Bot Brain

If you have a passion for robotic projects, then the BotBrain Animatronic Robot Head Kit is a pretty good toy for you. It is meant to help one pick up the basics of robotics and animatronics by leading the user through the entire assembly process of a fully functioning animatronic head. This head will be able to turn left and right, with moving eyes and eyelids add to the realism. The mouth can change according to how it is “feeling” at the moment, while integrated sensors enable it to react to changes in the environment. The BotBrain Animatronic Robot Head Kit retails for $449 so make sure you have a great love for all things robotic before dropping that amount of cash.

GigaPan Epic: How Do You Create Your Own 1,474-Megapixel Photo?

Some people like to say that "size doesn't matter." We think that those people have never seen the gigapixel photographs taken with a GigaPan Epic Sytem. David Bergman, a self-described "All Access" photographer took his GigaPan Epic to the recent inauguration of President Barack Obama:

My final photo is made up of 220 Canon G10 images and the file is 59,783 X 24,658 pixels or 1,474 megapixels. It took more than six and a half hours for the Gigapan software to put together all of the images on my Macbook Pro and the completed TIF file is almost 2 gigabytes.

Priced at $379, we think the GigaPan Epic is a steal for what it does. So must have one of these. Full list of features after the jump.

Reading University Turing Test Searches for a “Thinking” Computer

lan Turing wrote a seminal paper in 1950 titled ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’. In it, he states that a thinking computer is impossible to distinguish from a human in text-based conversation. Alan Turing further hypothesized that a 30% chance existed a computer could be mistaken for a human in a five minute conversation by the end of the 20th Century.

Reading University recently conducted the Turing Test to examine this theory. A panel of human judges were tasked with evaluating conversations to determine if they were computer or human. While some of the computer results were impressive, none of the computer programs passed the Turing Test. An AI named Elbot won the Loebner Prize, though, by convincing "a quarter of the judges". Although the results may not seem staggering, it does bring into focus that it’s possible within our lifetime AI will exist that is indistinguishable from a human.

The Macbook Air

The Macbook Air - Apple's self-proclaimed "world's thinnest notebook" is indeed a slender and visually attractive beast, but you do need to be aware that you're paying for design over utility, including some features that Apple offers in more capable notebook designs.

Notebooks have clearly reached the point where vendors will attempt to sell them on looks rather than what's under the hood, and nowhere is this more evident than with the Macbook Air. It's slim, it's highly eye-catching and at 1.36 kg it's remarkably light for a notebook with a 13" display screen.

The Macbook Air features a backlit LED screen, which instantly "pops" into view - and also consumes less battery power doing so. It also inherits the multi-touch touchpad from an iPod Touch, which lets you perform complex mouse commands, such as resizing and rotating, with just a few finger flicks.

Apple currently sells the Macbook Air in two primary configurations. The cheaper $2,499 model comes with a 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo Processor, 2GB of onboard memory and an 80GB 4200RPM hard drive. The $4,338 model ups the processor to a 1.8Ghz Core 2 duo, and swaps in a lower capacity 64GB solid state memory drive.

The model submitted to GadgetGuy was the premium 64GB hard disk version, and for the most part it exceeded our performance expectations. The keyboard appears very flat, but is actually quite comfortable to use, and the combination of OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") and the processor and memory meant that the Air floated through most computing tasks with nary a complaint.

One factor that shouldn't be omitted when looking at the Air's performance is what it sacrifices in the name of being slender. There's only a single USB port, no Ethernet or Modem port - quite vital for some travelling types if WiFi is either absent or not trustworthy - and no optical drive. The Air does attempt to sidestep the optical drive argument both by offering an optional external DVD drive ($139) and remote disc software that lets you mount drives on other networked systems as though they were natively connected. While remote disc does work, it's highly dependent on network speeds, and of course no use to you if you want to relax with a DVD in your hotel room after a hard day at a conference.

Multi-Touch worked well for us across a variety of applications, but it's worth bearing in mind that it's a technology that's also now offered on newer Macbook Pro models; if you can handle the extra weight of a Pro system, you'll sidestep all of our performance complaints about the lack of ports and drives.

