Andy Rubin gives us a hands-on look at Google’s updated Android UI and runs a few programs, including Quake and Google Maps Street View. Continue reading to watch.

It’s interesting, with things like Quake and Google Maps Street View looking pretty great, especially on a phone running at 300 Mhz (half of the iPhone’s processing power). It’s not perfect, but it’s also not ready for prime time

[via Gizmodo]

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Sony has announced the availability of two 40GB PlayStation 3 bundles for Europe: a movie bundle (March 19th) that includes Blu-ray versions of Spider-Man 3 / 300 / Casino Royale and then a second bundle (March 29th) with Gran Turismo 5 Prologue — priced at $607USD. Click here for one more picture.

Both bundles promise to be quite appealing, but apparently neither come packing HD cables, which could be a bit of a hangup for those ready to make the Blu-ray plunge

[via Engadget]

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That’s right, a Death Star-inspired hotel is set to open in Burka, Azerbaijan. Standing 521-feet high, it features 382 rooms and 35-plus floors. Click here for first picture in gallery.

They call it “Full Moon” but they are not fooling us: this is a fully armed, fully operational battle station

[via Gizmodo]

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The new Macbook Pro is not much of a bump up from its predecessors, but it is a step in the right direction. The addition of Multi-Touch is a great new feature, even on a touchpad that’s smaller than the one on the Air. However, the Penryn-powered processor in this MBP is running at roughly the same speed as the last generation’s chips, GHz to GHz, and give no good reason to upgrade from machines that are less than a year old. The most interesting point here is the boost in efficiency the now-pervasive LED backlighting and 45nm Penryn chips bring to the MacBook Pro, which together give an hour extra battery life over older models with CCFL screens and 65nm CPU technology. That makes this the most efficient Macbook Pro yet. Here’s more on the 2.6GHz 4GB 15-inch MacBook we got to play with.

Multi-Touch Trackpad
After a month of getting used to the Multi-Touch trouchpad on the MacBook Air, we have to say that the Pro’s touchpad is not quite as good in comparison. Compared to the Air, the Pro’s touchpad is slightly narrower in width and a whole half of an inch shorter in height. Our initial thoughts were that the smaller touchpad would make using Multi-Touch more difficult, but that wasn’t exactly the case.

Our first impression after testing with iPhoto was that the smaller touchpad did make the use of Multi-Touch more difficult, but after a few minutes we realized we were trying to use our fingers in the same fashion as we did on the Air, where we had more room to gesture. For example, on the Air we skipped through photos with our fingers vertically but because of the Pro’s size it’s not comfortable to do this. So we placed our three fingers horizontally and it worked perfectly.

We came to the same conclusion with the rotate function. Instead of trying to move our rotate finger from the top of the touchpad to the bottom, we realized that by simply doing the rotate movement with more of a flick, iPhoto and Preview correctly rotated our photo to the next layout.

For testing zoom, we did a side-by-side comparison with the Air and found that the Pro’s smaller touchpad actually zoomed into the same position as it did using the Air.

Overall we were surprised to find out that the Pro’s smaller touchpad didn’t actually make the use of Multi-Touch too much more difficult, but after getting use to the Air’s larger touchpad it sure felt compromised. One thing to note though is that the matte screen on the version we got was less bright than the glossy screen on the MacBook Air. This might be the matte vs. glossy difference, or it might be that the MacBook Air’s screen is just plain brighter.

Keyboard
The updated keyboard now has the F-key functions, same as the MacBook Air, and we think the additional Dashboard and Expose buttons use the F-keys nicely. We might not actually use buttons for these features but we think it’s cool that the buttons are now clearly labeled.

Benchmark
The Penryn MacBook Pro has already been benched and compared to the previous generation. But if you are considering buying the new model, you probably have an older MBP that isn’t the previous gen, which is still fast enough to make it not worth updating from. With that in mind we tested the new Penryn MBP agaisnt a year old Merom MBP and found a slight increase in power overall.
In a video encoding test, the Penryn MBP exported a 2.5min HD trailer in11 min., where as the older Merom MBP took 13 min. As noted in the temperature section, the Penryn did use much more of its power to accomplish the encoding which produced more heat and drained more battery. If you would like to see the Xbench results and compare it to your own machine you can check them out here.

Temperature
While idling, the Penryn MBP’s CPU was running at 127 F—slightly cooler than the Merom MBP which had 133 F. But as for the actual experience, the new Penryn MBP felt much cooler on your lap than the older Merom.

