Oct 28

With Halloween around the corner, there's one thought that scares us more than any other. It's not Dracula or reanimated corpses. It's not TP'd houses or razor blade candy. It's the day when robots turn on humans in the battle for Earth. And to prep for the event, we're throwing a contest. Dress up like a robot that's turned on the human race, maybe win a pizza.

We want you to get creative. We're talking about a whole pizza on the line with toppings of your choosing—this isn't something you can just go out and buy for yourself on a whim.

Your interpretation of robots turning on the human race can be as adolescent or apocalyptic as you'd like. Make us laugh or make us cry. Whatever. The only catches are that all submissions must be:

1. Original Non-Photoshopped Photos
2. Received by November 1st

Send all of your best shots to tips@giz with the headline "Robots Turn on Humans" for entry, along with your contact info. And good luck. We're really looking forward to seeing your work, puny humans.



Tagi: halloween costume contest, reanimated corpses, photoshopped photos, puny humans, piz, mdash, november 1st, whim, dracula, robots, adolescent, ly, good luck, robot, alg, blade, candy, contests, halloween, earth

Oct 28

Things were neat and tidy before the breakup of AT&T in 1984, but after the 7-way split things got a little out of control as you will see in the Telecommunication Company Family Tree compiled by the folks at Neatorama. By their own admission, the tree is "woefully incomplete and grossly oversimplified" given the omission of minor subsidiaries, independent local phone companies and the like. However, the bare bones tree is still fairly complex—and it gives you a decent overall picture of how much things have changed over the last 24 years. Hit the link to see a detailed version of the tree. [Neatorama]



Tagi: minor subsidiaries, neatorama, telecommunication company, omsi, mdash, comex, compas, phe, 24 years, family tree, telecommunications

Oct 28

Sony's Rolly is such a strange beast it either confuses, bemuses or amuses you...and now there's a new version with Bluetooth remote control mode. So you can now steer around your confusing, bemusing, amusing little robot MP3 dancer—in fact you can control up to seven of the SEP-50BTs, from a cellphone or laptop. Still, there's now a pink version too, and its price hasn't moved. It's still around $400, and its out November 21 in Japan. [RobotWatch]



Tagi: strange beast, jives, mdash, beng, dancer, sy, robots, robot, hasn, laptop, sony, japan

Oct 28

The first Japanese ad for the DSi not only reveals who they're really targeting—the really young and really old—but a secret feature. In addition to the whole camera and wacky photo editing it's got going on, it's also a digital picture frame! Perfect for grandparents to display wildly distorted pictures of their grandchildren scribbled with embarrassing notes. Oh, and I think might play games too. Maybe? [1UP via Kotaku]


Tagi: wacky photo, digital picture frame, secret feature, dsi, grandchildren, grandparents, mdash, nintendo, games

Oct 28

Whoooooa. That was my reaction as I surfed from tile to tile in Amazon's WindowShop, which is the most eye-popping online shopping experience I've ever seen. It's a collection of their most popular movies, books, music and other media arranged in a huge 3D grid, where every tile is a tiny demo of the product—a trailer, snippet or clip—and it's incredibly fast and smooth to dart from one to the other, with no lag at all.

It kinda reminds me of Google Earth, but if the world were made up of copies of Dexter and The Godfather. While the idea is definitely still in its infancy—navigation is far from in-depth—check it out, it's an awesome, visually delicious experience that is totally what online shopping is going to look like in the near future—and it's perfectly suited for a multitouch UI too. Update: As people have pointed out, it's verrry similar to Cooliris.[Amazon Windowshop via TechCrunch]



Tagi: delicious experience, 3d grid, amaz, google, amazon, techcrunch, snippet, shopping experience, infancy, godfather, dexter, tile, windowshop, dart, mdash, demo, earth

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