We guess the programmers at Easybits software got a tad tired of the kiddies always crashing daddy's laptop files, since they built the Magic Desktop software as a shield against the teething-set. And while an operating system for 2 to 12 year olds sounds a bit overreaching (not to mention that by 12 they'll probably be hacking into the Pentagon's computers, not goofing around on something like this), the system is pretty simple and filters out all non-kid-friendly material to enable safe surfing, uses clickable images to navigate the interface and ignores all those repetitive clickings with which little Billy always seems to freeze the system. The software is currently testing in Europe and the US. 

When did swallowable tiny robot gear become the breakout single of the summer? We're not sure (ok, so maybe it's not that popular) but first there was the robot pill crawler, now the latest is the VitalSense monitoring pill. Designed by the Mini Mitter Company and, um, the US Army, the pill checks out your inner stats with a wireless temperature sensor. We can feel a Survivor-type reality TV cameo brewing here, but more practical apps include studying how high-heat environments affect body stress. We're thinking of popping a few, relaxing at the fake-n-bake, and checking the results. 

We know that the diet industry's got a stranglehold on a big percentage of our hard-earned dollars, so it's natural that they would start to get a tad creative. Popgadget has some deets on a few of the more unusual dieting gadgets, like, the Powerseed (pictured at right) a device that makes rhythmic beats to which you can time your bites and chews, and every once in a while prompts you to review your hunger feelings. Maybe this could help the eating-impaired but we're thinking we'll use the pod for Powerseed dinner parties, then friends and family can all munch to the same beat. There's also the DDS system, an uncomfortable merging of dental wear and a diet aid, and uses a custom-fitted retainer to reduce the amount of food the wearer can chew by 25% for every bite. Since we're sure that any pleasure gained from eating will have been completely trounced through this bulky retainer, we ask the question begging to be asked, why not just cut portions by 25%? No, that would be too easy.

We'll admit we're more than a little jealous that Japan's rapidly-aging population will son have a robot for every occasion. OK, so we maybe should count it as a blessing that we don't require a robotic bathtime, though the human washing machine pictured here looks like the ultimate fullbody spa. And we guess we should be especially stoked that we don't require this new robotic lifter for the bedridden that Secom will be selling in April. The user can control the lifting robot with a remote and the device can move and place the user wherever s/he needs. Sensors make sure that the user is securely positioned on the lifter and stops moving if senses his/her unsafe placement.

While the initial response to the idea of a leggy robot crawling around your guts is naturally one of shock and awe, if you really think about the other surgical and endoscopic options, they're all a little offputting as well: tubes, little cameras on wires, so why the hell not a tiny-legged robot pill? The 25mm long and 10mm diameter crawling capsule was created by researchers in Italy and Korea and once the pill is swallowed the soft coating dissolves and the crazy-legged robot starts its course. The only issue might be one of control, since we're sure the patient won't be none too pleased when some rogue robot starts aimlessly inspecting his intenstines.

[Via Near Future]

The last time we bought a book light was for one of those crappy spend-five-bucks-White-Elephant parties and with an hour before party time we just grabbed whatever was left in clearance bin at Border's. Which is why we were filled with much stokedness to stumble across a book light that actually gives a little something back in the style and innovation department. LightWedge uses a sheet of acrylic with embedded LED's that users just place over the page to illuminate it. Since it lights up the entire page, there's no more awkward positioning of those clip-on book lights, we just hope the full page of shining LEDs doesn't give us some sort of cornea burnout.

[Via Funfurde] 

If the twisted look of the face corset becomes the next teen trend, then we'll just have to join the ranks of the agoraphobics. As an art aesthetic we're obviously not big fans of the Marilyn Manson-style face corset, but since the the corset was originally created to aid with facial reconstruction due to accident, then we'll admit that the device is not the obvious fashion faux-pas-in-the-making it appears to be. Engineers at the Imperial College of London developed the aid and experts of "facial reconstruction history" (what the?) are creating a "Rearanging the Face" seminar this week. We just hope that JoJo and lil' Bow Wow don't start rocking these, or it's going to be a  real long shut-in winter.

