Crave

Add another robot to the list of helping bots for seniors. A robot named Charlie rolled into a New Zealand retirement village on Monday to take residents' vital signs, deliver their medication reminders, and call for assistance if they fall.

Charlie's trial stint at Selwyn Retirement Village in Auckland's Point Chevalier is, in part, a response to a University of Auckland study exploring seniors' attitudes toward robots.

The study--part of a three-year "HealthBots" collaboration by the University of Auckland and Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute--collated the opinions of Selwyn Retirement Village residents, their families, and staff on what tasks health care robots could perform and what the mechanical helpers should look like.

Results showed respondents felt most comfortable with robots taking vital signs such as blood pressure, calling for help, lifting heavy objects, cleaning, and making phone calls to a doctor or nurse. They did not identify personal care, medical advice, and assessing emotions as tasks they'd like to see taken over by robots.

Posing with Charlie the robot are HealthBots team members (from left) Rebecca Stafford, Bruce MacDonald, and Elizabeth Broadbent.

(Credit: University of Auckland)

As far as physical appearance, residents and staff indicated they preferred a "middle-age robot" with a clear voice, though they didn't have a preference for male or female features. The robot shouldn't be too human-like, they suggested, with some residents explicitly saying they'd rather be tended to by a robot without a face. The preferred design was silver and around 4 feet tall, so the robot was not too imposing, with wheels and a screen.

Enter Charlie, which pretty much fits that description. ... Read more

Motorola i410

(Credit: Motorola)

Motorola added a new handset to its iDEN workhouse line today when it introduced the i410. Destined for Boost Mobile, the i410 has a rugged flip phone design in black and silver. The small external display sits in the middle of the etched front panel, while inside you'll find a color display and the standard navigation array and keypad.

Features are firmly on the low end. There's no camera, but you get GPS, Bluetooth, a speakerphone, messaging, an Opera browser, and a personal organizer. Pricing was not immediately disclosed.

It's episode 59 of the Digital City, and if our cast looks a little different today, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. Joey, Julie, and Scott all called in sick, so we recruited some of our CNET colleagues to step in and offer their holiday shopping advice.

David Katzmaier, John Falcone, and Matt Fitzgerald weigh in on Black Friday tips for big-screen TVs, home theater equipment, and digital cameras, and we go over some of the best and worst laptop deals around.

Also discussed was the high-concept Tony Hawk: Ride skateboard video game, the surprise popularity of Assassin's Creed 2, and Dan showed off his new Forza-3-branded Pumas.

Added bonus: we've got a handful of beta invites for MAG, the massive 256-person PS3 shooter to give away. Ping me on Twitter , or e-mail us at digitalcity@cnet.com, and we'll hook the first five people up.

Related links:
>>Are these Apple's Black Friday laptop deals?
>>Rating Black Friday laptop doorbuster deals
>>Review: the ColcaSac hemp MacBook sleeve
>>Hands on with 15th-century Italy in Assassin's Creed II

>>Watch the Digital City live every Monday at 3pm EST on CNET Live!
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>>Need more? Follow Dan on Twitter!

(Credit: yellowgoat/Etsy)

Here's another fashion accessory to complement your Polaroid-related peripherals collection. This sterling silver Good Time Ring from crafts site Etsy has a slot at the side that allows you to slip your favorite picture into the wearable frame to show off. The creator, Etsy member "yellowgoat," says the ring was inspired by Polaroid photos.

The ring's face measures 1.1 inch by less than an inch, and accommodates prints of only about three-quarters of an inch by three-quarters of an inch. Yes, that is small, but it's definitely a unique piece of jewelry that every Polaroid-devoted shutterbug should have in addition to the candle, paperweight, and mirror. Unfortunately, the ring currently appears to be sold out.

(Source: Crave Asia via Gearfuse)

It's Thanksgiving time in the U.S., which means we all sit down to a meal of turkey and a bunch of fattening side dishes and then pretend to watch football while we nap. At least that's the stereotype. However much truth it holds doesn't concern me, however. All I care about is that I have an excuse to play on the word turkey and do a top 5 about some of the worst tech of the year.

So watch the show, bask in the turkeyness of some of this year's tech, then come back here and enter a comment either complaining how I bashed your favorite product, or answering the lame prize question.

