Via Lauren Beukes, and offered pretty much without comment: new Barbie doll with chest-embedded YouTube-grade video camera spotted at International Toy Fair.
Tag Archives: toy
Bubble wrap to your heart’s content (or until the batteries run out)
Here’s something to start off your weekend. Probably the most universally pleasing thing in the world is (no, not THAT – Puritans hated that) bubble wrap. But you can’t always carry around a big wad of bubble wrap to de-stress. So the Japanese, who make everything better, came up with the Mugen Puchi Puchi bubble wrap gizmo.
You can get 10 hours of battery life from it, and the highlights are a mute button for public places (I’ll strangle you if you use it next to me on the train) and a special bonus sound every one hundred pops. For US$7, I might have to spring for one of these if I run into it in Tokyo this weekend.
[story via Mainichi Daily News] [image via the official website]
Robot toy can now recognize human faces, new torment for cats on the way
A new toy that’s been developed will be able to greet you and your family’s pet by name, as well as display emotions. The 17-inch doll comes in at 1/5 the price of the now defunct AIBO at $300, primarily due to the outsourcing of processing power to your computer, which it will connect to using Wi-fi. Zeno will be able to learn faces and names, as well as being fully mobile (walking, at least, no jump jets – yet). Its first debut was at Wired Magazine’s NextFest conference Sept. 13th-16th in LA. The developer’s website has an email list for those of you dying to keep track of its next appearance. [image courtesy Wikipedia Commons]
Zeno covers pretty much everything you need — vision, hearing, speech — to move about the world and the crafty outsourcing of computing power potentially allows for updates. Combine it with this guy and I’m definitely in!
(via PC World)