While performing a video encode in iMovie with the new Penryn MBP CPU was operating at a temperature of 170 F; actually warmer than the older Merom MBP at 165 F. The surprising increase in operating temperature during a video encode is based on the fact that it’s a more powerful machine. Once the the encoding started, the Penryn was able to use more power to get the job done quicker, but in return it produced more heat.

Battery
So why do Apple’s battery ratings look the same or lower in comparison to the last generation’s Macbook Pro ratings? Simple: They made the tests harder. Again, according to numbers provided by Apple, for this and the last generation’s MacBook Pro’s battery life, you get about half an hour more due to the Penryn redesign, and half an hour more from the LED backlights. As with the AirBook ratings, your mileage will definitely vary. Downwards. But relative to the older books, these are more miserly.

Conclusion
Overall this MacBook Pro update is nothing amazing. The Multi-Touch touchpad and the Penryn processor are nice upgrades, but not necessarily something that a previous generation MacBook Pro user would feel an urgency to upgrade to. In the end it is clear that this update is more about efficiency than power, since the Penryn processor and LED backlighting allow for better battery life.

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Smart Target’s Kiddo Kidkeeper Proximity alarm helps bring peace of mind to the parents of adventurous children using a wearable wireless transmitter. When a child has wandered out of a pre-set range, the transmitter will trigger a visual and audible alarm on the parent’s receiver, prompting them to reel the kid back in.

The device offers two range settings of 13 and 26 feet, it is waterproof, and it can monitor up to four kids at once—which is great until a hyperactive child decides to remove the device and hurl it into the woods for no good reason. There is no pricing information on the official site, but we did come across a Romanian site selling it for the equivalent of $170, which should be a decent indicator. [Kiddo via Gizmag via OhGizmo and Store4Kids]

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The default Aliph Jawbone Bluetooth headsets already look quite stylish for a Bluetooth headset, but these Yves Behar-created limited edition sets beat his originals by quite a bit. The white, brown and black headsets are smooth, unlike the pock-marked original design, and represent trash talk, sweet talk and dirty talk, respectively. We can’t quite make out what the picture for sweet talk is supposed to be, but the dirty and trash talk are obvious. If we didn’t already own a Jawbone for our in-the-car conversations, we’d nab one of these ASAP. [Fuse Project via Josh Spear via Yanko]

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Sneakers hanging from telephone lines has long been an iconic image of urban life—which is why it inspired designers Peter Pracilio and Oscar Lopez to develop this Shoe Chandelier. Why they chose to make a light out of it is unclear, but it has a very compelling weirdness about it. The good news is that all signs point to this design becoming a real-world product (in both chandelier and tabletop versions) sometime in the near future. Additional pic after the break.

[DesignGo and The World’s Best Ever]

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While we think you should wait to buy a standalone Blu-ray player until the 2.0 (”full profile”) spec hits to get interactivity and picture-in-picture, there’s no reason to wait for a PC drive, except for the price to drop. Newegg has a 12X Blu-ray drive from Lite-on for a pretty cheapo $130. Just remember you need a vid card w/ HDCP support (copy protection BS) and a fairly beefy machine. [Newegg via Crave]

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On Tuesday we asked you about the one thing you wouldn’t want spilled on your keyboard, and we were surprised how much you had to tell us. We have a brand new Y7 Toughbook laying around the apartment, which Panasonic claims can handle six ounces of liquid poured right into the keyboard. We decided to put some of your answers to the test.

We didn’t have the time, resources, or lack of shame to put some of your better ideas to work [See: here, here, and here], but we managed to try all of the choices in the poll. We cheated a bit on the puke, but our mix was pretty gross. The results—lucky for us—were inconclusive. Of the five liquids we put in the Toughbook, none made it explode or even slow down. After flushing the whole keyboard out with water, it wasn’t even sticky the next day. So when it comes to the Y7 our answer to that Question of the Day is “none of the above.” But please folks, don’t try this at home. [Panasonic Toughbook]

[Thanks to Sam Mindel for the video help, and Communication Corporation for their song “Slimey“!!]

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This is a bit of a self-serving question of the day, but here’s something for readers to participate in. What’s the best hard drive deal you can find right now? We’re talking preferably internal and SATA, but if you’ve got a hot Swedish deal for an external USB drive, we’d love to hear about that too. Help out your fellow Giz readers and tell them where to get cheap, yet functional, storage.

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