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Looks like robotic appliances are hell bent on making you the much-hated couch potato, what with innumerable new ones coming out daily to rid you of every bit of movement your lethargic self is capable of.

Now to add to our woes (well, it might actually be a boon), iRobot makes an attempt to swipe you off your fee. If you’re wondering if I’m off my senses, what I’m talking about is the new Scooba scrubber (quite a cute one, I must say), which takes care of your most “disliked” task (mopping the floors).

Sure it’s tiny (3.5 inches tall and about 14.5 inches across) and could need some supervision while its get hung at troublesome areas, but the good news is, it doesn’t accumulate dirty water on the floor. It holds up only clean water and stores up the dirty deposits in a separate tank.

Take my word for it! It sure is helpful, but if you want to dance at the wedding of your grandchildren, don’t let this gadget rob you off some exercise (especially if that’s the only one you get). Moreover, it’s not as maintenance-free as you think it might be.

The one question that totally beats me is how would you use this disc shaped wonder at the corners? Would’nt it have been better if it were squarish? OK let cynical me be. You go check it out for yourself. (NiRa)

If you are a fan of online music, you might be deafened by the silence today. Internet radio stations are staging a silent protest today against a substantial royalty increase going into effect next month. They claim some stations will go silent for good. Web music services like Pandora, Live365 and Real Networks’ Rhapsody and even broadcast radio stations including WAMU in Washington and KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., join in the protest against the Net rate hike coming July 15. The Day of Silence is being organized by SaveNetRadio, a coalition of webcasters, listeners and artists lobbying for Congress to reject the royalty spike. Meanwhile, the Digital Media Association and some webcasters have asked a federal appeals court to issue an emergency stay on the royalties.

Think mean, and you might just be able to throw a glass of chilled water down the head of that “Look at me, I’m a hottie” at office, without having to lift a finger.
No, I’m not off my mind! Hitachi’s scandalous brain machine interface equips you to literally do stuff at the speed of thought! Now that’s not exactly the best news for the mommies of all those couch potatoes, but it might well be the answer for all those who would want their mind to help them organize stuff, while their body retires to other more pleasurable things (better left unsaid). This one might just be the best technology developed in the 21st century! Sure it would be some time before you and I could afford it, (more…)

According to a study by Strategy Analytics Ltd. the wordwide number of mobile camera phones in use will top one billion this year, reflecting their tremendous growth rate since the first Mobile camera phones hit the market in early 200o. As the British researchers found out, mobile camera phone sales shot up from about three million camera phones in 2001 to 500 million in 2006 - a pretty impressive growth rate within five years. However, the reaserch group evaluating the data strongly believes the growth will start to level off now. (SK)

The Sony PSP has just got a new accessory, the go!Cam camera add-on that converts the PSP into a portable 1.3 megapixel fun camera. Not only does it take photos that you can upload directly to the internet from your Sony PSP, but the go!Cam also has a built in microphone to give the option to create video clips and movies with audio. You also have the ability to change the direction of the camera lens vertically by 180 degrees.The software you get called Go!Edit makes your PSP a complete portable editing suite, so you can edit movies and photos on the move with sounds and graphical effects. Priced at about $70, the go!Cam might not be the best digital camera but it opens up a whole new world to the PSP. (ii)

Found at: Product Reviews Net

Technology somehow finds its way into tradition. Or is it the other way round? Traditional book readers have been lamenting about the loss of conventional book reading. “It is a pleasure to hold a book in one’s hands”, they say. Yet, increasingly, people favor electronic media of any type over dead trees. That´s especially true for young people. Is the demise of the book inevitable? Well, Manolis Kelaidis of the Royal College of Arts, a student of Industrial Design Engineering, has tried not to replace paper books with an ebook but to integrate the printed with the digital media. He has invented a “blueBook” in the process (shown this week down in the Valley in San Jose). This book is a digital version of the ordinary book with some add-in features. Its pages are printed with conductive ink. This ink forms hyperlinks on the page which are sensitized by the touch of a finger.

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Australian tech media website TweakTown just reviewd the new Logitech Z-5450 Wireless Speaker system. With pretty surprising results: “Movie decoding is handled comfortably here with support for Dolby Digital, Dolby Prologic 2, DTS and DTS 96/24 hardware decoding – definitely no lack of support here. The Z-5450’s handled movie soundtracks very comfortably with no issues of dialogue clarity from the centre channel of any digital noise from the amplifier. Our previous concern about the subwoofer’s ability to play low frequency bass notes have arisen again here with demanding film soundtracks at times asking a little more than the unit can deliver resulting in the usual garbled fluffy port distortion, which are characteristic of this design in many different shapes and forms. For more information, visit TweakTown.

Oh yes, the iPhone has not even shipped yet and we are so sick of the omnipresent iPhone coverage! iPhone here, iPhone there, iPhone is just everywhere in the last couple of weeks. Too much is too much. Rumors about battery life, legal issues with the original iPhone inventor at Cisco-Divison Linksys, the lack of iPhone compatibility outside the U.S. (especially Europe), weird and very unfriendly comments from even more unfriendly (especially British) Apple PR folks the day before last week’s Apple Developer’s conference here in San Francisco. Good job, Steve (Jobs)! You (certainly the most arrogant marketing genius on the planet) did it again. The iHype is peaking right before your silly black wonderphone will hit the street next week. We at Gizmonistas! are tired of this and decided to boycott the iphone buzz (Cnet just called this effect “Ignoring the iElephant“): No more iPhone posts for a week on Gizmonistas!

Are u tired as well? Tell us what you think. E-mail us.

Matching its camera releases, HP on Thursday expanded its Photosmart printers with two photo-oriented models and a full all-in-one unit. The D7260 and D7460 draw on six inks to print a 4-inch by 6-inch photo at full quality as quickly as 10 seconds, HP estimates. Standard images can also print at a rate of 34 pages per minute in black and white and only slightly slower at 33 pages per minute in color. Each also has a 3.5-inch touchscreen for basic PC-free image editing and a multi-format card reader for loading photos directly from a camera. The D7260 ships in August for $149; the premium D7460 adds Ethernet and wireless networking and launches at the same time for $179. Continue at Electronista.com …

Finally, there is a pretty smart and creative way to get your kids actively involved in cleaning the house. With the rideable Vacuum Cleaner by YankoDesign cleaning can be so much fun. The stylish housekeeping gizmo was developed by american designer Kristina Andersson and is a overall a pretty cute idea: Quality time with your little one while cleaning …