By Evan Ackerman

Could someone please explain to me why, exactly, roboticists seem to think that it’s such a good idea to give their creations swords? Like, I get that it’s a way to demonstrate grasping and dexterous movements, but if you start with robots demonstrating swords, you move on to robots fighting each other with swords, and this will be our terrifying future. And swordplay seems to be a bad idea for HUBO here more than most, since it repeatedly hits itself in the head with a sword that is thankfully not made out of anything dangerous…

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By David Ponce

As Uncrate points out, being the “world’s first” often results in your having to charge an obscene amount for your wares. That said, we kind of like Imation’s wireless USB hard drive, if only because once again, any effort to ditch wires is welcome by us. Featuring transfer speeds of 15MBs/second and a range of 30 feet, the drive can store up to 1.5TB of whatever you think worthy of keeping around. If your main workstation is a mobile computer you can see how this setup can be useful as you won’t have to actually walk to your drive and tether your computer every time you want to back something up.

Sadly, ditching the wires on your external drive will cost you a pretty $450.

[ Press Release ] VIA [ Uncrate ]

By Evan Ackerman

Cloud Engines has unveiled a new version of their Pogoplug hard drive mobile access networker sharing thingy. Um, let me take another stab at that: Pogoplug (which we first saw last year at CES) is a little tiny computer that talks to USB hard drives and makes their content accessible from anywhere, and easily sharable with anyone. It doesn’t do anything that you couldn’t do with all kinds of major networking headaches, but that’s exactly why it’s so useful: you just plug it in, it works, and you’re done.

Version 2 of the Pogoplug features a redesign that incorporates a few more USB ports, making it easier to add multiple drives, although you can also use a USB hub to do the same thing. It comes on a weird pink sled, which personally I’m not a big fan of… I kinda liked the unapologetic functionality and smaller form factor of the original. There are also a host of new features on the software side, the most notable of which are automatic media syncing and global search, but you’ll also find new tools for creating and sharing media slide shows and other social features like a sharing address book.

The Pogoplug 2 is currently on pre-order for $129 (looks like the original version is still an even $100), which includes a lifetime of web sharing service.

[ Pogoplug ]

There’s no indication it will be made available in North America, but as November 16, Japanese manga artists have been able to buy a special version of Wacom’s Bamboo Pen & Touch tablet (reviewed here) called the ‘Comic Pen & Touch’ that includes comic book specific software such as “the pixia painting program, the CG illust 4.5 paint program demo from manga supply maker Deleter, the Comic Studio Mini manga layout program, and the Comicworks manga creation program demo for new artists.” And given a lot of the software appears to be demo or starter versions, I can’t imagine the Bamboo Comic will cost any more than the standard Bamboo Pen & Touch version.

[ Wacom Japan - Bamboo Comic Pen & Touch ] VIA [ Anime News Network ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Black Friday is only a week away, which means people will be lining up outside stores to get their hands on the cheapest gifts for the holiday season. HDTV’s, laptops and digital cameras will all be flying off the shelves only a few short minutes after the doors open. However, if a new TV is on your list, you might not need to fight the crowds for a good deal.

I usually don’t make it a habit of writing about a sale that some particular store is having, but this is too good to pass up. Best Buy has announced that they will be offering 32-inch 720p Dynex LCD TV’s for $299.99 and 40-inch 1080p Dynex LCD TV’s for $499.99. Those prices might sound like good doorbuster sales, but they aren’t. Rather, these are the new everyday prices and are effective right now.

Sure, Dynex isn’t the top brand out there, but the prices are almost too good to pass up. The best part is that you’re not going to have to stand outside in the freezing cold to get in on this. I’ll be interested to see how other manufacturers respond to this.

[ Best Buy ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

Google announced their new Chrome operating system yesterday, and as you’d expect from Google, it’s something innovative and entirely online, since as Google points out, we’re all online almost all the time anyway. At its heart, Chrome OS is just a browser, and all the applications that you’re used to having on your computer run as web applications (like Google Docs). A key difference from traditional web apps, though, is that Chrome will be able to harness some of the powers of the computer that it’s running on, thanks to the next generation of HTML, HTML 5. Like a browser, Chrome OS will start in mere seconds, and it’s designed specifically for netbooks. In a nutshell: Chrome OS is just like Google’s Chrome browser, except it’ll run web based applications that give it the functionality of a conventional operating system. While a developers build is available now, Chrome OS will officially launch sometime next year.