[Via Near Near Future]

Yotel, a new London hotel concept, claim they're design is based on Japan's capsule hotels, but we suspect they've never actually stepped into the curtain-covered beehive holes that are the Tokyo capsule hotels. Don't get us wrong, Yotel is swanky and say our company (given we had a company with a budget for the £70 bill) was sending us to London, we'd vote for Yotel every time. It's got an iPod connector to blast our music surround sound-style, WiFi access, and the classic Japanese hotel control panel to dictate everything from air temp to tv remote to dimmer mood lighting. But unlike Japan's capsule pods which don't allow even the ability to turn around, let alone standup, Yotel's spacious 10x12 rooms look large enough to feel roomy. We're thinking that the usual Japanese capsule hotel clientele, trashed afterwork salarymen looking for a place to pass out, might steer clear of Yotel's chic suites and just opt for the dirty hostels down the street.

[Via IDfuel]

While one part of us hopes that these stock buying and selling robots don't completely outdue their human counterparts, replacing all of Wall Street with teenage programmers might be kind of therapeutic. Japanese computer programmers have been invited to create virtual robots to compete in KabuRobo Programming Contest, a stock investment returns contest put on by Waseda University, Nomura Research Institute and IBM Japan. Contestants will program their virtual robots to buy and sell orders for 40 stocks out of the 225 leading stocks in the Nikkei in response to market events or whatever factors they choose. Once the contest starts the contestants have to refrain from giving their robots any input and have to just let the bot broker on its own. 

We're not sure how accurate this story is, but since it sounds similar to some other goods readily available out there, we're not going to question at least the possibility of lamppost-climbing robots with CCTVs strapped to their backs. We just going to pass the rumor along and deal with our lack of journalistic efforts later. In the English region of the West Midlands, police and firefighters unveiled the devices at an arson task force, hoping to catch future arsonists in the act and hopefully prevent them from committing their firey misdeeds.

Road signs have always been more like gentle suggestions than rule-of-the-road iron fist, at least to us. There's a hairpin turn ahead, ok, noted, now let's see how fast we can take it before sliding off into the ditch. But the National Information and Communications Technology Australian lab wants you to follow every road sign you see and has made a driver's aid system that detects and reminds drivers to pay attention to the road signs in front of you. It's kind of like having your nagging grandma accompany you on every car trip you ever take. The system, DAS - driver's assistance system, uses 3 cameras, one to scan the road for signs and the other two to watch where you're watching. The camera's vision is connected to a PC under the dash, which is also connected to the speedometer. The only potential problems might be with low-vision issues, such as bad weather or lack of lighting, assunming that you can actually stand the incessant headache of the computerized back-seat driver in the first place.

If you've ever been in town for a Berkeley protest then you know they're one part Che-t-shirt-wearing freshman, one part scraggly middle-aged 60's-era throwback and one part People's Park drifter (where's the free food?). So lucky for us all, we can now watch the ugly planned mayhem of the Sproul protests over a new robotic webcam, which has been installed under a project called Demonstrate made by Berkeley's engineering school. Users can sign into the project's site, control the webcam through point-n-click, take still pictures and write comments for their own and other user's pics. About 20 users can control the cam at a time and the site uses an algorithm to share all of the user's requests and determine the ultimate lens focus. For example if you're a user who has taken more pictures and commented on more images, then you're control over the cam carries more weight than a first time user. Starting noon today (just in time for the 40th anniversary of Berkeley's claim-to-fame free speech movement) the engineering school will be displaying and lecturing about their webcam. Though we really don't want to see the sad "you should have been there, man" old hippies or the "Mean People Suck" students, we might check it out just in case someone gets arrested.  

The only folks who might be tempted to download this are either recent grads who've yet to have the everyday tie-knotting drudgery instilled in them or those that "work at home" most likely never changing out of their pjs, let alone donning a tie (right, we don't know any of those). Well, we guess if you wanted to start getting really clever with neck fashion, since the database has 14 famous ties that teach you the step by step theatrics that is the tie knot. But if you really can't remember the simple steps to the classic knot, then you probably really don't need one anyway.

