Neato have built the XV11 robotic vacuum cleaner perhaps in attempt to knock Roomba off the top spot. The Neato XV11 appears to be a serious challenger to the Roomba range of robots and has a number of significant improvements that could see it do very well.
The Neato XV11 works slightly different when cleaning a room by using what appears to be a more methodical approach. When compared to the Roomba that uses a spiralling pattern along with a system which allows the Roomba to bounce of objects and appears to randomly cover the carpet, the XV11 maps along the walls of the room to know how big the room is. Rooms are typically broken down in to 15′ x 15′ and if power gets low mid clean, the XV11 goes back to it’s base to recharge and then carries on where it left off. Another difference between the two vacuums is that the Roomba uses virtual walls and the XV11 uses laser to detect doorways and wont leave a room unless it is told to do so. The system used on the XV11 is called SLAM which means simultaneous localization and mapping. SLAM has lasers on the top that detect objects 360 degrees around it. With that data pathfinding can be done as well as obstacle avoidance. [Read more…]
It’s not that often you get the chance to drop your Digital SLR camera 3000 feet to the ground, but this is exactly what happened to the camera pictures above. The camera dropped was a 
A new iPhone application has been launched by Microsoft [MSFT] that brings Bing the search engine to the iPhone. The new Bing iPhone application gives you the ability to search for webpages, images, movies, maps, news and even directions from your iPhone. One of the features built in allows you to use voice search while looking for places on a map as well as using voice for regular web search.
CPT have created a new 21.5 inch projected capacitive touch screen panel and have sent it for validation by their clients.
TheNexusOne website have posted a few videos of the Google Nexus One. Unfortunately they don’t really show anything too interesting other than a boot up animation and what the home screen looks like. However, it’s still good to see what the phone looks like on video rather than relying on just pictures.
CherryPal have launched a new netbook called Africa. The real interesting thing here is that they are selling it for $99. For the $99 you get a 7 inch screen along with a 400 MHz processor, 256MB of RAM and 2GB of storage.
If you want to get something different to hang on your Christmas tree this year then take a look at Walyou’s guide to Geeky Christmas Tree ornaments. In total there are 194 listed showing various themes like Star Wars, Video Games as well as a bunch of weird trees. 
BGR managed to get hold of a couple of Google Nexus One photo’s. The first seen above and below shows the profile vs that of a T-Mobile G1. As can be seen, the Nexus one is very thin. Some things to note here is that the G1 does have a physical keyboard though that does add a little bulk.
Google’s [GOOG] App Market is ticking along quite nicely for them it seems. Google haven’t published details of how many apps are included, but another company have and have said that there are now 20,000 applications available for download.
Thesearethedroids hjave taken a look at the ROM on the new Google phone that will be called the Nexus One. The Nexus One appears to be running a Snapdragon processor due to some specific Snapdragon libraries found in the ROM.
Google [GOOG] have announced a new service this morning that is capable of shortening URL’s. The service is called Google URL Shortener and is designed for those who like to share links on websites such as Twitter.com where you are restricted to the amount of characters you can tweet.
This digital photo frame not only displays photos but also has a scanner built in allowing you to scan old prints and display them on the screen.