Answer to last week's question: Beyerdynamic DT 48

What makes ADSL so improbable is it's transmitting a huge amount of data over some very ancient copper. That's right, copper, the stuff that isn't anywhere near as interesting or valuable as gold.

(Credit: Crave UK)

Many things keep us awake at night. Simon Cowell's hair is one. The implausible success of anyone who appears in "Big Brother" is another. But the thing that really keeps us staring into the darkness is technology. How the hell does it work? Simple gadgets like TVs and mice leave us unperturbed. But there are some things that are just beyond reasoning.

Science fiction writer and all-round genius Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." On this one issue, we think he might have been wrong--because it's quite obvious to us that some technology is magic. Or if not magic, at least utterly impossible and somehow a massive confidence trick.

We've ranked the most impossible technologies on the planet in order of their level of impossibility. If you've got all six things on this list, and haven't yet had breakfast, then as Douglas Adams said, you should consider dinner at Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe.

Read more of "Technology that's totally impossible" at Crave UK.

The new metallic blue DSi with five titles.

(Credit: Nintendo)

Starting on Black Friday, Nintendo will offer two new DSi bundles featuring metallic blue or white Nintendo DSi systems, plus more than $20 in DSiWare games, the company announced on Monday.

The new bundles will come with different games, depending on the DSi customers buy. The metallic blue version of the DSi will come with five Mario DSiWare titles, including Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again; Dr. Mario Express; WarioWare: Snapped!; Mario Calculator; and Mario Clock.

Nintendo's white Nintendo DSi comes preinstalled with Brain Age Express: Arts & Letters; Brain Age Express: Sudoku; Brain Age Express: Math; Clubhouse Games Express: Card Classics; and Photo Clock.

Nintendo said the DSi bundles will be available as long as supplies last, though a company representative wouldn't divulge how many units will be shipped. Nintendo also pointed out that although the white DSi has been around for a while, the Metallic Blue color is new. So far, Nintendo hasn't responded to my inquiry about whether or not it will offer a Metallic Blue DSi as a standalone unit after the bundle runs out.

Both the White DSi bundle and the Metallic Blue offering will be available in stores on Friday for $169.99, the same price as the standalone DSi.

See also: Be prepared for Black Friday tech deals

(Credit: Google)

One of the highlights of Android 2.0 has been the Google Maps Navigation app that delivers voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation on your phone for free. Until now, only Motorola Droid owners could take advantage of this sweet perk, but times they are a-changing.

On Monday, Google announced that its navigation app is now available for devices running Android 1.6 and higher, including the T-Mobile G1 and T-Mobile MyTouch 3G. While still in beta, the app provides voice-guided directions between two points, traffic information, and business searches.

This release also includes a new Layers feature that lets you overlay more information on the map, such as transit lines and Wikipedia articles about places, but it does not support the "Navigate to" voice command feature found on Android 2.0, so you'll have to input all your destinations using your phone's keyboard.

Google Maps Navigation for Android 1.6 is now available for download from the Android Market. Unlike other navigation apps or location-based services from the likes of TomTom, Garmin, and TeleNav, you don't have to pay a one-time fee or monthly subscription to use Google Maps Navigation. All you need is a data connection and you're good to go.

Data Robotics eSATA-enabled Drobo S

(Credit: Data Robotics)

Finally, it looks like the Drobo storage system I've been waiting for has arrived.

I've been struggling with the right way to deal with data as I move from a desktop machine with abundant internal storage to a laptop that can't fit my burgeoning photo library. Earlier four-drive Drobo models, with FireWire and USB ports, looked better at backup than storing live files I'd be using constantly.

But Monday, Data Robotics announced the Drobo S, a five-bay, $799 storage system that adds an eSATA connection to the mix.

Drobo systems use technology called BeyondRAID that stores data across a mixture of different drives. It offers redundancy and automatically rebuilds your files when you replace an older drive or add a new one that's more capacious. Drobos don't come cheap, but they offer longevity, and right now Amazon is selling 1.5-terabyte drives for $99.

So why should the prospect of dropping $1,000 on a storage system excite me? Because of eSATA. ... Read more