[Via TRFJ]

We're not sure how this Swordfish-themed, GPS-based cellphone game managed the coup that was their John Stewart's Daily Show shout out last month. Of course the show belittled the game, but hey press is press, right? To play the game, you look on your screen, see where the "swordfish" are, then move to that location to attempt to catch them. In real life, you don't "virtually" go there or any of that crap. Sounds like a whole lotta work, and miles covered, for the hollow claim that you caught a non-existent swordfish. The game is only available in Canada right now, and the company says that they are the first location based fishing game, which we're sure is true, since we're not even sure there is a market for one of these things.

[Via TechDirt]

If flossing a converted Boeing 727 limo around on American freeways was in any way legal, we would be the first to take the plunge—well, if we had the $1,500 for the 3-hour trip, that is. We aren't transportation experts or anything, we just have this feeling that the Highway Patrol isn't going to cut the 60-foot long, 13-foot high monstrosity too much slack, especially when there's 50 people crowded around the limo's bar and spilling onto the dancefloor.

Engineers seem to have a real soft spot for rat/robot combos like the Cyborg Rat, which we took a look at last week, though the AMouse (Artificial Mouse), a fully robotic rat with natural mouse whiskers, looks admittedly nothing like a mouse (we guess they weren't going for the realistic look). We're thinking that rats and labs have gotten a bread-n-butter partnership because, beyond all those lab-friendly characteristics, they tend to score pretty low on the public-sympathy-meter. And though we're not sure of the exact method by which the AMouse gets its real McCoy whiskers, it's probably not such a great outcome for the de-whiskered rats.  Engineers at Universities of Tokyo and Switzerland created the AMouse to climb into small spaces and use its whiskers as sensors to detect different changes in environment. They're hoping one day to create robotic whiskers to replace AMouses' borrowed real ones, but until then some unlucky labjockey will have the honorary job as rat-whisker plucker (not to mention the unlucky rats).  

You know CNN is really going for that Emmy when it features Richard Branson's love note to his trusty cellphone. We're not sure what is more disturbing, his 5th grade book report writing style, the fact that he makes it sound like the cellphone made its debut last week, or his suspiciously unbuttoned chest hair flash. "Before I had a mobile phone I would try to get away from my desk as often as possible but it was definitely a lot more difficult. . . Now I'm never behind a desk. I am always out and about and on the move." And free to write truly lame articles for CNN's tech pages, lucky us. We know he's just trying to promote Virgin Mobile so we'll cut him some slack, but CNN's really got no excuse.

We always knew that batteries have the honor of being the single most toxic element out of any electrical device we own - we're thinking that's why our battery-sucking kid brother developed that weird tick. But Sony announced that they've made the silver oxide battery disc battery a little greener. The silver oxide battery is the one used in wrist watches and handhelds games, and in the past the battery always needed mercury to stop corrosion. But now Sony says they've developed the technology to take out the mercury without the previous corrosive result. We really have no idea how they did it, but we applaud taking mercury out of the occasion. Now start working on those thermometers. 

You might be heading to Manhattan's Spectropolis festival this weekend for the Mary-Poppins (well, if she were a Valley programmer) meets Lite-Brite fun that will be UMBRELLA.net, but Urballoon, a floating balloon equipped with WiFi and projector, stands to be just as dinner-theater showy through its user-submitted content which gets projected and lights up the ground space below the balloon at the entrance of City Hall Park. The balloon is tethered to the ground, floating three stories high, so you can be sure that the plug you're going to make for your blog (or whatever) will be nice and big for everyone to see. We're not sure if they'll be censoring the content (probably not), but if you have kid make sure to have your shield-hand ready for the array of explicit and hardcore content they're sure to receive within mere moments of the Urballoon going live. Gotta love the Internet.

[Via textually.org]
 

We guess Tyra and the catty minds behind America's Next Top Model agree with Paris over the joys of the Sidekick, since the newbie model flock got a new Sidekick from T-Mobile to kick around on last night's episode. We're not sure how all 14 (well, by the end of last night's show, 12), are gonna share the thing, though they'll probably be too busy purging their lunches and posing with only body glitter and a snake to take time to properly test it out.