You might think that the entire history of personal computing is too complex to explain in a reasonable amount of time. Too bad Canadian animators Superbrothers teamed up with singer-songwriter and all-around awesome dude Jim Guthrie to prove your reasoned point wrong with this badass music video. The story: two heavily pixelated scientists decide to have a dance battle that echoes the transition from primitive '60s machines all the way up to today's cloud computing. The video is after the jump.

Read More »

Incredible: what more's there to say? Incredible. Based on Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance Video," but way better. We get to see a robot doing Vanilla Ice's dance moves better than he did. A robot doing the "walk like an Egyptian" dance. The upcoming MechRC robot has been under development for three years and has 17 independently-controlled servos, and built-in audio. And if this video is anything to go by, when it goes on sale in the fall it should make quite a dent in the miniature robot world. [MechRC via RoboSavvy. —Thanks Limor]

Read More »

Orange, a mobile phone provider in the UK, has just developed a couple prototypes of this Dance Charge mobile phone charger. You wrap this thing around your arm while you're dancing and your kinetic energy will translate into electricity to power your phone. It's like those flashlights that you have to shake before use, but much, much nerdier. Combine this with the fictional breast charger and you'll be able to power the entire DJ booth with just your flailing limbs. How they got that one chubby doctor from Grey's Anatomy to pose for promo pics is anyone's guess. [Reg Hardware via Tech Digest]

Read More »

Move over WALL-E, take a hike Rolly, Automated Music Personality—from Hasbro's Tiger Electronics and Sega Toys—has come to claim the throne of dancing robot music speakers once and for all. Its Segway-esque legs dance to the beat of any MP3 player via 3.5mm jack, and its 49 LEDs stay shining like some kind of cybernetic Rhinestone Cowboy. The A.M.P. has touch-sensitive DJ scratching pads and 62 sound effects built in so you can spice up your songs with a little "wiki-wiki", and an IR sensor so he will follow you (and his remote) from room to room and keep the music playing in your direction. Too bad the A.M.P. costs 500-f'ing-dollars, which won't even buy you a Li-ion battery, since you either plug the knee-high bot into the wall (huh?) or fill it full of D cells. What's this thing made of? SOLID GOLD? It sure dances like it. Bring the price down to US$99, and I will buy it. Available in October. [A.M.P., Gearlog]

Read More »

These robots are just the size of a hair, but up to five of them can be independently, wirelessly controlled to work (and dance) in harmony. The robots are able to move by inch-worming 10-20 billionths of a metre at once somewhere around 20,000 times a second. The result is small robots that can make their way around with relative alacrity, but still home in on precise movements. And the example video is pretty remarkable:

Read More »

This was taped in January, but it falls under the category of "Timeless sales pitches." From the Best Buy sales person's handbook: Never take no for an answer, entertain lower offers, hump the floor if it helps sell even just one more car stereo. [Funny or Die]

Read More »

The International Dance Party looks like an unassuming flight box. But as soon as its radar detects people dancing, its motorised face drops to reveal two speakers running 600 watts of the world's best unfiltered Eurohouse and other assorted Electro Boogie. There's an LED sign that displays a message in 20 languages: That message is simply "Dance." And the more intense the party gets, the greater the effects, eventually culminating in a light show with disco ball, siren, ground effects and fog, creating an infinite loop of more fog, more techno, more siren, and therefore more dancing, and then the radar picks it up and then you've got more disco, and then more fog, and then more techno, and then more dance I'm so tired I can't stop partying my legs won't stop feeling the beat. After everyone collapses, the box returns to its docile flight case status. But really, it's hard to explain how incredible this machine is, unless you watch the video:

Read More »

The next big trend in technology? Dancing robots. Yup. Sorry. It's fate. It's out of our hands. Like this Sega Toys i-spin, it either dances to ambient music or hooks to your MP3 player as a speaker—I mean, how will this not be the next consumer electronics revolution? After all, it dances. To music. So one day when we're sitting in goo to power the robots, it'll be for this, a coupla Sony Rollies and, if we're lucky, one of those gyrating Coke cans from the early 90s. [i-spin] Thanks Ken!

Read More »

Since you are currently on the internet, it's impossible for you to have missed Judson Laipply's Evolution of Dance video. Here's the Autobots' version of the famous routine, featuring Mr. Prime himself. Something tells us that if Optimus Prime wasn't real wasn't currently in another galaxy, he would destroy this video's creator. To see the original version, hit the jump.

Read More »

Remember cute Keepon, the little robot that's part Muppet, part dancing dynamo? He's back, teaching Daniel H. Wilson, author of How To Build a Robot Army, how to stop worrying and embrace cybernetics. Now that Wilson and Keepon are friends, we're imagining the undefeatable army of Keepons that will result: every opponent would compulsively drop his weapon and start to disco gently on the spot. At least, that's what we'd do. [Keepon at Carnegie Mellon]

Read More »