Miuro - a multimedia droid

Miuro - a multimedia system equipped with camera and sensors that follows one around the house. Equipped with Wifi, it can play internet radio and mp3s from an iPod. The robot can be easily trained by tapping it with a hand and “showing” the motion path.

http://miuro.com/

Google's Lost Spectrum Bid and Future Plans, White Spaces

AT&T and Verizon won parts of 700 MHz spectrum bid that ranged around $4.6 billion [Wi-fiplanet.com]. Even though Google was one of the bidders and lost the auction, it keeps pushing towards opening the air for other (than cell phones) mobile devices. The targeted spectrum is the "white space", previously used as a guard band between broadcasting channels. FCC is welcoming the initiative by the White Space Coalition, including Google, Microsoft, Dell, Intel, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, HP, Philips, and Earthlink. Once FCC approves the proposals, the consumers might see a multitude of wireless personal devices on the market that are not based on the conventional cellular networks. Access to internet from anywhere can become massively available to anyone for a fraction of the price that RFs (regular folks in this case) are paying right now for their cellular plans, if not free (Go Google)! As a result, the cell phone monopoly will face the serious competition and will be forced to offer more competitive prices.

We need the similar initiative in Canada! I am sure most of Canadians are sick and tired of expensive mobile plans that they have compared to our Southern neighbor.

[Google's Next Spectrum Battle, Wi-fiplanet.com]
[First White Space devices failed, FCC, reports InternetNews.com]
[White Space Coalition]

VoIP reviews, news, tutorials

I've been browsing Wi-Fi Plant website and came across the following interesting pages related to VoIP.

[List of VoIP articles]
[Skype vs. Other VoIP providers]

Robotics and DIY Projects

1. Robotics projects from EDN:
Robotics Project (sound sensing, hardware, soft)
Platforms and development tools
CoroBot - fast robot prototyping (runs Windows) - fast but expensive too!

2. Dogoid - a diesel powered four legged robot that is made to carry load over a heavy terrain. Current application is mostly for military use. The really cool part about it is its very natural movement! The videos on the website show robot recovering from a push, ice slip, walking on snow downhill and other. A must see!
Dogoid on PLDesignline: link
BostonDynamics: link

3. The guys at Gostai.com (France) are working on a Universal Software Platform to allow the reuse of code from one robotic system to another. They've created a language (URBI) that brings together parallelism, and event-based programming, works on Windows, Linux and MacOS and is interfaced with C++, Python, Java, C#, others. There is a number of commercial robots that are now supported and can be easily programmed using the existing URBI code created by the URBI community, including Sony's Aibo doc, Create, Mindstorm, Bioloid, KHR2, etc.
Key innovations: link
URBI's innovations video, small tutorial showing how easily a robot like Aibo can be programmed: link
List of currently supported robots: link

A few DIY project ideas

An idea, DIY rool-up keyboard: http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/diy-project-create-your-own-roll-up-keyboard/

Installing a small camera into sunglasses: http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/prepare-spying-sunglasses-for-secret-recordings/

Windows Memory Optimization

The following two articles explain how to optimize Page File in Windows and how to use Task Manager to detect Page File usage.

links:
Page file Optimization
Memory Usage Tracking using Task Manager
Windows Process Utilities
Windows Utilities (from Sysinternals, technet.microsoft.com)

Bug Labs: "Legos meets Web services & APIs"

"Startup Bug Labs, which aims to turn the task of constructing smart devices into a non-technical, lego-like affair, will begin accepting orders for its Linux-powered electronic building blocks later this month for shipment starting Mar. 17."

"Open source-based platform for programmers to build not only the applications they want but the hardware to run it on"

[DeviceGuru's article]
[wiki]
[forum]