More, after the jump.

Now, I think that this is a great idea in a lot of ways. I <3 the cloud. It's where most of my work lives... I use Google Reader and Google Docs extensively, and it's liberating to be able to access all of my stuff instantly on any computer while never having to worry about backing up my data. The problem is that too much of what people do on computers that's not in the cloud already (i.e. internet, email) requires the local memory and processing resources of a physical computer. You know, things like audio, video, and gaming. It’s great that Google OS is integrating existing web services like Google Docs and Hulu and stuff into one streamlined interface, but that convenience is just not enough incentive for me to abandon things like local storage and local oomph for applications like Photoshop. What’s it going to take? Easy: way faster internet, available everywhere, since the cloud is no good if you can’t access it. I’m talking about internet that’s fast enough that Google can run Photoshop for me and I don’t need a computer with oomph, like what OnLive is trying to do with video games.

So, in summary, I’d say that Chrome OS is an excellent direction for Google to be taking, but for it to really take off, infrastructure needs to develop to the point where internet is everywhere and it can consistently deliver information at speeds that allow server-side storage and applications to replace local content and hardware. And this will happen, just not quite yet. Until then, Chrome OS is going to be a bit of a niche market, but it’s certainly appropriate for netbooks and other platforms that are geared mostly for online use anyway.

[ Chrome OS ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]

Now here’s a match made in heaven. The Cal Flame G5000 from Cal Spas combines a cocktail table with a firepit on the inside, making cleanup as easy as pushing all your trash, uneaten food and whatever else you don’t feel like cleaning up into the center where it will get incinerated. Genius!! Of course convenience like this comes at a price, $6,900 to be exact, but think to yourself, would you rather have almost $7,000 in your pocket or would you rather have to do the dishes every night? I think the answer is pretty clear.

[ Cal Flame G5000 ] VIA [ Born Rich ]

It’s kind of surprising how quickly SSD drives reached the 1TB mark, particularly given how recently SSDs became available to consumers. And that’s probably why OCZ Technology’s new 1TB Colossus SSD, which we first brought you back in August, will actually burn a $3,400 hole in your pocket according to X-bit Labs and Froogle. Expensive? Absolutely. But for your money you also get max read and write speeds of 260MB/s with a sustained write speed of 220MB/s, and if performance is of the utmost performance to you, it might just be worth the coin.

[ PR - OCZ Technology Launches Cutting-Edge High-Capacity Colossus 3.5” SSD Line with up to One Terabyte of Storage ] VIA [ X-bit Labs ]

By Chris Scott Barr

How many monitors do you have sitting on your desk? For most people the answer is one, sometimes two. This is understandable, considering most computers only support 1-2 displays. Video card manufacturers are starting to discover that some people need more than a couple monitors, and thus are crafting cards that cater to them. ATI recently launched their Radeon 5800 series, which allowed for 6 displays, but now Matrox has one-upped them with their new M9188 card.

If you have an octet of monitors and are tired of dealing with multiple video cards, then this new card from Matrox is exactly what you need. If you have dreams of stretching your favorite games across a wall of monitors, sadly this is not the card for you. The M9188 was designed with enterprise clients in mind. The Radeon 5800 cards are going to be a better bet, especially with the new Eyefinity technology. Of course the $2,000 price tag will surely be enough to drive off all but the most eager of buyers.

[ Matrox ] VIA [ BoingBoing ]

Until now, one of the cooler premiums available from Club Nintendo, at least in my opinion, was a DS game that featured recreations of all their classic Game & Watch titles. But Japanese Club Nintendo members who’ve reached the Platinum level will now be rewarded with an actual Game & Watch handheld game allowing them to enjoy all the excitement of Ball which was Nintendo’s very first G&W title released way back in 1980 according to Kotaku. And here’s to hoping this is the first in a series of Game & Watch re-releases, and not the last.

[ Club Nintendo - Game & Watch: Ball ] VIA [ Kotaku ]