newVideoPlayer("bumbot2.flv", 463, 387,""); When the sun goes down in Rufus Terrill’s neighbourhood, criminals and vagrants swarm in like Night of the Living Homeless. You remember when we first told you about BumBot, the solution contrived by the former DoD contractor. “If it wasn’t chasing criminals, it’d be fighting Osama bin Laden.” Granted, it’s only equipped with a deBUManising water jet turret, but his dreams were bigger: “I wanted to put a flamethrower on it, but they wouldn’t let me do that.” The police shut down his Taser plans too. You saw the original pics, but now here’s a video of BumBot in action, from Colbert. [Colbert]
In the outside world, we all know the iPod can take a one-man dance party from 0-100 in under 3 songs. But ever wonder what it’s like on the inside? The Porta Party adopts its shape from the similarly named Porta Potty, but has the skin of an iPod. Insidethe Porta Party is an iPod dock and disco ball that will also take the one man party from 0-100 in under 3 songs — if you provide the tunes. And when you’re finished inhabiting the iPod, it’s kind enough NOT to spit you out on the New Jersey Turnpike. [Nick Rodrigues via LAist via Gadget Lab]
The guys over at Liliputing have a done a great service for all who are looking for the perfect low-cost ultraportable notebook. They’ve made a “comprehensive list of low-cost ultraportables”, that not only shows you what’s available and what’s not, but also provides information for every unit. So if you’ve been craving an ultra-portable, check out the list. Though proceed with caution, ’cause if you’ve already decided on a model this list might make your head explode. [Liliputing]
This awesome street art was spotted here in NYC in the East Village, and I love it. Pixelart beats sloppy, illegible tagging any day of the week, thank you very much. Unfortunately, some jackass didn’t agree. At least we have a picture of it in its original state. [Gothamist]
“Nintendo said it sold 18.61 million units of its Wii console globally last year, for a total of 24.45 million units moved since it was launched in November 2006.” In the past year, Nintendo’s raked in US$2.5 billion in profit. [NYTimes]
P.A. Semi, the chip design company Apple picked up for a song, is best known for its super-efficient PWRficient processor, a PowerPC variant. One of the big customers for the CPU is the Department of Defence, which makes use of it in programs in every major branch of the military, and they’re not thrilled by the possibility of Apple ending production of the chips.
QNAP has upgraded their line of NAS drives to include the one-bay TS-109 Pro II and two-bay TS-209 Pro II models. Both of these beefed up systems will include a Marvell 500MHz CPU and 256MB DDRII large memory, a faster BitTorrent download engine, built-in Joomla! CMS 1.5.1 and upgraded TwonkyMedia version 4.4.4. QNAP also claims that the P2P download speed is now the same as a PC-based BT download.
This is not any sort of indication of a hardware failure epidemic, but a friend of mine had a Playstation support person tell them that there were a lot of 40GB failures, with many units being sent back more than once.
Those Mii Sculptures we told you about last year are finally available for purchase. All you have to do is hand over US$79 and a copy of your Mii and the guy will hand-craft it just for you. Some of his other creations, Michael Jackson, Woody Allen and Bill Gates—actually do look a lot like the actual person. We’re not sure why the creator decided to make these three the sample images for his site, but we’re sure one of them certain won’t appreciate being mixed in there with two pedophiles. [Mii Sculpture via Geekologie]
Spike Lee has teamed up with Nokia in an attempt to “democratise film” by developing a movie based entirely out of user-submitted mobile phone footage. The film will focus on “the way music tells the story of humanity” and consist of three acts based on “assignments” posted on the project website. After an assignment has been announced, participants will have four weeks to develop their submission. Sounds like a cinematic thrill ride right?
