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Latest Gear Live Videos
Pacmba Chomps Down
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Smart Home, Mods / Hacks, Video Games, Videos, Wireless / WiFi,
What do you get when you cross a Roomba with Pac-man? In Ron Tajima’s case, you get a Pacmba (don’t ask us how to pronounce it.) He took his droid vacuum, tacked on a board with 448 LEDs, and added a Bluetooth remote with circuit driver. Of course, he had to have something for the little guy to chomp on. This is Ron’s second foray into hacking his Roomba. We cannot wait to see what he will come up with next.
Read More 
| BotJunkie
Gallery: Pacmba Chomps Down
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Drivemocion Rear Window LED Sign
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Misc. Tech, Transportation, Videos,
Next time someone cuts you off on the highway, show them how you really feel with Drivemocion. The LED sign uses emoticons and animated messages to let others know what you are thinking. Stick it on your rear window with a suction cup and control it by remote up front. Powered by 4 AA batteries, the company claims they will last up to 4 months, unless you have a lot of road rage. There are 6 different types available for £24.99 to 29.99 (~$60.00, ) including one that uses words and another that uses a certain digit as the ultimate display of anger.
Read More | Drivemocion
Gallery: Drivemocion Rear Window LED Sign
Robotic Tynamizer Mows Lawn
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Design, Misc. Tech, Science, Videos,
You’ve got your elite with their fancy Swedish Automowers that they adore so much they give them names, and then there are others who take a more ordinary approach by having a robot slave do the work for them, despite the rudeness of the family dog. The video of the Tynamizer is fairly amusing to watch but we were wondering a couple of things. Doesn’t the grass already look fairly short? And what happens when the extension cord runs out?
Read More | Robots-Dreams
Gallery: Robotic Tynamizer Mows Lawn
What better way to spend an evening than to see Honda’s ASIMO live and in person, conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The bot lead the musicians for the tune “The Impossible Dream,” then met Yo-Yo Ma who played with the DSO and received an award as part of the Power of Dreams Music Education Fund that supports music for kids. We wanted to share ASIMO’s performance with you, and yes, we know its time to get a tripod. Our favorite part had to be when he greeted the audience and they answered back. We were hoping to meet him afterwards, but this is one busy bot.
(Thanks, Honda and Alicia)
Read More | DSO
Gallery: ASIMO Leads the DSO
RoboCup Rescuers Work through Mazes
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Misc. Tech, Science, Videos,
Bots recently competed in Germany as part of the RoboCup to be held in July in China. A sub-competition, RoboCup Rescue, allows robots to practice on dolls in such critical situations as chemical spills and other disasters. Robotic teams must go through a maze and scores are based on how well they can navigate and generate a 3D map of the course. A Manipulation Challenge gives extra points for delivery of radios or water bottles to victims. Currently, it takes about 5 to 10 minutes to scan the area and the same amount of time to create the image, but that should decrease as the bots become more advanced.
Read More | New Scientist Tech
Gallery: RoboCup Rescuers Work through Mazes
We have seen soccer-playing robots, but did you know there is also an annual Robot American Football game? Produced by the same group that organized Robot Sumo in Japan, the mini-bots do the playing, thereby depriving its viewers of outright violence and blood-letting that you get most Monday nights. We only have one question after viewing the video. What do you suppose the robotic players do when one of the human refs blows his/her whistle?
Read More | Robots-Dreams
Gallery: Robot American Football
If you are tired of Googling and coming up with stuff that is meta word infested or meant only to make a buck, consider Mahalo beta. Originally launched last year, it’s creator, Jason Calacanis, believes that the “curated web” is the answer. The human-powered search engine claims that it creates organized, spam free searches. Sign up with them, enter your searches and get paid for your efforts (according to relevance and difficulty.) And if you are really into the Mahalo phenomenon, check out their new VlogIdol search for Mahalo Daily which began yesterday or join their Mahalo Social Network.
Read More | Mahalo
Gallery: Mahalo Offers Human-Powered Search
Review: USB Exercising Mouse
Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Misc. Tech, Product Reviews, Toys, Videos, USB,
This little guy has been out for a while now, but when our English buds from Crazy About Gadgets sent us a USB Exercising Mouse, we just had to put him through his paces (pun intended.) While waiting for the software to upload, we noticed that Microsoft warned us that it had not undergone safety testing by them. (Thanks for looking out for us, but we’ll take the risk.) Full review and video after the jump.
(Thanks, Phillip)
Click to continue reading Review: USB Exercising Mouse
Read More | Crazy About Gadgets
Gallery: Review: USB Exercising Mouse
What better way to remind your child that she/he is on their way to obesity than to present them with a pair of FATS (Fitness Achievement Technology System) shoes. Created by students from the Utrecht School of Arts in the Netherlands, the more the kids work out, the more the color appears. This is accomplished by a motion sensor integrated into the shoe’s heel that, along with glass fiber yarn woven on the outside, reflects the light from LEDs. While we think that most kidlets we know would prefer being rewarded with a twinkie or more video game time for exercising, we suspect that this prototype may work on the same little ones that wear those blinking light shoes for safety reasons.
Read More | FATS Shoe Project
Gallery: FATS Shoes for Fat Kids
ExpressionEngine 2.0 preview video
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Features, Internet, Software, Videos,
UPDATE: Here are the high-resolution versions of the ExpressionEngine 2.0 sneak preview - we recommend disregarding the above video.
At Gear Live, we use ExpressionEngine to manage our vast array of sites, authors, and blog posts. Things like MovableType, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal just don’t cut it for us.
During SXSW, we got the opportunity to get an early looks at ExpressionEngine 2.0. If you have a blog, or want to blog in the future, you need to watch this video to see what is coming soon from the crew over at EllisLab. We have a higher quality video coming soon for you high resolution types.
