At Tokyo's 12th Robo-One Grand Championship match, two-legged robots jabbed, ducked, hurled balloons and even sang in their quest to become world champ.
25 finalist robots put up their fists to knock one another out of a ring on Saturday, showing off some of the latest moves originated by children, homemakers and other robot fans in the world's biggest robot market.
Hundreds of spectators clapped as robot "Arichyon," clad in Christmas lights, sang "We wish you a Merry Christmas." They then cheered when a robot with a penguin head toppled Arichyon over with a single punch.
Japan, home to 40% of the world's robots, is also fertile ground for amateur programmers, who invest serious pocket money and hours into making the ideal biped out of server motors, cameras, sensors and wires.
To succeed the tournament and the title of the world's strongest two-legged fighting robot, contestants need to be able to keep their balance while punching and dodging blows, and get up when pushed down.
"Companies can't make money making robots like these," said Terukazu Nishimura, chairman of the Robo-One committee. "The future of robotics depends on amateurs."
The cost of developing robots has compelled electronics firms to pull the plug on cutting-edge robots targeting the consumer market. The most prominent example is Sony Corp's (6758.T) Aibo dog robot, discontinued last year.
Toymakers such as Takara Tomy now have entered the consumer robot market, with firms cutting development costs and simplifying design to market low-cost robots for the home.
But toys just don't cut it for true robot lovers like 40-year-old Naoki Maru. Robot hobbyists have long outpaced companies in innovation, he said.
"You cannot win the tournament without the help of a major innovation every six months," said Maru, designer of the former Robo-One champion. "You don't see that kind of speed anywhere else."
Source- http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/robot_fight_dc;_ylt=AquBHKQ0X4PacRryV75JC2YjtBAF
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Robots Match- Japan's robots slug it out to be world champ
Monday, December 3, 2007
Apple iPod vs Microsoft Zune 80
The Apple iPod Classic is the undisputed (until now) titan of high-capacity MP3 players, with a rich legacy dating back to 2001. Its rival, the Microsoft Zune, stepped on the scene only a year ago and was promptly cast as an ugly duckling. In its latest incarnation, the Zune 80, Microsoft has finally offered a worthy challenger to the iPod dynasty. Unlike the original 30GB Zune, which had the aesthetic charm of a bar of soap, the Zune 80 is capable of competing not just on features, but design as well.
Of course, there's more to an MP3 player than good looks. To be a truly feared and respected MP3 player in this day and age, you need excellent software, top-notch video playback, podcast support, a drool-worthy graphic user interface, premium sound quality, and an affordable price. It also doesn't upset to have a few tricks up your sleeve, such as games, or a Wi-Fi connection.
The only thing certain about this fight is that it will inevitably stir up a monsoon of disgust from both sides--no matter who wins.
Source- http://reviews.cnet.com/4370-11399_7-324-101.html?tag=nefd.lede
Amazing Tesla Coil-powered Christmas Tree
The guys over at Tesladownunder decided to construct a Christmas tree by "building a frame around a standard Tesla coil to shape the spark pattern."
The guys wrote-
The different colors are achieved by using my color filter setup. This gets changed during exposure so that the tree sparks are green and the star sparks are yellow
Source- http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/pictures-amazing-tesla-coil-powered-christmas-tree
LiveJournal- The blogging site has been sold
LiveJournal, the personal Web publishing service that jump-started blogging in Russia, has been sold by its U.S. owner to a Russian business partner, who will operate it independently, the companies said on Sunday.
Six Apart Ltd said it sold the blog community site for undisclosed terms to SUP, a Russian-focused Internet media company led by an American and British duo that has expanded LiveJournal's Russian business over the past year.
The free, ad-supported blog site encourages users to keep online diaries they share and discuss with friends. It counts 14.3 million blog accounts and roughly 20 million visitors a month. Its writers publish more than 150,000 new posts a day.
"The deal will allow LiveJournal to get the attention, and frankly, the investment, to allow it to flourish," Andrew Paulson, SUP's chief executive, said in a phone interview.
Six Apart CEO Chris Alden said his company will focus on three properties it has created in-house: the widely used MovableType blog software, the TypePad blog hosting service and Vox, a blogging service aimed at less-technical users.
SUP said it is forming a new San Francisco-based company, LiveJournal Inc, to operate the service globally.
Alden said Six Apart will continue to partner with LiveJournal Inc, by supplying advertising and other services.
San Francisco-based Six Apart acquired LiveJournal in 2005 from its founder, Brad Fitzpatrick, who created the software in 1999 while a student at the University of Washington as a way for his friends to stay up-to-date on his latest Web postings.
Terms of that deal were never disclosed. Fitzpatrick left Six Apart this year and now works at Google Inc.
Market research firm Hitwise ranks LiveJournal as the fourth most popular personal blogging site among U.S. users, behind MySpace, Google Blogger, Yahoo 360 and ahead of Microsoft's "Live Spaces," Xanga and WordPress.
