CrunchGear was reporting earlier today that a big "groundbreaking" Nikon event was coming our way this week, and now we might know what, exactly, all the fuss is about: It's a camera/projector hybrid called the VP650.
The big rumor/tip comes from someone at the French photo magazine Chausseur D'Image, which has some established Nikon rumor cred thanks to a D300 specs scoop that they ran in their July issue (before anyone else, notes Crunch). Their next issue apparently features the VP650, and this is what the source is saying Nikon will "break ground" with this week.
The combo unit would officially drop in August, to be shipped to consumers by September. The camera would sport an LED projector, would have a compact size/form factor, and is capable of producing 8x12in. pictures in a dark environment. So, a camera with a projector built in. Is that "groundbreaking" to you? It's certainly interesting, to say the least. [Nikon Rumors via CrunchGear]
This is one small step forward in the Apple Tablet rumor. An anonymous Barron's analyst says he's seen the Apple Tablet and that the thing will be announced in September for a November launch.
He also says that what he saw was "close enough now to a final design," and may retail for $700 to $800. Every other manufacturer is waiting now to see what this is, since it's all over the supply chain in Asia." "[Barrons via 9to5Mac]
The premise behind Lola Mensa's Cargador De Celular is pretty simple: By the time you get back from a morning run, you'll have enough power stored up to keep your cellphone charged for the rest of the day.
The charger uses the same technology found inside self-winding wristwatches. With every footfall, you give a little more juice to the internal battery, which in turn will power a phone, or MP3 player, or whatever. The flexible design means no major bunions, should you actually stick this concept into your running shoe someday. [Coroflot via DVICE]
As you can see form the picture, this is no ordinary paddle boat. In fact, when the exhilarating water fun is over, there's no need to disembark. Just hit a switch and drive home.
The key component are the three wheels, which morph from the paddle form you see in the image to a traditional wheel for land-based activities. In the case of snow or other such hard-to-traverse terrain, the wheels can open slightly, mimicking snow tires or chains.
Designers Janne Leppänen, Tuulia Miettinen, Roope Kolu, Tiemen Stelwagen, and Jaap Van Der Voort also created the Hybrid to be eco-friendly: Driving the wheels are battery-powered electric motors and the souls of lesser, weaker traditional paddle boats, which this vehicle must consume to stay alive. [Tuvie via Ecofriend vai DVICE]
He stopped short of calling texting and social networksthe devil's playground, but nevertheless Archbishop Vincent Nichols warned us all in an interview today that these "dehumanizing" practices can often lead to suicide.
That's right. When little Timmy gets Susie to "sext" him nudie pics in class, not only are both parties degrading the moral fabric of our civilized society, they're also contributing to the growing number of transient relationships Nichols feels is slowly killing us all.
"I think there's a worry that an excessive use, or an almost exclusive use of text and emails means that as a society we're losing some of the ability to build interpersonal communication that's necessary for living together and building a community," he said in a Sunday interview that was probably not conducted over email or IM.
While I agree that anything can be abused if done in excess, the suicide note seems a bit alarmist and anti-technology, even for the Catholic church. Then again, I've (luckily) never had the misfortune to know someone who was driven to suicide because I un-friended them on Facebook.
That said, we've seen some freaky cases where crazy shit's happened on these networks... maybe the ol' Archbishop has a point. What do you think? [Reuters]
Word from Kotaku is the Xbox Live NXE preview beta thing going on now features smaller game install sizes.
Not one of the more exciting features, sure, but if you're the type of gamer who enjoys seeing their games boot up a few second fast than usual it's gravy. [Kotaku]
Forget running humanoids, autonomous drones and the like. As this video demonstrates, our future robot masters will in fact disarm us with their lightning reflexes and squishy rubber balls. [YouTube via Geekologie]
That heavy breathing you hear on the phone sometimes? It's IBM.
Specifically, it's the IBM Social Network Analysis for Telecom Business Intelligence data mining tool, or SNAzzy for short, and it knows all about who called who and for how long on the network of "one of the largest mobile operators in the world."
The purpose of this snazzy snooping, as explained by Big Blue researchers, is to spot "churners" on a cell network who might influence their circle of friends with "profit-threatening behavior." The reasoning goes that when one person ditches a cell network for greener pastures, they can inspire their friends to do the same. Enter SNAzzy, which can apparently recognize this behavior, alert the carrier, and allow them to swoop in with retention materials and keep their remaining customers happy. It does this by mapping out call behavior, time, and a bunch of other heavy metrics that seem to be copy/pasted right out of the NSA.
Better still (I say sarcastically), IBM is already eying larger deployments beyond telecoms into areas like social networks. Personally, I can't wait to see what my Facebook picture stalking looks like when presented to me in graph form. [IBM va Slashdot]
Here's a quick peek at the purported final build of Windows Mobile 6.5 (we call it "Windows Phone," he says) running on an HTC Touch Diamond 2.
Aside from the subtle name/branding change, there's some meat here in the form of the UI (Zune-ish), Marketplace for Windows 6.5Phone, the My Phone sync service (free) and Microsoft Tag. Browsing was a bit slow, and if you're not a fan of WinMo before you view the video, that will probably still be the case when it's done. Updated: Removed auto-playing video - J.L. [Intruders TV via BGR]
Shown here is Toyota's running robot. At 7 km/h it's not going to win any wind sprints in the Olympics, but nevertheless this thing is airborne for 100ms between strides as it skirts across the floor (i.e. genuine running).
For comparison's sake, Honda's Asimo robot can only manage a meager 6 km/h. We assume Toyota was able to squeeze the extra kilometer per hour out of their robot with a strict training regimen and what can only be described as a mild dose of physical abuse—their robot can re-balance itself when pushed lightly, as you can see in the video.
After you drain that cool, refreshing soda and prepare to go out on that 50-mile bike ride you had planned today, don't forget to retain the bottle and protect that iPhone. [Flickr - Thanks, Chris]
He stopped short of calling texting and 
That heavy breathing you hear on the phone sometimes? It's IBM.
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