In Japan, Brad Pitt Is But a Sumo’s Butler [Cellphones]

Celebrities often cash in on commercials overseas, and Brad Pitt, a speechless spokesperson for cellphone company Softbank, is no exception.

In America, Brad Pitt’s cool enough to dump gorgeous stars like Jennifer Aniston and walk away to a small pile of babies. In Japan, he’s just sumo champion Musashimaru’s butler.

But we must admit, Pitt does a pretty good job as a butler. If the whole movie star thing doesn’t work out, we could use someone to hold our cellphone while cradling us tenderly. [via MobileCrunch]

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A Whole Kitchen Squeezed Into a Small Island [Concepts]

What can we say? It’s called the “Modern Space Saving Mini Kitchen” for a reason.

This otherwise standard, boring island’s countertop slides out to stretch its surface area while revealing (cold?) storage, a sink and electric burners. Comparing this design to the layout of more than one of my tiny apartments, there’s really no contest—this island is simpler, more space efficient and has a lot more eye appeal. I’d far rather work on an island than with my face pressed to cabinets, and there’s enough surface area here to match most small kitchens.

Then again, keep in mind that you need to leave the open space for everything to unfold and the island fails to accommodate a simple toaster, blender, or even oven. So maybe existing designs don’t have it all wrong even if they aren’t quite as chic or idealistic. [Ensci via freshome via dvice]

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USB Cigar Puts Your Laptop One Martini Away From Benderhood [Cigars]

We appreciate a good electronic cigar, but we never imagined that we could roll our own with USB storage.

Over at Instructables, there’s a step by step on boring a cigar, treating its surface, and then loading it with a fiery LED along with a USB stick. The result is a classy cigar USB dongle that can possibly lead to computer mouth/throat cancer. But don’t feel bad for your laptop, it’ll turn obsolete well before its needlessly induced nicotine addiction claims its life. So you’ll thoughtlessly drop your computer in a retirement home (a landfill disguised as a recycling center) from where it will spend the rest of its days doing its damnedest to poison you back. [Instructables via Geeky Gadgets]

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Dell Mini 10 Lands Full Geolocation, Navigation Options [Dell]

Starting next week, Dell Mini 10 netbooks will get a new geolocation option—and not just to foil bad guys. It’s a proper A-GPS+Wi-Fi system, complete with CoPilot navigation software and network location services from SkyHook.

Dell’s also throwing in the Loki browser plugin for FireFox and IE, which integrates your Mini 10 with their location aware web portal and a few other supported sites, like Flickr, Loopt and Brightkite. The Dell Wireless 700 location solution, as it has been christened, will be available from next week, but pricing options remain to be seen. [Dell]

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Do Gadgets Make You Happy? [Question Of The Day]

I like this NYTimes blog about happiness. Our relationship with our personal tech is complicated, but overall, do you think we’re better or worse off for being so addicted to our gadgetry?

Does your phone help you remember things you might have forgotten, and take photos of memorable events? Does it piss you off when the screen cracks or when it crashes? Do you hate telecommuting or getting work calls at 11pm? What if we lived like wombats and just ate food and shit and had sex? Does that sound so bad?

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Designed for search and rescue missions - which, let’s face it, are only ever one loose word away from “search and destroy” - the SCRATCHbot uses its whiskers to detect disaster survivors in inhospitable or dangerous areas. The Bristol Robotics Laboratory developed the rat-inspired people searcher over the past 6 years and now hopes to find interest for it in underground and underwater projects where vision may be impaired. Far less heroic uses are also being contemplated, such as textile inspection and implementation inside intelligent vacuum cleaners that would be able to adjust their cleaning to the particular surface they sense. Video of the new bot coming to life is after the break.

Continue reading Video: SCRATCHbot hunts like a rat for those trapped like one

Filed under: Robots

Video: SCRATCHbot hunts like a rat for those trapped like one originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Via [Engadget]

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In Japan, Brad Pitt Is But a Sumo’s Butler [Cellphones]

Celebrities often cash in on commercials overseas, and Brad Pitt, a speechless spokesperson for cellphone company Softbank, is no exception.

In America, Brad Pitt’s cool enough to dump gorgeous stars like Jennifer Aniston and walk away to a small pile of babies. In Japan, he’s just sumo champion Musashimaru’s butler.

But we must admit, Pitt does a pretty good job as a butler. If the whole movie star thing doesn’t work out, we could use someone to hold our cellphone while cradling us tenderly. [via MobileCrunch]

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Firefox 3.5 arrives

After some rather impressive RC builds, Firefox 3.5 is all packaged up and ready for public consumption. Mozilla is saying its new browser is more than two times faster than Firefox 3, but what has us more excited is the support for plugin-free “open codec” video and audio playback using Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora– it’s still in its infancy, but the subtle glimpse we’ve seen so far of a world without Flash video reducing our CPU to jelly is rather compelling.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Firefox 3.5 arrives originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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