Source- http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071203/wr_nm/blogging_livejournal_dc;_ylt=AqIkA4mkNPjHvtxMhcHusI0jtBAF
Behind LiveJournal's success is a history of technical innovations that have spread far beyond LiveJournal itself.
Its freely licensed software helps speed up database-driven sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia. OpenID is a single sign-on system that does away with passwords once a user signs on to any one OpenID-based Web site. AOL and Microsoft support OpenID and Google recently began testing the service.
Source- http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071203/wr_nm/blogging_livejournal_dc;_ylt=AqIkA4mkNPjHvtxMhcHusI0jtBAF
First Vehicle To Break Sound Barrier Hits 763MPH
The British-designed ThrustSSC is touted as the world's first supersonic land vehicle. Propelled by twin Rolls-Royce Spey jet engines, it managed to hit a staggering 763.035mph, driven by Andy Green.
Some more pictures-
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HP, Acer Beat Up on Dell in PC Sales
Hewlett-Packard grew its lead, while Acer snagged second place in laptops in the third quarter.
Hewlett-Packard expanded its PC market share lead over Dell, and Acer snatched the number two ranking in laptops away from its beleaguered rival during the third quarter, market researcher iSuppli said last week.
HP's market share rose to 19.2% as it widened its lead over second place Dell, which held a 14.6% share, iSuppli reported in preliminary figures. It's a remarkable difference from the same time last year, when HP first captured the top spot from Dell with a 16.5% market share, versus 16.3%.
Dell has suffered from a host of troubles over the past two years, including financial restatements and leadership changes. But its main problem has been a failure to grow as fast as rivals despite strong global PC market growth. The company's quarterly earnings conference last week highlighted this issue. Despite strong revenue growth, rising costs cut into profits and the company warned that future earnings could be hurt by cautious PC buying among financial customers.
Dell's stock fell 9.9%, or US$2.78 to $25.36 in after-market stock trading Thursday after the report.
Rivals have taken advantage of its troubles.
HP has surged under new leadership from CEO Mark Hurd. The company's third quarter PC shipments grew 32.7% compared to last year to 13.1 million units, iSuppli said. Dell's increased just 1.5% to 9.9 million.
Acer added to Dell's woes in the quarter, snatching away the second place global ranking in laptop PCs on strong shipment growth. The Taiwanese company gauged the strongest growth among all top PC vendors in the third quarter, up 68.8% year-on-year, mainly due to strong notebook PC sales.
The market for notebook PCs is growing far faster than desktops, and offers far better profit margins for companies. Laptop shipments grew 33.5% year-over-year in the third quarter, while desktop PC shipments grew just 3.4%, iSuppli said.
Acer captured a 7.9% share of the global PC market in the third quarter, but the results did not include Gateway, which Acer recently obtained. Gateway figures will be included in fourth-quarter figures, iSuppli said. The addition of the U.S. Company’s sales will narrow the gap between Acer and Dell in global rankings.
Notebook shipments should continue to boost Acer. Goldman Sachs Wednesday revised its target for global laptop shipments up to 11% quarter-on-quarter growth in the fourth quarter, compared to a previous forecast of 9%. The investment banking firm also sees the potential for the best laptop shipment performance in six-years in the first quarter of next year.
iSuppli predicts worldwide PC shipments will grow 12% year-over-year in 2007.
The global PC market grew 13.8% year-on-year in the third quarter as companies shipped 68.1 million PCs, iSuppli said. Chinese PC vendor Lenovo retained its third place global ranking in the PC market in the third quarter with an 8.1% share, while Acer took fourth and Toshiba placed fifth at 4.3%.
Source- http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140188-c,researchreports/article.html
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Online Advertiser Pays $650,000 in Spam Fines
Online advertiser Adteractive Inc. will pay US$650,000 to settle charges that it used deceptive spam messages to lure people to its Web sites.
The company ran e-mail and Web ads offering free Sony Playstations, laptop computers, and even a $1,000 check, implying that consumers had been selected as secret shoppers and would receive the free gear or cash after they tested the products, the FTC said in court filings.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has been investigating this behavior, called "promotion-based lead generation," in the advertising industry for several years now. It is also taking a look at online advertiser ValueClick. It announced the settlement with Adteractive on Wednesday.
The Adteractive promotions contained offers such as, "Test and keep this flat-screen TV," and "Test it- Keep it- Microsoft Xbox 360," and "Congratulations! You've been chosen to receive a free $1,000 check," the FTC said.
But actually collecting the freebies proved to be complicated. "After the consumer navigates [Adteractive's] 'optional' promotions-- often taking up five or six consecutive computer screens, each with multiple offers-- he or she eventually reaches a link that, when clicked, takes the consumer to the first of three tiers of offers in which the consumer must participate to obtain the free merchandise," the FTC said.
