NASA to hold Phoenix press conference tomorrow, water on the brain?

clipped from www.engadget.com It's been a while since we've reported about the doings of our robotic friend on Mars, but a press conference tomorrow (Thursday) could uncover Phoenix's first positive report of water on the red planet. NASA's conference will be held at 2 p.m. Eastern Thursday and we're hearing that Pheonix Mission is ready to report that water ice is not only confirmed, but the research robot has dug some ice out of a trench, heated it, and confirmed that it is, in fact water. If this all holds true, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be able to determine whether or not the atmosphere could sustain life and lead to manned missions to Mars. We call shotgun.

Video: Camera-based concept turns any surface into a DJ deck

clipped from www.engadget.com DJ MoCAP, master of time and white space, has developed a camera-based controller for the TRAKTOR Scratch DJ System. Just sketch the deck onto a piece of white paper and turn any high contrast surface into a mixing table. There seems to be a bit of latency but overall the system looks fairly responsive. Why? Why not, we say. Video demonstration after the break.

USB Ladybird Mouse

clipped from www.coolest-gadgets.com What kind of mouse would go with a cute Asus Eee PC? Well, here’s a candidate if you haven’t yet gotten one already - the USB Ladybird Mouse. Available in either green or red colors (I would settle for the latter since that is what ladybirds should look like - a green one is probably suffering from some stomach ailment and hence that monstrous color), this USB-powered device is extremely lightweight and compact in size, making it the perfect traveling companion without weighing you down unnecessarily. Of course, for $14.90 you might actually find something else you like. I’d recommend those with rather large hands to avoid this purchase.

Heart Robot loves to be hugged, express emotions

clipped from www.engadget.com Here's your afternoon dose of cuteness, ready or not. David McGoran's Heart Robot has made its way into London's Science Museum, and for good reason. This intelligent robot not only possesses a face with moving eyes and an external heart that blinks depending on what's happening, but it actually encourages people to hug and cuddle it like a real human. Seen as being "among the first robots to signify a new era of emotional machines used for medical treatment and enjoyment," this creature could one day become a mainstay in nursing homes where the elderly could interact with it and hopefully benefit in some metaphysical manner. Check out the read link for a video oozing with adorableness.

Dell's Pocket Projector is easy to overlook

clipped from www.engadget.com We can't blame you if you missed it, but Dell's latest leaked PowerPoint had one little gem tucked away near the end of the 31 slide deck. No, not the Coolslice homeslice, rather the Pocket Projector. Weighing just 1.1 pounds, this LED projector is either incredibly small, or that's a Texas-sized coffee mug... either of which could be true in Dell country. No word on release date though we expect it to pop with the rest of the Latitude E-series in Q4.

Microscopic microscope could fit on cellphones, cost just $10

research

clipped from www.engadget.com Make no mistake, microscopes have been getting increasingly smaller for years, but a team of CalTech researchers have leapfrogged previous efforts by creating one minuscule enough to fit on a cellphone. The microscopic optofluidic microscope could one day be used in third-world nations to "analyze blood samples for malaria or check water supplies for giardia and other pathogens," and given that it could theoretically be mass produced for around $10, cost shouldn't be too much of a hindrance. Changhuei Yang, credited for developing the chip, is currently chatting it up with biotech companies in order to get this to the market, but there's no word yet on any takers.

Anton the robotic tongue has saved you from electrode doom

robot

clipped from www.engadget.com So we had a choice: either we let scientists at the University of Sheffield attach electrodes to our tongues, or they were going to go and build their own artificial mouth. Because we're not so into the whole electrode thing, they built "Anton," an animatronic tongue made of soft silicone to help them understand speech and subsequently improve speech-recognition software. This isn't the first of its kind, believe it or not -- there's much competition in the robotic mouth world. Because speech recognition systems aren't really benefitting from simply crowding them full of recorded speech, researchers want to better understand how the mouth produces sound and then create algorythms that can simply recognize speech patterns rather than try to match recordings to recordings. Sounds about right to us. Peep the creepy video after the break.

