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Robots Dreams reported that Takahashi-san, of Kyoto?s Robot Garage came up with a new humanoid which looks like a female and walks like a female. The humanoid is called, FT for “female type”. I didn’t know about the fame of Takahashi-san and Robot Garage of Kyoto University before. As I learned they are famous with other two good-looking male robots namely Chroino and Manoi. I don’t know who is setting the standards for “good-looking” in the robot world, but those robots definetely do not look like metal pieces brought together to look like a human.

According to Robots Dreams there isn’t much detail about the specifics of the FT but the production time is said to be 13 months.

If the FT gets to stay at the Robot Garage together with Chroino and Manoi, I can imagine next year’s headlines: “Humonids Fight for Love: The athlete humanoid Manoi stabbed Chroino as two were fighting to win the heart of FT, the sexiest female humanoid in the world.”

humanoid, female type, chroino, manoi, kyoto, robot garage

Google bought a search algorithm invented by an Israeli student at University of New South Wales in Australia. According to the news, Microsoft and Yahoo were also negotiating. The student is now said to be working at Google.

So, what does make this algorithm valuable? As I understand from short news article, the algorithm relates to the most relevant search results. THis is important. In addition, it is supposed to recommend topics that relate to the search item.

[via Digg]

google, microsoft, yahoo, search, search algorithm

I have no intentions to turn this blog into Engadget, but in order to complete the series of posts that I posted about Microsoft’s Origami here and here, I felt it is necessary to say that everything about the Origami Project teaser has been revealed this week at CeBIT. I am a bit late at posting this but turns out the buzz was about a new gadget buzz concept called Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC). I think the excitement was a little calmed down after the details went out about it. You can get more coverage on that at Engadget or at Origami Portal.

The picture above is from Engadget and shows the three UMPC devices from Samsung, ASUS, and Founder.

Origami, Microsoft, UMPC, technology

Above is a picture of Origami which was leaked to the web and shown at Origami Portal. Although there is no evidence that this is the real thing most people seem to be believing that it is not a mock up.

This thing looks undeniably cool. The form factor seems acceptable. It is not clear from the buttons how the navigation will be like when the touchscreen is not used with a stylus. Well, you may think that there would not be anytime when touchscreen will not be used but I guess it would be nice to have a play/pause or stop buttons on the device itself for convenience. Since this is not a confirmed picture it doesn’t really make sense to critic it though. From the icons on the interface and the device, it seems like it is wireless enabled. as well. If Microsoft can really come up with this device and make it real good, they may steal the coolness factor from iPod in a heartbeat.

I have a feeling after his evidence of the new portable media device, Microsoft will take a similar stance saying that this is just a early prototype design. On the other hand, there may very well be a video showing how this mock up was created even before Microsoft responds

origami, origami project, microsoft, portable media player, ipod

Loremo AG of Germany developed a passenger car with hard to believe 157 mpg. The start-up car company is said to introduce their new car at the Motor Show 2006 in Geneva, Switzerland next week.

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So, what is that Origami Project? According to Scoble, it is a device. Microsoft seems to like that viral marketing acts a lot lately. They create a teaser website and try to create a buzz around the product.
Engadget seems to have a tip about what Origami Project is and have some pictures which may not of course be the real thing. It is rumored that the device is potentially a portable media center. One potentially interesting thing is that a stylus is seen in the images which suggests that the device has a touch screen. If this is the case, this will be the first touch screen portable media player in the market.

The mystery will be revealed on March 2nd as the flash teaser on the Origami Project website suggests.

microsoft, origami, portable_media_player