Remember Kokoro's Actroid DER2 a lifelike Fembot which made its debut in Japan two years back. Its human like expressions did not go unnoticed as she makes her small screen debut with a 15-second commercial spot for a UV insect repellent/sunscreen spray. The android is available on rent for around $3500 for 5 days which turns out much cheaper than hiring a celebrity. “The Woman Who Doesn’t Rust,” the 15-second commercial spot shows Actroid outdoors at a campground, where...

MIT graduate student Nicolas Pinto and David Cox and James DiCarlo recently assembled an impressive 16-GPU 'monster' composed of 8x9800gx2s donated by NVIDIA. The high-throughput method they promote can also use other ubiquitous technologies like IBM's Cell Broadband Engine processor (included in Sony's Playstation 3) or Amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing services. The team is also involved in PetaVision project on the Roadrunner, the world's fastest computer....

Japan has presented us with robotic cats, dogs and even humanoids and to the untrained eye they are as good as real. Bright minds from the University of Kitakyushu, Japan have developed 'Rarerurashii' a 7kg robotic fish which is the most realistic I have ever seen. It swims using a vibration wing propulsion system and uses the tail fin to swim through the water. When fully charged the fish can swim for about 1 hour 20 minutes. It is...

University of Tsukuba Japan has developed a dome shaped virtual reality walking system for patients patients suffering from a stroke etc. The VR treadmill can accommodate a 80kg person for a walking speed 1m/sec with strides of 80 cms. The dome has a viewing angle of 270 degrees horizontally and a 60 degrees vertically. The system is not fully developed and is very expensive for hospitals to install. (One more video after the jump)...

Who hasn't grown up playing the Mortal Kombat series or at least watched the movies? Well, I for one, have always been a die hard Mortal Kombat fan. It must be said, that recently the newer versions of the game have been sucking (at lack of a better word). But there is hope. Kotaku has announced that they have Mortal Kombat 9 lined up and hold your breaths because it is said to be far more violent and bloody...

Remember the last time when you were itchy, red and miserable? Well yes I am sure, you do. Who can forget that time of torment anyway. You may cover yourself up, apply tons of lotion and nestle yourself under that umbrealla but when you gotta burn, you gotta burn. And to help avoid such dreaded moments of sunburn, bring the Personal UV Monitor with Exposure Timer. The Personal UV Monitor with Exposure Timer “monitors the current UV index and...

If you are a sucker for great ambience and great environment, then Europe’s electronics manufacturer Philips has got something that will make you smile. Philips has created the Philips Imageo LED candle, that creates an atmosphere, you never thought a candle could single handedly create. The LEDs within are powered by a small battery, lasting way longer than a regular wax candle and offering a gamut of colours. It is a great thing to create a spa-like milieu in...

The Google index started with 26 million pages in 1998, shot to a billion pages in 2000 and now it is has hit a new milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique url's. Google claims not to index every one of the trillion pages as indexing can be expensive as many of them are similar to each other, or represent auto-generated content. The way Google indexes has evolved it now indexes blogs and other rapidly changing websites every 15...

The hype of the new iPhone3G is not enough to overshadow the plethora of accessories available for the iPod. A more recent addition to the iPod lineage is the iBLIK RadioStation which is stereo speaker system that does more than just play music but less than make your morning coffee. iBLIK RadioStation features DAB and DAB+ radio reception FM radio with RDS WiFi internet radio Digital music streaming from PC or Mac An iPod dock which both plays back...

The growing wealth and prosperity of the APAC region especially China and India was a cause of worry for Mr George Bush, because according to him the increased consumption of fuel, food and natural resources were driving global commodity prices up. But little did Mr Bush know that even after a decade of strong economic growth China consumes less fuel than California, hell except for the US, California alone uses more gasoline than any country in the world. Its...

Jason Yan the co-founder of Disqus (the commenting system we use) dropped his iPhone 12 floors down. He then took the painful elevator ride down expecting the worst, but as you can see from the pics the phone was intact and working. Call it extreme engineering or super lucky....

Armed with futuristic looks and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR compatibility is this wireless speaker. It supports A2DP/AVRCP/HFP/HSP profiles and seamlessly pairs with a compatible mobile phone or PMP. In addition to this it also has a stereo mini input for good old wired connectivity. The speaker delivers an output of 2W×2ch with a frequency zone of 20Hz - 20kHz. The speaker can be powered by an onboard Lithium battery or AC adapter or USB. The Japan only product will sell for...

Gocco is a self contained printing system produced by Japan's Riso Kagaku Corporation. Since its launch in 1977 it became immensely popular and around 30% of Japanese households have one. Using flash bulbs similar to those found in old cameras, an original image is thermally imprinted on a master screen. The simplicity and the low cost of making a screen made Gocco an instant success in and outside Japan. Unfortunately due to falling demand as personalized greeting cards can...

The next time you plan to going shopping, it might be better to go online first to see if you have a parking space instead of going around in circles at the venue. Looking for parking is biggest pain after the money we spend on fuel, in fact in many cases that's where fuel is spent for most people. However that's not to say for the citizens of San Francisco. Around 6,000 wireless sensors from the San Francisco company...

Mobile accessories are more in demand now then ever before, long gone are the days when you would see a music lover who would carry a two in one cassette player on his shoulders and walk by you in the subway blasting his music to passersby. Sony Ericsson has come out with the all plastic, dark grey MBS-400 for lovers of powerful sound. The MBS-400 comes with two speakers and allows you to experience high-quality stereo sound on the...