Gadgets Inspector | Hot Gadgets and Gizmos

Hoping to expand on the success that Wowwee have received with their Robospapien products (or cash in) two new products are set featuring the likenesses of Spiderman and Homer Simpson.

The two new Robosapiens, Spidersapien and Homersapien, are almost identical in design except for some small modifications and colouring to make them resemble their on screen counterparts.

The new Robosapiens will quote several familiar phrases such as “d’oh” for the Homersapien and the Spidersapien will pretend to shoot webs.

The Robosapiens will be released to tie in with the Simpsons movie and Spider man 3.

No price has been given yet for the robots but expect them to be quickly picked up once they hit the shelves.

Reference for posting: http://www.engadget.com

The Nintendo DS has been used for a lot of purposes. Some of these have met critical success whilst others linger in obscurity. Nintendo’s newest venture sees them working with Imperial Hotels Limited to bring a piece of software called the Cooking Navigator to Japanese homes.

The software, which is an upgraded version of a similar title released late last year, contains a list of recipes that include dishes from Western, Chinese and Japanese cultures. The software includes top secret recipes from the master chefs of the Imperial Hotel.

The software divides the recipes into stages and the DS speaks them out to you as you prepare the dishes. The software accepts voice commands to move onto the next stage allowing you to focus on the dish instead of having to walk back to the device.

The Cooking Navigator will be released this spring, however it only operates in the Japanese language.

Reference for this posting: http://www.newlaunches.com

The Lothian and Borders Safety Camera Partnership are considering installing CCTV cameras to monitor their speeding cameras in the Scottish Borders.

The speeding cameras which have been set alight, damaged and pulled over have been attacked seven times over the past three years.

Understandably the group is angry at the attacks with Colin McNeil, who leads the group, saying that “Every time it happens it is inconvenient, it is costly and it is a crime.”

The cameras, which would monitor cameras that have been attacked in the past have yet to be approved. The proposition will be evaluated on a cost basis before approved.

Reference for posting: http://news.bbc.co.uk

Sony got in some serious trouble when their rootkit started messing up people’s computers. The rootkit was “injected” into Sony’s CD’s and any attempt to remove it would cause in an even worse result. Today, and after more than a year, a settlement has been announced:

WASHINGTON - U.S. regulators said Tuesday that Sony BMG Music Entertainment agreed to reimburse consumers up to $150 for damage to their computers from CDs with hidden anti-piracy software.

More at Yahoo! News via [Gadgetell]

PC World has said that it will no longer sell floppy discs when the format runs out of stock due to demand plummeting.

The first 3.5in disk was developed by Sony and was sold in 1981. Since then the format became an icon as the forefather of modern storage formats. But now they are no longer needed. The format has been marginalized neither suitable for small storage requirements nor large enough to handle mp3 and video files.

Most everyday storage requirements can now be handled by pen drives, which can hold more than a thousand times what floppies were able to manage and can be connected to your keyring.

In 2006 700 million units of the format were sold in world while in 1988 the figure was over 2 billion and more and more computers are now not being fitted with the floppy disc drive making the format redundant.

Reference for posting: http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Gamers can get very nostalgic about their old games consoles and that is exactly what one ebay seller is hoping to cash in on. The seller “sonyabscott” is selling a whopping 670 NES games (that’s Nintendo Entertainment System by the way) on the online auction site.

This seller is selling every licensed game for the 1985 console which includes classics such as Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros as well as less well known titles.

In the lot, “sonyabscott” is also including a NES plus a rather large amount of accessories including controllers, zapper gun, power glove, joystick and game genie and the code book.

Because it is such a large collection which obviously took a very long time to collect the price of the auction is very, very high. At time of writing it was at the very nauseating price of $30,600.

Of course many people would suggest that you could get every one of these games from the internet and play them on your pc (I doubt its even that big a download) but that’s not the point.

The auction will run for six days.

Reference for posting: http://arstechnica.com

And: ebay.com

The online auction site, Ebay, plans to fully enforce its policy on digitally delivered goods “the seller must be the owner of the underlying intellectual property, or authorized to distribute it by the intellectual property owner.” In the past the policy has not fully been enforced with lapses occurring for quite some time.

What this policy means is that gamers can no longer sell items that they have earned from online games on the online auction site. No longer will gamers be able to sell their gold, their swords (with +1000 super-duper-fire-power) or their strong high leveled accounts.

Speaking with the web site, Slashdot, Ebay said that it will be delisting all auctions for virtual property and has been it has been doing so for the last couple of months.

What effect this will have on the market remains to be seen. A high percentage of operations are run in third world sweatshops where workers “mine” gold for very poor pay. Will these businesses have to close or will they find an alternative marketplace?

Reference for posting: http://games.slashdot.org

Second Life, the extremely popular online game, has come a long way. The online game where “residents” can communicate with each other and buy and sell property has attracted a great deal of attention from the media recently and now appears to have interested the Swedish government to the extent where it hopes to build an online embassy.

Though this embassy will not be able to issue visas or passports, it will provide instructions to visitors on doing so in the real world (thought I’d imagine anyone looking for that information would try the Swedish government website and not an online game).

The Swedish Embassy of Second Life may also be an attempt by the government to promote its country to a world wide audience and perhaps gain more visitors.

There have been other embassies in the game though these have not been official, rather they have been created by users with no ties to a real world counterpart.

Reference for posting: http://www.game-addicts.com

The (in)famous ‘Get A Mac’ advertising campaign is finally (?) hitting the United Kingdom, Steve Jobs shows how much of a professional he is and has hired two actors (Mitchell and Webb) to perform a special British version of the ad.

After stumbling with sales in the US, Sony is probably shooting themselves in the other foot announcing a very late debut for their 3rd generation console in Europe, Australia & The Middle East.

Not only that, according to insiders at Sony only one edition will be offered intially, that would be the 60 gigabyte model and will cost at 599 euros.

Sony said it shipped 2 million PS3 machines worldwide by mid-January, falling about two weeks behind its initial shipment targets in Japan. The machine’s launch in Europe was delayed until this year.

Read More