Comments (1)

By Brian, December 9, 2006 3:13 pm

I’m not much for toys – but sometimes something catches my eye as being a handy thing to have. The Roomba robot, created by iRobot is one such device. Put it down, press a button and this little robot traverses your home vacuming on it’s own. It can go under furniture and has automatic room discovery software that allows it to get a picture of the area to be cleaned and figure out the most efficient way to do so.

It even has the ability to detect areas that are extra dirty and gives them a little extra attention. This is great, for someone like myself – I have a tendency to operate in my own little world and that sometimes leads to unintentional neglect of such tasks such as floor cleaning. Advanced models allow for scheduling of the little cleaning beasty and the Roomba can even park itself in it’s charger by itself.

Imagine you can go about your daily life and this small droid takes care of your floors for you. Replace frequent cleaning tasks such as vacuming and sweeping with merely picking up the Roomba and emptying it’s dirt chamber occasionally.

Of course, at $300 and up (although a refurbished model goes for $200) such convenience is not cheap.

Comments (0)

By Brian, December 9, 2006 2:32 pm

It seems the American attitude of suing others for their own stupidity is prevailing. Not only are there talks on the Internet of lawsuits due to a faulty controller strap, now there’s talks of repetative strain injuries (RSI) from swinging their motion sensitive controller around. Of course, rather than making their kids take an occasional break from their video game activities parents would rather sue Nintendo.

On a more pertinent suit another company, Interlink, is launching legal action because they claim the Wii controller is infringing on their patents for a remote controlled pointer device.

Pictured here to the right, is Interlink’s pointing device. These remotes are not used in a game system (operating as a PC mouse for presentations) however, other companies have successfully taken legal action against console manufacturers for similar technologies, such as the rumble feature in Sony’s Playstation controllers.

Interlink is claiming lost profits and royalties. I’m not sure that Nintendo Wii users are forgoing purchasing remote office devices because they have a game console. I would surmise that, if anything, they’re more likely to purchase Interlink’s device due to being familiar with the technology involved, but what do I know?