DeviceGuru writes "Heathkit, which produced and sold mobile robots aimed at hobbyists and students back in the 1980s, is about to reenter the educational robot business. Heathkit's new HE-RObot incorporates an onboard computer running Windows XP Professional on a Core 2 Duo Processor. It stands 21 inches tall, weighs 55 pounds, and has a built-in 80 GB hard drive, IR sensors, bright LED headlights, and lots of space for custom project circuitry." As robots go, it also looks very much like certain models of SGI workstation. Now I'll need to update my 1980 Christmas wishlist -- it's probably lost between pages of Popular Mechanics.

As if the entire office full of guitar-controlled lights wasn't enough to make any holiday complete, some enterprising geek has taken it upon himself to give you a rendition of Jingle Bells played on his graphics card heat sink. He probably wont debut at Carnegie Hall, but I'll give him points for effort.

mrcgran writes "The Chicago Tribune is running a feel-good story about the effects of OLPC on a remote village in Peru. 'Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months ago. At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits. At night, they're dozing off in front of them — if they've managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines. Peru made the single biggest order to date — more than 272,000 machines — in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed.'"

Roland Piquepaille writes "A new report from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) looks at the future of the military's unmanned systems over the next 25 years. This 188-page report covers air-, land- and sea-based unmanned technology from 2007 to 2032. The long document notes that drone aircraft and ground-based robots have already proved they could be useful in Iraq and Afghanistan by saving soldiers' lives. The report also integrates contributions of combat commanders pointing out possible improvements to today's systems, such as 'better sensor technology for use on unmanned systems to identify underwater mines and land-based improvised explosive devices.' This report also looks at how developments in artificial intelligence and robotics might lead to 'autonomous, 'thinking' unmanned systems that could, for example, be used in aerial platforms to suppress enemy air defenses.'"

tripmine writes "The Orlando Sentinel has a story about a geek who can't get enough Christmas light. 'This Christmas, tech-savvy people such as Hansen are increasingly building the biggest, most elaborate holiday lights in neighborhoods across Central Florida and throughout the country. They typically work in fields such as computer programming, Web development, engineering or audio and visual services and are armed with a technical knowledge that the average person lacks. They trade tips and stories on message boards and set up Web sites with step-by-step descriptions of how they installed their lights as well as pictures and videos of the finished product.'" Many cities have neighborhoods where the spectacle takes up blocks at a time, not just individual houses, too, as anyone who's strolled down Austin's 37th Street can attest. Links invited (in comments) to the best / worst light-spectacles you know of.

Engadget has noted a report in the New York Times that that the US has "passed a law barring stores from selling incandescent light bulbs after 2012. 'Course, the EU and Australia have already decided to ditch the inefficient devices in the not-too-distant future, but a new energy bill signed into law this week throws the US into the aforementioned group. Better grab a pack of the current bulbs while you still can — soon you'll be holding a sliver of history."

davidwr writes "The island nation of Palau is looking into creating a satellite-to-ground power transmission system. The system would use low-orbit satellites to transmit power to a receiver in bursts, unlike some other plans which rely on geostationary satellites. The initial 1-megawatt project is supposed to go online 'as early as' 2012 for a cost of $0.8 billion. Time will tell if this can be made cost-effective compared to traditional solar or other sources of power."

mrneutron2003 writes "This guy just doesn't know when to stop. Johnny Chung Lee graces us with yet another one of his inventive Wiimote projects. This time it involves using the Wiimote and a pair of inexpensive LED safety goggles (with the standard LED's replaced with InfraRed ones) to allow positional head tracking , achieving an effect similar to what is experienced with three dimensional displays and CAVE systems. The video dramatically illustrates the effect. Game developers take note. This simple little variation on infrared tracking could allow for some seriously immersive gameplay in the future." This guy deserves a medal.

akintayo writes "Digitimes reports that first-tier notebook manufacturers are increasing the standard installed memory from the current 1 GB to 4GB. They claim the move is an attempt to shore up the costs of DRAM chips, which are currently depressed because of a glut in market. The glut is supposedly due to increased manufacturing capacity and the slow adoption of Microsoft's Vista operating system. The proposed move is especially interesting, given that 32-bit Vista and XP cannot access 4 GB of memory. They have a practical 3.1 — 3.3 GB limit. With Vista SP1 it seems that Microsoft has decided to fix the problem by reporting the installed memory rather than the available memory."

