dinosaurs

Dino Glade Advanced is a dinosaur-themed screensaver that promises a variety of dinosaurs frolicking in a delightful landscape. We like dinosaurs, so we were excited. Then we tried this screensaver and our excitement turned to befuddlement.

We don't want to be mean, but Dino Glade Advanced looks like the work of someone who just learned computer animation. Both the dinosaurs' design and animation are utterly amateurish. The dinosaurs bend their heads as if to pick something up with their mouths, and their chins disappear into the ground. The insides of their mouths are empty and red, reminding us of … Read more

Anyone remember when you talked to computers in 52-character sentences? Need a technology nostalgia fix? Head over to CNET News.com, where we've excerpted a TechRepublic gallery of the earliest "portable" computers. They're from a time when "portable" just meant you could haul them from place to place with a handle--and it was truly revolutionary to be able to do so, since it exaggerated the fact that computers were not the size of a room, as they had been.

Click here to go to the News.com gallery: "Dinosaur sightings: Osborne 1 and TRS-80 4P&… Read more

Dinosaurs descended from reptiles and evolved into today's birds, but their growth and sexual maturation were more like that of mammals, according to a study by scientists from University of California, Berkeley. The finding suggests that dinosaurs were born precocious and suffered high adult mortality, making early sexual maturity necessary for survival.

Read the full story at PhysOrg.com:" T. rex had teen pregnancies"

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

Everybody loves phrases like "when dinosaurs ruled the world," but it appears the reptiles had a more halting ascendance to world domination than scientists had earlier believed.

Paleontologists, sifting through fossils in New Mexico, found in the same location skeletons of dinosaurs and dinosaur precursor species that scientists had thought were rapidly replaced by the dinosaurs themselves. The results were reported last week in the journal Science. The paleontologists were from the University of California at Berkeley, the American Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

"Up to now, paleontologists … Read more

Dinosaurs are known for a lot of things, but cuddly emotionalism isn't one of them

Ugobe will try to change that next year with "Pleo," an animatronic robotic dinosaur that reacts emotionally to its surroundings. If you talk cooingly to it, Pleo becomes more responsive, wagging its tail and offering to shake hands. But if you're curt, it can get depressed (the back slumps, it emits a mooing sound, the tail wags plaintively).

"You can consider it more of a lifelike creature than a toy," said CEO Bob Christopher in an interview in our … Read more