The Macbook Air is a very niche product with superb design aesthetics but a number of significant computing drawbacks for mobile travellers. If you can either live with a number of dongles to add back multiple USB support, Ethernet networking and an optical drive, it's a very nice and very portable system.

If you can stand a little more weight in your shoulder bag, the newer Macbook Pro systems outpace it in most regards. Finally, while it's great to see solid state drives make their appearance in portable notebooks, the whacking great price premium attached to them means we'd suggest you wait for prices on these premium components to drop a little before buying

SanDisk Sansa e280 8 GB Digital Media Player

This compact MP3 player can hold 2000 of your favorite songs. You can even add more external memory with a MicroSD Transflash Card. The e280 plays MP3, WAV, WMA and ASF audio files. Unlike most other MP3 players, it also plays MPEG-4, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV and AVI video files. The 1.8 inch screen is bright and displays the unique Sansa interface nicely. Cool features include FM Stereo Tuner, Voice Recorder, Radio Recorder and Built-In Card Reader. The Rechargeable Lithium Battery lasts for 20 hours when full charged, giving this media player, excellent battery life.

The sound quality is clear, just like an iPod, just without the price tag. The 2280 is very affordable, and is cheaper than any iPod. It also has a lock button, to avoid accidentally changing your playback. Durability is a plus on this device, since it’s built solid. The interface is simple and upfront. From a Gadget Addicts perspective, this mp3 player is an excellent choice if your looking for an MP3 player. The interface is different, so it will take some getting used too. The screen is going to get scratched if you don’t take good care of it, but if your at all careful, you’ll be alright. Also, the earphone that are included, aren’t exactly top quality. It seems like all you need to do, upon your purchasing your device, is to buy a sleeve for protection and earphones. Overall, I would choose the Sansa e280, over an iPod, any day.

C-Bot

Until now the ability of various heroes (such as Spiderman and etc.) to climb walls was considered to be unreal and fictitious. Yet a device that can climb walls without any artificial adhesion has been recently invented.

Given gadget named C-Bot uses a gecko's innovative foot design that ensures wall climbing without the necessity to use any additional tools. Despite the fact that its foot looks like an obvious one, it's hairy (like that of animals); but it can be seen just on the micro level.

In addition to this given concept uses a sensor technology for diagnostic tasks. The sensor emits ultra-sonic rays and gets the required information through specific ray reflection. Inner damages of buildings, like rust inside of reinforced concrete, can be detected. Due to this given device can be easily used both in the construction of different buildings and structures and to analyze damages caused by an accident.

Moreover, as designer (Niklas Galler) asserts, theoretically it is possible too build such a robot big enough to carry human. Though at the given moment it seems to be unbelievable, it may turn out to be very useful in the future.

However it doesn't mean that at present there are some doubts about the usefulness of this device. Thus, I think that the innovative technology of adhesion used in this robot will soon be used in the design of various devices of that kind.

Sony PS 3

The Sony Playstation 3 is a powerful gaming system with a lot too offer. With a vast amount of multimedia options, the PS3 doesn’t just give you the ultimate gaming experience, but it also delivers much, much more. It’s the features like internet access, image viewing, digital audio and video chat that make this console stand out from all of the rest. You’ll find that the console can be a bit stylish, so you can easily not mind the amount of space it takes up. This console has a 3.2 GHz Cell processor and 256 MB of built in memory. It also has XDR RAM technology which allows it to go at a speed of 3200 MHz. It runs on an advanced NVIDIA RSX graphic processor which has a speed of 550 MHz. The hard drive is 80 GB, which is a huge amount compared to anything out there on the market. It also features a Blu Ray optical hard drive, which is an excellent way to view movies. It has expansion slots that support SD Card, Memory Card Slot, Memory Stick Pro Duo, Memory Stick Duo and Compact Flash.

The wireless capabilities include Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g and Wi-Fi. Another great feature is the Progressive Scan DVD Playback. The PS3 is available in many different colors, but the most available is black. From a Gadget Addicts perspective, this device can perform a perfect amount of capabilities in just one awesome unit. Although the PS3 might seem pricey at first, you’ll later notice that buy combining all the devices you would buy separately in just one sleek device, you will actually end up saving bucks. Primarily made for playing video games, you better believe that you’ll receive beautiful graphics that will leave you baffled. I would buy the PS3 again in a heart beat.