iRobot announces winner in the iRobot Create Challenge

The “Personal Home Robot” was announced today as the winner of iRobot's Create Challenge and it's creator Danh Trinh, 35, of Towson, Md., took home $5,000 for his efforts. The device can water plants, control lights and appliances, play music and remind owners to take medication. “This is an excellent example of the enthusiasm people bring to the idea of building robots,” said Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman, iRobot Corp. “Contestants put in amazing efforts creating exciting and imaginative robots for the challenge. We saw everything from robots that serve food and drinks to robots that paint pictures and can be remotely controlled from distant locations.” No mention was made of any intentions to market "Personal Home Robot" but I'd sure like to have a robot that could take care of the plants!

HULU's first look

Started by NBC Universal and News Corp, HULU.com is NBC's alternative to iTunes and YouTube, that the skeptics have given little chance for success. c|net's news.com has had a look during the closed beta release that started yesterday and the verdict is "Hulu nailed the basics." The review is not all glowing "To be sure, Hulu needs work. The site featured a bare bones look, just a laundry list of show titles and thumbnails. Click on a link and a video player appears." but it seems that providing clear, full length video, for free, puts HULU on the right track.

Book promotion on YouTube!

It seems that viral videos are the way to promote your book these days, or so Random House believes! Commissioning marketing company Crush Toronto to promote Douglas Coupland's new book "The Gum Thief", Random House has released 9 short videos to YouTube with the author's narration. They're pretty good, I'm not sure that they'd make me want to pick up the book, but then again I don't read a lot of fiction... Check it out!

How many hits make you a YouTube star?

The Globe and Mail has an interesting round up of some of the more famous YouTube celebrities. One thing is clear, there is no telling what the viewing public will be drawn to as talent goes head to head with the bizarre and reality does battle with fiction. A million hits appears to be a benchmark but does not guarantee celebrity status.

More technology and the California Wild Fires

There is an LA Times Twitter feed that is dedicated to news about the fire and it is accessible via your mobile phone at this URL. It seems to me that this is potentially a very valuable tool to anyone who is truly affected by this tragedy. Those living in the area and displaced by the evacuations may not have internet access but one would assume cell access is still available. Besides your typical news articles, the feed is offering information about closures and shelter locations. I'm only seeing a couple of hundred people following the feed at the moment, it will be interesting to see if that number grows over time.

Mapping the California fire zone.

I'm seeing a lot of TV and web news coverage of the California wild fires and, not having had the privilege of ever being in that State before, was wanting to put it all into perspective. It was timely that while I was listening to Buzz Out Load this morning the Buzz crew spoke of an interesting Google Maps mashup that maps the area of the fires and pinpoints some major points of interest. It's amazing to see the area affected by these fires and truly brings into scope the magnitude of this tragedy! There's also something much more compelling about being able to click on the map and move the image around as opposed to just seeing the area represented by a static image on TV. Though the video and stories presented by mainstream media is also very overpowering!

Playing in Google's sandbox

If you are looking for a new way to experience searching ala Google, give SearchMash a try! It appears to be where the Google search engineers are trying their hands at a Web 2.0 interface to Google search, though I've not tested to see whether or not the same results are returned in both cases. The landing page is, as you'd expect, very sparse, but the results pane is much more functional. You can tab between results for 'Web', 'Images', 'Video', 'Maps', 'Blogs', and 'Wikipedia'. The site also uses Snap to provide a snapshot image of the pages returned and mousing over an inconspicuous tab on the left hand side of the page presents a list of resent searches. It's very usable and I'm kinda digg'n it!

Look up, look way up!

Would be rocket scientists will be in attendance at the X Prize Cup, which runs today through Sunday at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico. "Organizers expect more than 60,000 attendees, up from last year's 25,000. The Lunar Lander competition will be the center of attention, but the show will also include robotics displays, hands-on spacecraft exhibits and fly-bys courtesy of the U.S. Air Force." according to Wired. The big attraction will be the $2 million lunar lander challenge with $1 million going to "the craft that can hover for 180 seconds and land on a pad that simulates the moon's surface, with craters and boulders." The odds on favorite is video game maker John Carmack (creator of Doom and Quake), and his team at Armadillo Aerospace who according to Wired "holds the record for the longest-hovering vehicle, beating the Japanese space agency and NASA,". Check out this video from Armadillo.

Microsoft surprises analysts with strong quarter

Stronger than anticipated sales of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007, not to mention the lift provided by Halo 3 and subsequent Xbox 360 sales, have propelled Microsoft to a healthy quarter and the market responded favorably with a 12% jump in stock price. Despite strong growth in it's core business Microsoft still has a long way to go in it's online business. “Strategically, looking forward, the challenge for Microsoft is cloud computing and Google,” according to David Mitchell Smith, Gartner analyst. NY Times story here.

More Facebook news!

Now all of those annoying crackberry addicts will have one more thing to do on their smart little devices! Research In Motion (RIM) today announced the launch of "Facebook(R) for BlackBerry (R) Smartphones", a new BlackBerry application that enables mobile access to Facebook using a BlackBerry smartphone. The press release says, among other things, "With the Facebook for BlackBerry Smartphones application, Facebook users can wirelessly send and view messages, photos, pokes and Wall posts. The rich, native application goes beyond browser-based access, automatically pushing notifications to the user's BlackBerry smartphone as friends and colleagues send notes, Wall posts or pokes. The application allows users to take a photo, upload it to the site with captions and tags; quickly and easily invite friends; manage events; manage photo albums; and manage their status while on the go." I'm not sure putting Blackberry addicts and Facebook addicts together is such a good idea... there goes the productivity! and probably the RIM share prices. Also interesting is the fact that Microsoft has been rumored to be interested in RIM, coincidence???