Speed up Windows Vista with a flash drive

clipped from lifehacker.com If you've got a spare USB drive laying around, hold onto it till you start running Windows Vista. Using Vista's new ReadyBoost feature, a spare USB 2.0 key with enough space can speed up the OS performance. Plug in your drive and choose "Speed up my system" from the AutoPlay menu to enable ReadyBoost, which uses some fancy-pants disk-caching to make Windows a bit snappier. Still looking to unload a few extra drives? The hardware experts at Gizmodo have some links to donate 'em too. — Gina Trapani

Roll Your Own System Administration Panel

clipped from lifehacker.com If you're regularly digging into Windows' Control Panel and Administrative Tools to tinker with your system, or a friends', the How-To Geek has quite the time-saving tip for you. Both Windows XP and Vista have a built-in tool that lets you cherry-pick the tools you regularly use—disk management, user/group control, services, and the like—and pack them all into a custom panel. You can place a shortcut to this panel anywhere you'd like, and you can even add in links to helpful web pages or folder locations. Pretty handy stuff for professional sysadmins, or those folks regularly putting on their fix-it cap. Create a Custom System Administration Panel in Windows XP or Vista [The How-To Geek]

Keepin' it real fake, part CXXVI: Jointech's $99 JL7100 rips Eee PC in spectacular fashion

clipped from www.engadget.com The Kira 100 was a decent Eee PC knockoff, but at just north of $475, there was literally no purpose in picking it over the genuine product. The Jointech JL7100, however, really makes ASUS' darling look mighty unnecessary. Okay, so maybe the fact that this thing relies on WinCE 5.0 rather than, you know, a bona fide laptop operating system is a bit disappointing, but there are sacrifices to be expected here. As for other specifications, you'll supposedly find a 7-inch 800 x 480 resolution display, Samsung chipset, 64MB (yes, megabytes) of internal storage, 64MB (yes, megabytes) of RAM, a VGA output and three USB ports. We can hear your stifled laughter from here, but your tune may change upon hearing the $99 (USD?) price tag. Told you so.

The Lifehacker Editors' Favorite Software and Hardware

http://lifehacker.com/399296/the-lifehacker-editors-favorite-software-and-hardware

clipped from lifehacker.com Lifehacker readers range from the complete computer newbie to the most seasoned computer techie, but where do the Lifehacker editors stand? We polled our own editors for the computer hardware and applications they swear by and we're breaking it down for you here. This post is categorized into the software used by the Lifehacker editors, the operating systems we can't live without, the hardware we rely on, the peripherals we utilize on a regular basis, and webapps we need.

Nikon D700 gets real: full-frame, 12.1 megapixels

clipped from www.engadget.com Well, we can finally put the D700 rumors to bed. The beast that houses Nikon's newest monster (near) full-frame FX format 12.1 megapixel CMOS (not dissimilar from that found in the D3) is officially announced tonight, and it takes UDMA CompactFlash, and comes packing with a live view 3-inch display, 51 point autofocus (with 3D tracking), scene recognition, four-speed active dust reduction, ISO up to 6400, 5 or 8 fps full-res shooting, HDMI out, and a whole lot more. Expect it in July for $3,000 US (for the body). Also being released are the SB-900 speedlight (August, $500), and the PC-E Micro NIKKOR 45mm f/2.8D ED and PC-E Micro NIKKOR 85mm f/2.8D lenses (August, $1,800 and $1,740, respectively).

Nikon D700 full-frame DSLR gets unboxed on video

clipped from www.engadget.com It's easy enough to drool over the press shots of Nikon's luscious D700. Seeing someone unbox this full-frame beast on video is another experience entirely (bordering on spiritual, really). Unfortunately, the vid waiting after the break is just two minutes long and doesn't show any clicks being depressed, but those looking to get a better idea of the size and build have plenty of reason to click through.

ProcessQuickLink

clipped from www.processlibrary.com As many as 20 to 30 processes may be running invisibly, silently in the background on your PC. Some hog system resources, drastically slowing down your computer. Others are a threat to security and privacy. A few may be harmless. The Windows Task Manager displays most of these processes but you have no information to learn and understand what is what. Click on the button to instantly gain access the relevant process descriptions and advice through the Task Manager. Gain insight on any process through easy and quick search feature that queries over 9000 entries in processlibrary.com database directly. Provided free of charge, new process descriptions are added on a weekly basis making the site the most comprehensive source of information yet. Requires Windows 2000 / 2003 / XP / Vista, an Internet connection and an Internet browser.

'The Shining' gets remade with WowWee bots, cybernetically invades your soul

clipped from www.engadget.com

Analyst says Android and Symbian to merge, Nokia and Google to get matching tattoos

clipped from www.engadget.com According to the oracle-like superbrains at J. Gold Associates, Google's Android OS and Nokia's Symbian will "combine to provide a single open source OS," sometime in the very near future... say, three to six months. Sure, Android is just about to launch on devices in late 2008, and Nokia just announced in June that it will be moving Symbian towards open source -- and of course the two companies have no formal relationship that would come close to permitting such a collaboration. Still, J. Gold assures us this is happening, stating, "A combination of the Android and Symbian efforts would be good for the industry, good for Google and good for Symbian ." In related news, we understand a handful of similar mergers are in the offing: Linksys and Belkin, Red Hat and Ubuntu, Engadget and Gizmodo, and the inevitable one-two punch of Coke and Pepsi.