinfeld To Letterman: ‘What’s The Deal With That Crazy Woman My Wife Stole All Her Cookbook Ideas From?’ [Revenge Comedy] - Read More

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals

Nokia — always known to break a phone-lover off some snazzy new junk — currently wants to get up in your headspace with its new Bluetooth earpiece, the BH-101. What can the BH-101 do for you, you ask? Well for starters, it’ll deliver eight hours of talktime, 180 hours of sweet, silent standby, Bluetooth 2.0 (with EDR, Handsfree v.1.5, and Headset v.1.1), plus it will go easy on the wallet with a €30 / $40 price tag. Ready to give the appearance that you’re talking to yourself? Do it this “Christmas season” with Nokia’s help.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Nokia intros the BH-101 Bluetooth earpiece

? Universal and New Line join the list of those who strenuously object to the WGA’s strike rules, warning writers in their employ that complying with their union’s demands to validate the scripts they’re trying to turn in before tomorrow’s deadline will put them in breach of contract. [Variety]
· Writers and studio executives alike have caught Script-Flipping Fever! Unfortunately, any camaraderie the two sides may now feel as they rush to finish shootable screenplays together could be slightly undermined if they’re forced to start trying to kill each other on Thursday morning. [THR]
? Warner Bros. wants to deepen its already very fulfilling relationship with model/host/producer/investigative reporter Tyra Banks, signing her to a multiyear deal in which Banks’ production company will do everything for the Warner corporate family short of emptying their trash cans at the end of the day. [Variety]

· ABC gives a full-season pick-up to Samantha Who? following the show’s third consecutive “strong” showing. The usual caveats apply regarding the strike erasing the portion of the TV season in which those back-nine episodes would eventually air. [THR]
? The World Series sweep is great for Red Sox fans, not-so-great for Fox, who find themselves out of three games’ worth of ad money. [Variety]

Warner Bros. Wants To Get Even Deeper Into The Tyra Banks Business [Trade Roundup] - Read More

The Lane Garrison legal saga found a measure of closure today, a judge having decided that 40 months in jail was a suitable sentence for the Prison Break actor’s cokey-boozy bender that ended in the death of Beverly Hills High School student Vahagn Setian. From the AP report:

“The public has the right to know that conduct such as this, causing devastation such as this” will have consequences, Superior Court Judge Elden S. Fox said.

“Unfortunately, in this case, you have to be the messenger,” he told Garrison.

Before the ruling, he apologized to the family of Vahagn Setian.

“I’m sick of my own behavior that night,” he said. “This remorse is genuine. I feel it every day.”

With Garrison safely behind bars, relieved parents of Beverly Hills High students can now feel free to sign permission slips for the Terror At 30,000 Feet Halloween Dance, semi-confident that no C-list Hollywood type will sidle up to their children on a beanbag couch in the Cockpit of Doom to coax them away from the proceedings with the promise of a “kick-ass, all-you-can-snort party in the Hills.”

• Garrison Sentenced to 40 Months in Prison [AP]

Lane Garrison Gets 40 Months Without Possibility Of Kick-Ass High School Parties [Rulings] - Read More

With a significant portion of Southern California engulfed in apocalyptic hellfires sent by a vengeful God clearly envious of our year-round good weather and easily accessible, delicious produce, the hardy footsoldiers dispatched to the front lines of this unwinnable war display extraordinary courage in the line of duty. We speak, of course, of the paparazzi angling for a shot of Britney Spears’s home. The NY Observer reports:

“Basically, all the paparazzi are still out there trying to get their Britney shot,” said one resident of the beachy burg. “They don’t even care much about the burning houses.”

Indeed, gripes about Britney have been permeating Malibu like so much ash, said the source, who overheard Mel Gibson’s wife, Robyn, venting to a fellow local. “She was like, ‘It’s so annoying that people are more concerned about if Britney Spears’s house was burnt’”–so far, it’s escaped any damage–”‘than their own well-being.’” Mad Max’s wife, who was forced to evacuate along with the couple’s twin boys, went on to say that the situation said horrible things about “people’s priorities.”

“Basically,” said the source, “Britney needs to get the fuck out of Malibu.”

This isn’t the first resident of a tony Los Angeles enclave to verbalize their frustration over the riots that follow the singer wherever she goes. Still, when Mrs. Mel Gibson, Duchess of the Dominion of Malibu, is reduced to getting her sugartits in a bunch over the media’s trivial obsession with her gum-snapping, latté-chugging neighbor–as beach-dwelling Malibu Americans are sent fleeing from their burning homes–it signals to us that something is truly off-kilter with the current state of disaster-exploitation tabloid journalism.

• Malibu Is Up in Smoke–About Britney’s Paparazzi Problem! Ejected From Abode, Mel Gibson’s Wife Grouses [NYObserver.com]

Wildfires: Britney-Stalking Paparazzi Fiddle With Their Cameras As Malibu Burns - Read More