In order to get the really good prizes, consumers would have to do things like take out a one-year subscription to satellite TVs, or sign up for CD or DVD deliveries. "In most instances, it is impossible for the consumer to qualify for... free merchandise without spending money," the FTC said.
Founded in 2000, Adteractive was earning $118 million in revenue in 2005, and boasted clients such as Blockbuster, Netflix, Club Med, BMG and Citibank, according to an article in the San Francisco Business Times.
The company has been cooperating with the FTC since 2006 and is happy with the settlement, which spells out how the company can run these promotions in the future, said Greg Wharton, Adteractive's general counsel.
Online advertisers now have better guidelines on how to present their promotions to consumers, Wharton said. "The FTC has offered some guidance on how to use the word 'free' in advertising," he said. "At the end of the day, we're actually pleased to get this resolved."
Adteractive expects that the FTC will soon announce several other enforcement actions, Wharton added.
Not everyone was happy with Wednesday's news. If the FTC really expects to deter this kind of behavior, it's going to have to levy higher fines, according to Ben Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School.
"Time and again, the FTC accept settlements that let defendants retain a portion of their ill-gotten gains," he said in an e-mail interview. "Tougher requirements are needed in order to make sure defendants actually regret their infractions, and to prevent others from turning to these ill-advised strategies."
Source- http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20071201/tc_pcworld/140198;_ylt=AtDi7Sk2MEpyPuwZGEOwLIgjtBAF
Online bullying is growing in US teen Internet life
US researchers warn that bullies are taking their hurtful ways from real-world schoolyards to the "cyber" world by targeting teens with nasty e-mail, text messaging, and online chat.
The number of children ages 10 to 17 that say they were abused by "cyber bullies" climbed 50%, from 6% in 2000 to 9% in 2005, according to a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"One thing that stands out is that aggression perpetuated with technology goes far beyond cyber bullying," said Corrine Ferdon, one of the authors of the CDC report on "electronic aggression and youth violence."
"Technology is constantly evolving and if we focus on the Internet we will miss the show."
Instant messaging, including text messages sent to mobile telephones, is the most common way to send taunts, teases, threats, insults or other bullying messages, according to report co-author Marci Hertz.
Unlike in schoolyards where bullies have to face victims, the Internet lets abusers remain anonymous, Hertz said.
The majority of the self-described victims in the study said they didn't know who the "cyber bullies" were, Hertz told AFP.
"In the schoolyard you could defend yourself by speaking back but it is a completely different dynamic online," Hertz said.
"Some kids might be able to shrug it off, turn off the computer and move on. But some kids are more fragile."
A 13-year-old Missouri girl hanged herself with a belt in November after exchanging insults via her profile page at MySpace.com with a person she was tricked into thinking was a 16-year-old boy named "Josh."
The final message sent by Josh, who flirted with the girl for weeks online, was reportedly "The world would be a better place without you."
It turned out Josh was an online person created by the mother of a former friend of the girl. The woman told investigators she played the charade to find out what the girl really thought of her daughter, who was the jilted friend.
After finding out the mother's behavior didn't break the law, local politicians made it illegal to harass people on the Internet.
Police in Tennessee say that one teenage girl stabbed another over a comment posted at the Facebook social networking website.
School officials in some US cities restrict access to the Internet or mobile telephones on campuses.
"Some of this hysteria about bullying is just a way to try to regulate and surveil kids," said Nan Stein, a scientist at the Wellesley College's center for women, where she directs research on sexual harassment.
"We need to encourage kids to be citizens of the world. Being nice helps too, but we shouldn't be regulating."
The CDC performed its study of electronic aggression because it receives calls from "a lot of US schools" asking for advice regarding how to handle cyber bullying, Hertz said.
The report found that 64% of youths that said they were bullied on line contended they were not bullied at school. A separate US study concludes children bullied online are more likely to take guns to school.
It is vital for parents to be aware of their children's online experiences because electronic bullying is most likely to take place at homes or other places where teachers can't be alerted, researchers said.
As youth lifestyles increasingly involve the Internet and new ways to communicate it is understandable that bullying migrates from the real-world to the cyber arena, said University of California, Berkeley, researcher and sociologist C.J. Pascoe.
"It is the online manifestation of what they are doing in the schoolyard," said Pascoe, the author of a book on bullying titled "Dude, You're a Fag."
"The issue is being overblown. We should be concerned with bullying and harassment in general, no matter where it takes place."
The popularity of social networking websites where people post profile pages packed with personal information and rosters of friends provide rich fodder for bullies, says Pascoe.
In contrast, online messaging and social networking can also be safe havens for shy children that have trouble making friends in the real world or get bullied in real life situations, according to Pascoe.
"We highlight in our article the benefit of technology," Hertz said of the published report.
"Kids are better able to make friends, maintain social connections and get accurate information. We really encourage more talking rather than blocking or prohibiting access to technology."
Source- http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071202/tc_afp/lifestyleusitinternetyouthschool;_ylt=Ag4jluZjJa22QzY9R.dl8NcjtBAF
