Toys

Sony's prototype, wind-up Odo digital camera is among the gadgets attracting attention at Tokyo's largest green products fair this week. We're spying from afar at Eco-Products 2007, which includes more than 500 exhibitors.

The Odo looks like a giant, plastic toy sprout when plugged into a planter-shaped base to transfer images to a computer. The camera takes 15 seconds to recharge, either by rolling the charger wheel with fingers or running it over surface. Sony's Spin N Snap takes still photos while the Crank N Capture shoots video.

Other future-forward products attracting attention at the fair … Read more

Is it possible to love an animatronic dinosaur?

I don't know yet, but I'm likely to find out over the next few days.

That's because I'm road-testing Pleo, the new animatronic dinosaur robot from Ugobe. Though much talked about since it was unveiled at Demo last year, Pleo is only just now being officially released, and I was lucky enough to be among the first to get a review unit.

What I'm dreading is the moment in a week or so when I have to put Pleo back in its box and send it back … Read more

Kids who want to play CSI can use a kit that shows how to dust for fingerprints, blowing away excess powder in the process. The play dust, however, contains enough asbestos to trigger cancer later in life, according to the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, which tracks toxic ingredients in consumer products.

The powder was found to contain as much as 7 percent of tremolite, one the most fatal forms of asbestos. One-time exposure has been linked with developing lung disease and mesothelioma years or decades later. The toxicant was found in six of eight samples tested by the Asbestos Disease … Read more

Doc Brown invented a flux capacitator after he knocked his head on a bathroom sink in Back to the Future. As everyone knows, it's the most important part of the time machine that allowed him to wreak havoc over many decades.

Now the item is available for public consumption on pre-order from Things From Another World for $220. As seen on Uncrate, it has lighting effects that really looks indistinguishable from the original.

And you don't even need to fall off a toilet to get one.

(Source: Crave Asia)

All good things must come to an end. Eventually, your co-workers will become immune to your flying toy antics, and you'll need to come up with some other way to irritate them. So here's the answer you've been looking for: the black helicopter.

This way, not only can you buzz them at will, but you can also prey on their paranoid tendencies at the same time--the best of all conspiratorial worlds. The "Black Ghost," as first seen on Coolest-Gadgets, has "full altitude and directional control," which is a good thing because it'll … Read more

It seems America's Got Talent has given new life to old KITT, or Knight Industries Two Thousand, once the sidekick of The Hoff.

Firebox has a remote-controlled version complete with familiar whooshing sound and working red sensor on the hood. If you hit a button on the transmitter, it will even intone: "I am KITT, whom you may regard as the voice of the Knight 2000."

In case you're too young to remember the original (sigh), KITT was an advanced crime-fighting vehicle with artificial intelligence that had a sleek, customized Pontiac Trans-Am body in a molecular … Read more

News.com has been running hugely cool photo galleries excerpted from sister site TechRepublic--their "Cracking Open" series, where they dissect, gut, and then try to reconstruct your favorite electronics.

Latest entries include the iPod Touch--you won't believe how thin the components are--and the remote-control game, "Shocking Tanks."

Links: Cracking open the iPod touch and Cracking open "Shocking Tanks."

Tech toys are all the rage this holiday gift-giving season, and I have a request for all the cool, creative, and wired aunts, uncles, and friends who are choosing presents for the kids in their lives. Please consult with parents before you buy a child a high-tech gift, especially any toy or gadget that has an online connection.

Just as you wouldn't spring a puppy on a family as a surprise, you should check in with parents before you give a tech toy. I can testify on behalf of frazzled parents, even those of us with a techie bent ourselves, that we are dancing as fast as we can to keep up with the implications of computers, gadgets, and online communication for our kids.… Read more

U.S. Soccer Federation, take note: If you want the sport to be as popular here as it is in the rest of the world, start marketing more products like this.

We know as much about futbol as we do about figure skating, but we'd be the first in line to get one of these soccer ball remotes that are sold in the U.K. And it can actually be used as a ball to play with, according to Gizmodo, though we wouldn't recommend that if it was the only remote in the house.

It supposedly can be … Read more