You Sunk My Battle Cruiser!
Topic: Other
Battleship may have been the coolest game of our childhood years, but that doesn't mean it can't get a little cooler. And just what could help vault the game to that next level of spectacularity better than a little Star Wars convergence? We certainly can't think of anything. (Except maybe actual laser beams that melt your enemy's destroyer.) Until the laser upgrade comes along, you'll have to settle for the next best thing: a Star Wars edition of the game complete with sound effects from the films and packaged in a big black case worthy of the Emperor himself. The game costs $60 at Hammacher Schlemmer and it's available now.

[Via Cool Hunter]

Tiny Projector Sees the Big Picture
Topic: Peripherals
Business travelers spend way too much time and energy fooling around with big, bulky projectors. Even so-called ultralight projectors are too big to fit comfortably into the outside pocket of a standard notebook case. But that's about to change. A new breed of tiny pocketable projectors is coming your way. Case in point: The Light Blue Optics PVPro. Using a compact laser to render presentations stored on just about any device, from notebooks and PDAs to iPods and cell phones, the PVPro is on demo at 3GSM this week, but it'll probably be a long time before you'll get to use one for your own big sales pitch.

[Via Gizmag]

WashDryIron Does Everything But the Folding
Topic: Appliances
If any of you out there actually enjoy ironing, you must have the coolest iron on earth. For our part, we'd rather take a more hands-off approach. And that's where this new design from University of Plymouth, UK, graduate Oliver Blackwell comes in. The WashDryIron can tackle up to 16 items at once, including king size bed sheets. Just hang them up in the little lockers and turn this thing on, and it'll produce clean, wrinkle-free results. Not surprisingly, the hangers are the key, because they keep the clothes from getting all tangled up, thereby reducing wrinkles by 83%. Blackwell expects the WashDryIron to retail for around US$1,400.

[Via BBC]

Moto Unveils New FM Radio Phone
Topic: Phones
This week at the 3GSM mobile technology conference, Motorola has dropped yet another load of new gear into the mix. Most notable among the new contenders is the W220, a FM radio phone aimed at the young folk with plenty of RAZR-esque styling. Unlike the RAZR, however, this handset should be mighty cheap. Apart from its FM tuner, the W220 offers few extras. Its 120 x 120-pixel screen is barely large enough for lots of texting, and you know a phone is pretty much bare bones when the maker lists downloadable wallpaper as a feature. Exact pricing isn't yet available, but Moto says the phone is expected to hit carriers in the July to September timeframe.

Yellow Slime Mold Evolves, Controls Robots
Topic: Robots
OK, so perhaps it isn't really the slime mold that's evolving so much as the field of robotics, but roboticist Klaus-Peter Zauner at the University of Southampton in the UK has indeed developed a spider bot that can be controlled by a single-celled organism. Because yellow slime mold is light sensitive and prefers to inhabit dark places, Zauner was able to harness this tendency to allow the mold to steer a bot to the safety of the shade. Rather than place the slime on the robot itself (which might have required the development of itty bitty helmets for all the little spores), Zauner devised a system that linked a six-pointed mold-filled compartment to the six-sided robot body so that any light that shone on the robot was duplicated on the spores. And sure nuff, every time the bot saw sunlight, the spores sent him running for cover.

[Via New Scientist]

Goodbye Palm OS, Hello Linux
Topic: PDAs
The four horsemen of the PDA apocalypse are mounted up and ready to ride, and Palm OS is now officially dead. With Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0 now running on Palm devices and Palm OS developer PalmSource long since sold to the Japanese company Access, it was only a matter of time before this announcement came along. Access is putting Palm OS to bed in favor of a completely rebranded and totally redesigned mobile operating system built entirely on Linux. The new OS will still run legacy Palm software in addition to lots of Linux-based apps, but it won't even have the word "palm" in the name. Instead, it'll be called Access Linux Platform. Of course, it'll be a while before the new OS comes to a handheld near you, as the developer's kit won't even be available until much later this year.

Seagate Pumps Up Capacity for 1-inch Hard Drives
Topic: Storage
Just about everyone loves the tiny pocketable chassis of the iPod Nano. But it's hard to love the limited capacity of the player's 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB hard drives. For that matter, even the 30GB iPod offers barely enough space to hold most people's record collection. But Seagate is working on a solution that bridges the gap between small size and big capacity. Today the company announced a 12GB 1-inch hard drive that is now the largest available anywhere. So if you've gotta have as many songs as possible on one tiny device, it's only a matter of time before this little drive appears in your favorite audio device.

Throw Another Windows Mobile 5.0 Phone on the Barby
Topic: Phones
More than a few skeptics have pronounced Windows Mobile 5.0 smart phones dead on arrival. But we can't help feeling at least a little impressed by the sheer abundance of them coming to market. Now Samsung is throwing another option into the mix with the SGH-i320. Powered by Windows Mobile 5.0, of course, the i320 offers a QWERTY keypad in a fairly compact form factor, together with Bluetooth, MicroSD, and a 1.3-megapixel camera. Since it offers EDGE data networking in addition to GSM voice, we've got a hunch that it'll appear on Cingular's network if it ever comes to the U.S.

[Via PhoneScoop]

Google = Evil After All
Topic: Internet
According to a statement issued yesterday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Google Desktop ain't what it seems. A new feature of the application now records the contents of your hard drive, storing actual copies of your files -- including Word documents, PDFs, and spreadsheets. Concern about the new "Search Across Computers" feature arises out of the possibility that making such files available to Google opens users up to severe invasion of privacy, not only from hackers, but from government surveillance as well.

Rebuilding the Dream of Airship-filled Skies
Topic: Transportation
Prior to the tragic destruction of the Hindenberg, it was airships -- not airplanes -- that held the promise of a skyborne future for humankind. And although today's airships (aka, blimps) float on helium rather than more volatile hydrogen, the fateful crash and burn of the Hindenberg has kept most people off of airships and allowed jets and prop planes almost exclusive dominion over the skies. Sure, a heavier-than-air craft will get you there faster than a lighter-than-air one. But if Worldwide Aeros Corporation has its way, you'll be cruising the skies in a blimp on your next long sabbatical. With plans to build a fleet of lighter-than-air cruise ships, Worldwide Aeros is banking on the notion that the skies hold more allure than the seas for the rapidly retiring baby boomer generation. And with a new contract to design luxury liners as pampering and posh as anything Princess Cruises has afloat, the idea looks pretty appealing. Perhaps the age of the airship has yet to arrive.

[Via Dexigner.com]