Remember that DARPA initiative from a few years back to create cyborg insects? With funding from the agency, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have managed to control a rhinoceros beetle via radio signals, demonstrated in a flight test shown on video at this week’s IEEE MEMS 2009 conference. A module placed on the arthropod uses six electrodes affixed to the brain and muscles to commandeer its free will. The device weighs 1.3g — much less than the 3g payload these guys can handle, and with enough wiggle room to attach sensors for surveillance. Ultimately, scientists say they want to use the beetle’s own sensors — namely, its eyes — to capture intel and its own body energy to power the apparatus. Keep an eye on this one, we expect it to play a major role in the impending robots vs. humans war.
The Storm’s wunderkind network chip, which plays on CDMA and GSM networks, and fancier 3.2MP camera is why it costs $203 to build, about $30 more than the iPhone 3G. [BW]
Remember that DARPA initiative from a few years back to create cyborg insects? With funding from the agency, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have managed to control a rhinoceros beetle via radio signals, demonstrated in a flight test shown on video at this week’s IEEE MEMS 2009 conference. A module placed on the arthropod uses six electrodes affixed to the brain and muscles to commandeer its free will. The device weighs 1.3g — much less than the 3g payload these guys can handle, and with enough wiggle room to attach sensors for surveillance. Ultimately, scientists say they want to use the beetle’s own sensors — namely, its eyes — to capture intel and its own body energy to power the apparatus. Keep an eye on this one, we expect it to play a major role in the impending robots vs. humans war.
Well, our interest was certainly piqued by that OLPC XO-2 mockup that surfaced yesterday, and now the Guardian is saying that the hardware development will take place open source. This is certainly fitting with the company’s idealistic ethos, and it’ll be interesting to see what other companies bring to the table as the reportedly $75 dual-screen device gets closer to real reality. “The XO-1 was really designed as if we were Apple,” Nicholas Negroponte says in the interview. “The XO-2 will be designed as if we were Google - we’ll want people to copy it. We’ll make the constituent parts available. We’ll try and get it out there using the exact opposite approach that we did with the XO-1.” He let a few details slip too, saying that it will be dual touchscreen, with one of the displays featuring a touch-sensitive, force-feedback, haptic keyboard. When asked how he feels about the possibility that other companies might profit from all this hard work developing the laptop of tomorrow? “I wouldn’t complain.” Class act, that one. Bravo.
Toshiba sure seems to love a quiet, conservative business laptop, and for good reason — the last thing you need in the offices of middle America is a sudden dash of color causing a “wig out” as bad as anything you’d experience on a tab of Beige Sunshine. Certainly not bucking this trend, ol’ Tosh has just added four more 15.4-inch widescreen Satellite Pro S300 series notebooks to its roster. Both the S300-EZ1511 and S300-EZ1512 sport an Intel Pentium T3400 processor, 1GB memory, and a 120GB hard drive. Selling for $529, the former sports integrated GMA 4500M graphics and Vista Home Basic, while the later is going for $579 with GMA 4500MHD graphics and Vista Business. Moving on up the ladder, $649 will land you the S300-EZ1513, which sports an Intel Core 2 Duo T6400 processor, 160GB hard disk storage, 1GB memory and GMA 4500MHD graphics. Lastly but certainly not leastly, the S300-EZ1514 comes to the table with a Core 2 Duo T6570 processor, 2GB of memory, GMA 4500MHD graphics and a 160GB hard drive. This bad boy will set you back a cool $699.
Our favorite Lifehacker posts of the week show us how to keep our secrets, take naps and sell our gadgets for cash. We’ve got a few of our own favorite posts this week as well.
We’ve seen Dynamic Towers, the planned condo skyscraper in Dubai where every floor rotates independently. But according to The Economist, this Jetsons-esque way of living could become the next big thing in luxury housing.
Companies all over the world, not only from Dubai, but also Nevada and Brazil, are beginning to develop their own way of creating both houses and towers that have the ability to rotate (generally 360 degrees/hour). Custom contractors are building homes on a one-off basis out in California, while Brazilian developer is wrapping up their Suite Vollard, where the 11 flats will sell for $550,000. They also have deals to develop in Canada, Japan, Portugal, the US and the UAE.
Apparently, the big issue in the past with building houses like these came down to plumbing. Now contractors and plumbers are working around those limitations with rubber hoses, rounded half pipes, or just leaving all that stuff in a stationary center column.
The custom houses built in California only use between 370 watts and 1 kilowatt of power for every hour the house was rotating. These houses also have an interesting way of delivering power: there’s a metal brush on the that sweeps against a metal ring connected to a power supply inside the anchored base.
In any case, while the idea of rotating houses may not be entirely new, the prospect of them becoming somewhat commonplace is. [The Economist]
Japan’s cute USB miniaturizations never fail to amaze us, as this small USB construction zone serves to prove once again.
It’s about $20 from Japan, and comes with one Construction worker, one yellow sign or one white sign, combined with three traffic ones. We would set this up around our mouse and keyboard every night before we went to bed. [Rinkya via Crunchgear]
While most people on the front lines would hope to pack a 9mm or better, one Vietnam reporter carried this deadly-looking Bolex 8mm camera gun that did nothing but shoot film.
As Boing Boing Gadgets points out, even if the rifle components offered the shooter some level of stability amidst the whizzing bullets of a war zone, would you ever want to look like you were aiming a gun at someone if you weren’t really aiming a gun at someone?
This 1983 Apple Event where Steve Jobs invites three software CEOs, including Bill Gates, into a dating game is the type of thing we want to see at the next Apple event.
It’s the last time they were on stage together until recently, back in 2007. The clip doesn’t show the entire game—thankfully omitting the part where Lotus CEO claims that his favorite place to program Enterprise Software is “in the butt, Bob”—but it does show why a young Steve Jobs got way more ladies than a young Bill Gates.
The Storm’s wunderkind network chip, which plays on CDMA and GSM networks, and fancier 3.2MP camera is why it costs $203 to build, about $30 more than the 
Our favorite Lifehacker posts of the week show us how to keep our secrets, take naps and sell our gadgets for cash. We’ve got a few of our own favorite posts this week as well.
We’ve seen 
Japan’s cute USB miniaturizations never fail to amaze us, as this small USB construction zone serves to prove once again.
While most people on the front lines would hope to pack a 9mm or better, one Vietnam reporter carried this deadly-looking Bolex 8mm 
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