Getting bored with your workouts? The Progio Training Companion has a 320×240 screen that shows you exercise videos, keeps track of your progress, times your workouts, and with its optional Polar Heart Rate Monitor can keep track of your pulse rate.
Once you’re done with your workout, it uploads all your performance data to the mother ship, the CompanionWorlds website. That’s where you can graphically keep track of your progress and download more workouts that are specifically designed for different areas you’d like to improve.
What’s the point of all this, anyway?
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This is the British Royal Navy’s newest class of submarine, the Astute. And this is what the nuclear-powered behemoth can do: generate its own air and water; sit in the English Channel and fire cruise missiles at North Africa; but perhaps the most extraordinary feature of the British-built sub is that it will never need to be refuelled throughout its 25-year lifespan, meaning it can sail round the world 40 times without surfacing – if your seamen don’t need feeding, that is.
The Brits have put in an initial order for three of the subs – a snip at $2.33 billion each – and each one is expected to enter into service in 2009, 2010 and 2011. The contractor, BAE Systems, in Barrow, says it learned a lot from US sub builder Electric Boat – namely to build sections of the sub vertically (hence the 12-storey construction towers at the plant) which saved on manpower. Check the big beast in the gallery below, and the specs after the jump.
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Leave it to that nest of fat bureaucrats called the European Union to fix what a consortium of eight european companies have not been able to pull off: Galileo, a former excommunicated astronomer turned global positioning system, is in a “dead-end street”.
The 30-satellite system promised extreme accuracy to everyone around the world without the limitations of the US government-controlled GPS. According to German Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee, now it “is going through a deep and grave crisis” which, for those of you outside the Old Continent, means: “we are in deep shit.”
The companies in charge of running the show have been unsuccesful and, with only one test satellite in orbit and the second one still grounded with technical troubles, it looks like the european taxpayer (that’s me, for one) will have to pony up those funny colored bills to finance their incompetence. Quite frankly, I didn’t need a GPS to tell me that we are completely lost this side of the pond. – Jesus Diaz
Galileo system ‘in a deep crisis’ [BBC News]
Could it be that this Australian man was inspired by our own pants-stuffing Jason Chen of Wii-down-your-pants fame? This guy seen on the video somehow fits a huge projector down his pants and then laboriously walks out of an electronics store.
Next: tough legislation will be introduced to keep bloggers from suggesting new shoplifting methods. Not to encourage anybody or anything, but this guy actually got away with this crime. – Charlie White
How To Hide a Projector In One’s Underwear [Wired Gadget Lab]
Here’s PaPeRo again. And this time he comes in a bite-size format. Or better said, in kick-that-ball-mutha-format, since he keeps freaking me out just like his bigger, older brother, by now hopefully dismantled and rotting in some landfill near Osaka.
PaPeRo Mini only measures 179 x 170 x 250 milimeters (9.84 inches high) and weighs 5.5 pounds, but he’s smarter than PaPeRo, being built around a module that uses a ARM 9192 CPU and a DSP processor to provide speech recognition, speech synthesis, control of the surrounding area and face recognition.
It’s good to see the Japanese increasing the efficiency of their bots but, quite frankly, I’ll stick with Kondo. He may look more menacing, but at least he’s stupid and talks like the Hulk rather than some smartypants British butler. – Jesus Diaz
Press Release (in Japanese) [NEC via Impress Robot]
Slickly designed external hard drives are all the rage lately, but we originally scoped out Seagate’s FreeAgent line back at CES. The FreeAgent Go holds up to 160GB and with the included Ceedo virtualization software, you can run apps directly from the drive, which is useful if you’re stuck using a public computer.
What’d we like? It’s small, lightweight and quiet but feels surprisingly sturdy. It looks great and the yellow glow is nice, but if it’s not for you, you can always turn it off. The read/write speed is average, so there’s nothing to complain about there (you can scope out the benchmarks in the gallery). Apps run from the drive generally lag-free.
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What we didn’t like:
This is a friendly reminder to sign the McFly 2015 project. You know, to convince Nike to build Marty McFly’s kicks from Back to the Future II. I’ve signed because they’re cool enough to risk tearing up the space time continuum with an early release.
If you’d agree, go ahead, click through and sign. – Brian Lam
Make it Happen [Mcfly 2015]
HP is breaking new grounds today by becoming the first PC vendor to swing both ways in the high-def DVD wars.
The company’s new PCs (which will be part of the Pavilion Media Center m8010y series and d4890y series) will feature a Blu-ray/HD DVD combo drive and also come with a GeForce 8800 video card. ATI’s TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner will also be bundled, and because it has a CableCard slot, that means turning your PC into a quick and dirty PVR shouldn’t be a hassle. No word on pricing yet, though we can’t imagine the dual drive option coming in cheap, so you better start saving now. – Louis Ramirez
Nothing’s certain yet, but rumor has it the BlackJack won’t be getting a Windows Mobile 6 update until some time after June. AT&T users were probably counting on somewhat of an earlier update, seeing as T-Mobile’s Dash already got theirs last week, but no such luck (supposedly) for now. Of course, this is from unofficial sources, so you may have better luck once AT&T actually makes an announcement for real. – Jason Chen
BlackJack WM6 Update: Q3 at best [WMExperts via Boy Genius Report]
