Miniature humanoid robots are getting more impressive by the day: this video shows the Darmstadt Dribblers team in action in the recent 2008 Robocup. And if you notice, they're really playing like proper autonomous soccer teams. It's the first year that three on three playing action has happened, and thus required some nifty role negotiation and info exchange over wi-fi. That's in addition to avoiding obstacles, finding the ball visually and trying to score goals. Ok, so that opposing team needs a better goalie, but at least watching this robotic version of the beautiful game means you get to see less diving and hissy fits at the referee. Impressive stuff, no? [YouTube.—Thanks Stefan]

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Fans of the English soccer league will know that today is the F.A. Cup Final at Wembley Stadium, where Premier League mid-tablers Portsmouth F.C. take on relative minnows Cardiff City. To mark the day, Cardiff City fan Ashley Weaver has made a stop-motion LEGO video of his team's amazing journey to the finals, complete with BBC commentary and black-and-white replays. The two videos took Weaver, who will be cheering on the underdogs at Wembley today, around 40 hours to do, and he shot around 1,000 still photos—that's around five or six every second. Part two is after the jump.

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Casio's G'zOnes are nothing if not sturdy, which is why people who favour ruggedness over any other feature are picking these up. Just how unbreakable are these things? Incredibly. Our buddy Danny from Wired took these outside so both a football team and a soccer team could throw it around. Check out the video to see (spoiler alert) what eventually did the phone in. On a similar note, Danny received a concussion while filming, proving that his head is slightly less durable than the phone. [Wired]

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With finals season reaching their climax, wouldn't you like to really know if you could pull on the strip and kick goals from range to beat the siren and win it for [insert fave team here]? This ball from Discovery may be far from regulation, but its built-in distance meter will have you kicking and throwing (for the NFL fans) harder than ever before. A little bit of catch has never been so competitive. -SB [Discovery Distance Football via Red Ferret via Fosfor]