Gadgets

When camel met robot

On dog tracks, the canine competitors have long chased mechanical rabbits. Now, in camel races, robot racers are taking their place in the saddle.

The changeover to mechanical jockeys isn't a purely scientific quest. Persian Gulf states like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have been stung by criticism about their use of boys, some as young as four and often kept in bleak conditions, to ride the camels.

Enter a Swiss robotics company called K-Team. It began studying the camel races early last year, and its racer-bot, called Kamel, has just completed a trial run on a dirt … Read more

Peace may be elusive in next-gen DVD war

Gadgeteers may have been ready to go all Neville Chamberlain this week and declare "peace for our time" over Sony's new willingness to negotiate on next-generation DVD formats.

Not so fast. Several publications noted in second-day stories that it will take a lot of work to find a middle ground between Sony's Blu-ray format and Toshiba's HD DVD.

The Wall Street Journal notes (subscription required) that time is likely to be a critical factor, as hardware makers and movie studios want to get HD DVD products on the market in time for the 2005 holiday … Read more

Digital divide, nanotech, and plastics, plastics, plastics

The People's Republic of Berkeley, Calif., will be the host city of the Bridging the Divide 2005: Technology, Innovation and Learning in Developing Economies conference April 21-23. A co-production of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and Microsoft nemesis the University of California, the conference will cover "technology essentials for economic development," "healthcare technology in the developing world," and "technology for communications and commerce," among other less technological subjects.

A week later, on April 30, Berkeley will welcome 1997 Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu, the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, … Read more

PalmOne preps latest handhelds

PalmOne is preparing its first handheld with a hard drive, Hitachi's 4GB Microdrive, as well as a refresh of one of its most popular devices, the Tungsten E, according to a source familiar with the company's plans.

The hard drive-based device will be the first in a new line to be called Life Drive. The $499 handheld is expected to be announced in mid-May and include Wi-Fi connectivity. The device will play back music but will not come with RealNetworks' player. Instead, it will use Pocket Tunes and will synch with Real's Rhapsody music service, according to … Read more

A Rube Goldberg flash of inspiration

Not everyone wants to build a better machine.

While efficiency is the watchword for most manufacturers, the competitors in the National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest seek out ways to make their contraptions clumsy and clanky. Rube Goldberg, of course, was a cartoonist who made an art form out of drawing whimsical, overelaborate machines such as a "simplified" pencil sharpener.

This year's contest, which took place at Purdue University over the weekend, tasked the mechanically inclined entrants to build machines that could replace the batteries in a flashlight, taking at least 20 steps to do so. That proved … Read more

Kyocera kills Contax cameras

Japanese electronics conglomerate Kyocera announced Tuesday that it was ditching its Contax line of cameras, one of the oldest and most respected brands in photography.

Zeiss Ikon, the German company founded by lensmaker Carl Zeiss, began making Contax 35mm cameras in the 1930s, quickly establishing the brand as the main competition against high-end camera maker Leica.

Zeiss formed a partnership with Japanese camera maker Yashica in the 1970s to cut production costs. Kyocera acquired Yashica in 1996 and continued producing camera under the Contax name, but the brand never established much headway in digital imaging.

"Kyocera has decided to … Read more

Bureaucrats turn to robots

Citing market demand for urban search and rescue (US&R) robots that can find victims at disaster sites, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have scheduled a public forum on rescue robot standards.

Dr. Penrose "Parney" Albright, the assistant secretary for homeland security for plans, programs, and budgets, will deliver the keynote address. The May 13 forum, to be held from 9-4 at the NIST campus in Gaithersburg, Md., will address testing, certification, and timelines for standards development. Ultimately those standards are intended to help the DHS advise … Read more

Techies make Time's influential list

In a sign that technology's influence may not be waning, a significant number of techies made this year's Time 100 list of the world's most influential people.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, eBay CEO Meg Whitman and newly installed Sony boss Howard Stringer were among those on the "builders and titans" part of the list. Also making it as collective entries were "the Google guys" and "the BlackBerry guys."

Sony white with envy over iPod?

Sony's PSP game player is itself considered a pretty hot gadget, but it appears the Japanese electronics firm is still suffering a severe case of iPod envy.

The sleek device has its own unique design and a nifty screen, but there is one touch that appears an obvious play toward Apple. The white headphones make little sense with the black device, other than to emulate Apple's hipness.

The whole point of the white headphones is to let the world know that you have an iPod. By going with Apple's look, Sony is giving the iPod the appearance … Read more

Nikon confirms new digital SLRs on the way

With rumors swirling that the company was readying new digital SLR models, Nikon decided to announce that such products are indeed on the way.

The company's British affiliate said on its Web site on Friday that it is "pleased to confirm the launch of two new digital SLR cameras to be launched towards the end of April 2005."

The company said both are aimed at entry-level SLR consumers. One model will be the successor to the Nikon D70, while the other is "specifically designed for consumers looking to upgrade from a digital compact to the next … Read more