An anonymous reader writes "Kontron, a giant among industrial single-board computer vendors, yesterday revealed a credit-card sized board apparently based on a single-chip x86 chipset that clocks to 1.5GHz and supports a gig of RAM. It targets portable devices — not x86's usual forte. Kontron isn't saying whether the board uses a Via or an Intel chip(set) — both vendors reportedly have single-chip chipsets in the works, part of their respective missions to drive 'x86 everywhere.'"

GWBasic writes "A Silicon Valley start-up called Nanosolar has shipped its first solar panels — priced at $1 a watt. That's the price at which solar energy gets cheaper than coal. While other companies have been focusing their efforts on increasing the efficiency of solar panels, Nanosolar took a different approach. It focused on manufacturing. 'The company [has developed] a process to print solar cells made out of CIGS, or copper indium gallium selenide, a combination of elements that many companies are pursuing as an alternative to silicon.'" The outfit also happens to be backed by Google, a fact that's getting some attention at tech media sites.

j.sanchez1 writes "Wired has the scoop on the official bidder list for the 700MHz auction slated for January 24, 2008. Here are PDFs of the lists of accepted applications (96 names) and incomplete applications (170). Along with AT&T and Verizon, Google and Paul Allen's Vulcan Spectrum are in on the bidding."

DeusExCalamus writes "Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs."

inkslinger77 writes "A team of ten MIT students powered a supercomputer for twenty minutes by pedaling bicycles. They duly claimed the world record for human-powered computing (HPC). They powered a SiCortex SC648 supercomputer with a Linux cluster of 648 CPUs and almost 1TB of main memory in a single cabinet. The system is low-powered and draws 1,200 watts without needing special power supplies or cooling..."

sjvn writes "The official word will be out any minute now, but in the meantime DesktopLinux has learned that Dell will be releasing Ubuntu 7.10 on a laptop and desktop with immediate availability. And, as an extra added bonus, they're tossing in legal DVD-playback capability. In a word: Neat."

brianmed writes to tell us that Stanford researchers have created a new use for silicon nanowires that promise to reinvent lithium-ion batteries. "The new version, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travelers. [...] The lithium is stored in a forest of tiny silicon nanowires, each with a diameter one-thousandth the thickness of a sheet of paper. The nanowires inflate four times their normal size as they soak up lithium. But, unlike other silicon shapes, they do not fracture."

Tmack writes "While hard-hacks with the Wiimote are somewhat old news, this particular implementation is quite interesting. Using the infrared camera on the Wiimote, pens with LEDs instead of ink, and an LCD projector, Johnny Chung Lee of Carnegie Mellon University has created software to use them as a (relatively) cheap multi-touch display. Any surface onto which you can project becomes an interactive multi-touch display, as demonstrated in the video at the link. He has the software available for download, along with some other neat projects. Lee has also documented another impressive Wiimote hack.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "HP and Staples are facing an anti-trust lawsuit over replacement printer cartridges. According to the lawsuit, HP paid Staples $100 million to refuse to stock competing ink cartridges. HP could make that back in short order when you consider that printer ink can cost $8,000 per gallon and certain printers deceive users to waste as much as 64% of their ink."

jcatcw writes "An IDG analysis of Dell's attempts to reinvent itself concludes that there are some positive results, but there are problems with the company's supply-chain management and support. One area analysts want to see more improvement: the company's Linux business. 'Jeremy Cole, owner of Proven Scaling, a small consulting firm with offices in the US and UK ... is satisfied with Dell equipment, but said the company needs to show more support for open-source applications and the Linux OS. "It's clear that Dell cares about Linux, in that all their server-class hardware is well-supported by the Linux kernel and they have many people dedicated to making sure that's the case. However, it's not good enough just to boot," Cole said.'"

prostoalex writes "Each December the Bureau of Labor Statistics prepares a report on telecommunications spending among US households. They analyze the previous year's data, so their most recent release says that in 2006 the average US household spent $542 on their landline, and $524 on their wireless bill. The way the curves are headed, 2007 is likely to become the first year when wireless spending will surpass landline spending. 'To be sure, when corporate cell-phone use is counted, overall U.S. spending surpassed land line spending several years ago, analysts said.'"