John Sisler

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Eye-Fi’s technology has digital photographers raving, since they can now transfer and publish

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AT&T subscribers are about to get a new sweet treat.

This summer, AT&T will be adding the newest BlackBerry Curve 8900 to its lineup.

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The SOLAQUA by designer Jason Lam is a concept for a passive way to purify water using both heat and UV rays (so, in other words, leaving water out in the sun). Each petal that extends from the main unit — which folds up as to be easy to carry — contains several 10 liter, clear tubes of water that’ll have the water inside entirely and thoroughly bombarded by the sun. Filling the tubes up is easy, as SOLAQUA automatically funnels it down into them, rather than making someone fill the bottles one by one.

Boiling water is one of the easiest methods of disinfecting the liquid, though a filter needs to be used to get out any solid pollutants — which is why the SOLAQUA includes a built-in filter of sari cloth — but the water doesn’t even have to be all that hot if it’s going to sit out for a while. Boiling just speeds things up. UV rays, as well, are popular for purifying, and the petals of the SOLAQUA would direct them straight through the bottles.

Check out the pictures below for more of the SOLAQUA.

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Back in 1997, when Bill and Melinda Gates built their house in Medina, Washington, the world waited with bated breath to see what the software king had envisaged. Xanadu 2.0, as the house, on the shores of Lake Washington, is nicknamed, was full of hi-tech surprises — but what would you expect in a residence (land included) valued at almost $150 million and owned by one of the world’s richest men?

Twelve years on, here is the company Gates founded, Microsoft, showing off its vision of domestic technology for the year 2019. As well as a mirror that organizes your closet, suggesting what you wear — mis-match! — there’s all kinds of delicious kitchen gadgets, plus (and this is my favourite bit) interactive wallpaper for the kids’ rooms.

Most eye-opening moment, however, is the table that can turn into a screen for your smartphone, gobbling up the info on a common-or-garden paper business card and transferring it to your cell. It rather knocks the Microsoft Surface into a cocked hat. Commenters, I have to ask, which aspect of Microsoft’s house of the future would you guys like chez vous — or do you reckon they missed a trick?

Via Engadget

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The old tourist technique of asking for directions to make friends will soon include robots thanks to a research group at the Institute of Automatic Control Engineering in Germany. The group has created a robot called the Autonomous City Explorer (or ACE Robot), which can use its cognitive abilities to ask humans for directions in real, random situations.

In addition to its software components, the ACE Robot employs human detection with stereo vision, gesture recognition using model-based human body pose estimation and three-dimensional obstacle detection to find its way. It not hard to imagine that once this kind of robot becomes more sophisticated and commercialized, human tour guides may become an endangered species.

Via IEEE

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The next visitors to the moon may not be humans. No, instead they may be these robotic spiders, designed to quickly swarm across the lunar surface, collecting data through sensors and cameras.

The concept is an entry in the Google X Prize contest from Team Italia, who’s looking to win $20 million by landing these robots on the moon and sending high-def images back to Earth by 2012.

Space via Gizmodo

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You can try using positive reinforcement to get your kids to study. But what if that doesn’t work? Well then, it’s time to try some more medieval methods.

The study ball is a literal ball and chain that comes equipped with a timer. Simply set how long you want your little miscreant to study and attach the ball to their ankle. When the time is up, it’ll unlock, allowing them to leave their rooms. Until then, however, it’s study time. Or trying to run out of a burning house with a ball and chain time, but let’s just hope that doesn’t happen.

Curiosite via Gizmodo

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Just this morning we told you how Boston Dynamics is getting robots to hop like rabbits, and now the company, working with the University of Pennsylvania’s “Kod*lab,” has them climbing up poles. The 28-inch-long RiSE V3 has four claw-tipped legs that allow it to ascend vertical surfaces at a rate of 8 inches per second. That’s certainly a lot faster than I could get myself up a rope back in gym class, but then again I wasn’t specifically designed for rescue mission, recon and surveillance like this ‘bot.

Want to see it in action? Click on through for a video. It’s worth noting that the rope tied to RiSE in the video is just to make sure this expensive piece of equipment doesn’t crack like Humpty Dumpty – it’s doing all the climbing.

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Sure, you can manage working off of a boring, cheap desk from Ikea, or you can make a statement with something more impressive. This Perfekt Desk, an entry in the Emotionalize Your Light competition, is pretty awesome. Loaded up with LED lights, it looks like something out of a spaceship rather than something you’ll sit at while playing World of Warcraft.

It’s not for sale at the moment, but hey, maybe someday.

LED Emotionalize via Core77

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Look at LG, trying to make it all easy for iPod owners to get into home theater. This LG HB954TBW Blu-ray 5.1 Home Theater Combo features a unique slide-out iPod dock. It accommodates all iPods, but whether it’s iPhone-friendly or plays back its video is still up in the air.

What if the new iPhone 3.0 could handle HD video, and this dock could play it back in non-up-rezzed, native 720p on your HDTV with full 5.1 sound? Now that would really be something special. But we’re just dreaming now. Either way, we’re digging that unusual tray, alleviating the need for a clunky outboard dock.

Introduced at CES 2009, the system’s now selling in Korea and includes 5.1 speakers, amplification and a Blu-ray player inside. Not bad for around a $grand. Click through for another shot of the complete set, subwoofer and all: