You supply the drive; Meritline.com has an enclosure for just $10.99 shipped (after entering coupon code HW1971413OFF, which expires 1/25). It’s compatible with all 2.5-inch IDE and SATA drives, and it includes both IDE and SATA external interfaces (cables, too). You also get a carrying case and a little screwdriver for opening and closing the [...]

Shigeo Hirose, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, has been working on what he refers to as “serpent robots” and serpentine locomotion since the 1970s.
(Credit:
SINTEF ICT)
ACM-R5
For its design of a robot for use inside pipes, the SINTEF ICT part of the SINTEF Group, a [...]

In conjunction with Electronic Arts, that official Hasbro Scrabble app is now up, in beta. How does it compare to Scrabulous? Pretty well. Too well, actually. While Scrabulous fans will see no reason to switch to the official Scrabble app, newcomers to the game on Facebook (like me), will find Scrabble easier to get [...]

(Credit:
Canon)

The Canon PowerShot SD990 IS replaces the SD950 IS, which we thought pushed limits with its 12 megapixels. Canon obviously thought different, opting to drive the PowerShot SD990 IS Digital ELPH up to 14.7 megapixels. That’s a lot of resolution for a camera that’s still small enough to fit in a shirt pocket.
Along with [...]

In a kulturkampf between old and new, several hundred youthful Facebook activists are increasingly under pressure from Egyptian authorities.
Earlier in the year, a group of young Egyptians used Facebook to organize support for a strike by textile workers on April 6. To put it mildly, Egypt’s authoritarian government did not welcome this [...]

Delta Air Lines passengers will get Wi-Fi access on all domestic flights by the middle of next year, the company said Tuesday.
Several other airlines, including American Airlines, Virgin America and JetBlue, have announced similar in-flight Wi-Fi plans, but Delta’s roll-out is among the most aggressive plans announced.
Delta Air Lines will begin offering Wi-Fi throughout its [...]

It’s entertaining to see all these new geo-focused sites trying to build out their social networks and their databases of local content. There’s still a huge disconnect between the sites that make data entry easy and the ones that do a good job of helping you find what and who you are looking for.

Everyblock gathers [...]

Fujitsu is in talks to sell its hard disk drive business to Western Digital, according to a Japan-based report.
Western Digital is the second-largest hard disk drive maker in the world behind Seagate Technology. Fujitsu’s HDD unit is ranked sixth.
Fujitsu would sell all of its plants–including those in Japan, Thailand, and the Philippines–for between [...]

If my hunch is right, Chris Tolles has a better shot at representing the future of media than does Chris Matthews and his ilk. And that would be so fine by me–and probably lots of you, as well.

At the Web 2.0 Expo last week, I had a long conversation with Tolles, who runs Topix.com, [...]

T.J. Rodgers, chief executive of Cypress Semiconductor and free-market buccaneer
(Credit:
Declan McCullagh/News.com)
q&a SAN JOSE–T.J. Rodgers is an unapologetic capitalist who happens to be the chief executive of San Jose, Calif.’s, Cypress Semiconductor. The two roles, as you’ll soon see, are deeply intertwined.

Cypress’ product catalog includes things like programmable logic devices, USB controllers, and SRAM chips–the basic [...]