Crave

That irritating mosquito copter we wrote about earlier had better not run out of batteries around this thing, or it'll be squashed like the RC bug that it is.

Hammacher Schlemmer has come out with this all-terrain "screw-propelled remote control car" that would gleefully crush anything in its path. Why "screw-propelled," you ask? As any schoolboy knows, that refers to the technology used by the "Snowbird 6 vehicle that crossed the Bering Strait during the Ice Challenger British exploration expedition of 2002," according to the product literature. When constructed wisely, a pair of … Read more

The way things are going in Japan, receptionists might eventually become entirely obsolete. The human ones, anyway.

About 124 miles north of Tokyo, Aizu Central Hospital is employing the country's first front-desk robots. A mechanical receptionist mans the desk and answers questions while two porter-bots handle luggage and escort patients to the proper areas at a speed of up to 1 mph, according to Gear Live.

While we've had our share of problems with the service industry, we're not sure this is the best idea. It's one thing to replace surly hotel clerks with bots or … Read more

It's that time of year, when every manufacturer in the world hopes to strike it rich with the "It" toy. And every year we're flooded with e-mails touting remote-controlled mini-somethings.

This season, it's the miniature helicopter, all of 6 inches long and about a third of an ounce. You can see one in action in this cheesy video, complete with a score reminiscent of Magnum P.I. (A competing version that looks identical can be seen here too.) The demos are a far cry from this amazing RC plane footage, but the mosquito-like copters are … Read more

I'd like to meet the person whose thought process went like so: "What should I do with these old diskettes I haven't used since the last century? I could just throw them away, but a better idea would be to affix them to my purse!"

While I applaud entrepreneurship always--I mean, this is America--not every arts-and-crafts project should be an exercise in capitalism. The folks at Fractalspin, apparently, beg to differ.

The site brags, "This is a totally unique black vinyl handbag with six real 3.5'' high-density 1.44MB diskettes on each side." … Read more

Her penguin fixation aside, we have to agree with Craving colleague Caroline McCarthy in her stand against the "color-changey phenomenon." In fact, the issue has become increasingly dire ever since.

Readers of this space will note that we have been warning of egg-based subversion for some time, usually under the guise of audio devices. Then this week, what began as a misguided psychedelic revival crossed into the sinister realm of the Ovo Underground with these color-morphing eggs from HouseOfRave.com. The "Oggz," as they are known, are supposedly harmless accent lights that "change color like … Read more

Interested in getting a sense of Zune, but don't want to shell out $249 for the device?

One option is downloading the Zune software. It's free from Microsoft's Zune Web site.

I gave it a whirl Tuesday afternoon. The download was slow--perhaps because of high day-one demand. It took 19 minutes from the time I noticed it was taking a while to download. Once it downloaded and installed, it required a restart.

Once up and running again, the Zune software walked me through creating a Zune nickname, linking it to a Windows Live account. The software offers … Read more

Cue the Deep Purple. Air guitar, that time-honored musical tradition generally best left for performances in garages and basements, has just gotten a big boost from technology.

Scientists at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation have created a T-shirt that adds a real-life sound track when wearers strum their imaginary instrument.

Textile motion sensors embedded in the shirt sleeves detect motion when one arm bends and the other fake-strums. They then send the information to a computer that interprets the data and plays it as a series of guitar riffs.

Fortunately, the contraption is wireless, so there are … Read more

Boy, November is most certainly a hot month for gadget and gizmo birthdays. In addition to welcoming the Nintendo Wii, the PS3, the Zune, the Archos 604-WiFi, and the Samsung BlackJack, among many others to this rough and tumble consumer world, I'd like to welcome De-botz (the name given to the Lego Mindstorms NXT-based robot I recently built).

The $250 robotics kit (for ages 10 and up) gives you the tools necessary to build and program a variety of brick-based robots. I decided to go with the humanoid, patiently assembling what seemed like a thousand pieces, and that … Read more

Sound the horn and unleash the hounds of bargain hell!

Earlier this month, Wal-Mart unveiled a $398 Compaq notebook. Staples is now doing them one better by offering a similar notebook for the same price but tossing in a free printer, according to Black Friday 2006. The regular price for the laptop is $730. Consumers have to put up $69.98 for the printer but you get a rebate for $70. Despite the bad reputation for rebates, I've received every one I sent in for in the last two years.

The notebook comes with a Turion processor, a 60GB … Read more