But will it do windows?: A Japanese company has mass-production plans for a human-shaped walking robot that will sell for $4,600.
Tokyo-based ZMP Inc., which has so far made robots only for research and rental, expects to sell about 3,000 of the new Nuvo model. The company plans to make them available by year’s end.
Although other Japanese companies, including Sony Corp. and Honda Motor Co., have created humanoid robots, the machines have merely taken part in special events and are not sold to consumers. Sony also makes the dog-like robot Aibo, with models starting at $780.
The 15-inch-tall Nuvo walks on two legs, picks itself up when it falls, recognizes voice commands such as “advance” and “stop,” and is controlled by remote from a cell phone.
A digital camera in its head can relay images of its surroundings to a video phone from Japan’s top mobile carrier, NTT DoCoMo.
What’s the Russian word for “sorry”?: A misconfigured spam filter blocked Comcast Corp.’s 5 million high-speed Internet customers from reaching Russia for four days.
Until the filter was corrected Tuesday, customers could not send e-mail to users with Russian “.ru” domains, the company said.
Internet service providers use filters to block junk e-mail coming in and to prevent spammers from sending out such messages.
Comcast had applied the filter after seeing a large volume of e-mails sent with return addresses ending with the “.ru” domain.
Spam filters often go awry, but more often incoming messages are the ones mistakenly tagged spam. Comcast said incoming mail to its customers wasn’t affected.
Printer cartridge tiff resolved: A company at the center of a legal skirmish over remanufactured printer toner cartridges has re-engineered its computer chips to address the objections.
A year ago, a federal judge in Kentucky barred Static Control Components Inc. from making or selling chips that match remanufactured toner cartridges to Lexmark International Inc. printers.
Lexmark’s chips have a formula for computing how much toner is loaded in a cartridge, and Lexmark claimed Static’s use of it was a copyright violation. Static attorney Skip London said that Static’s new chips for Lexmark’s T520, T620 and T630 printer cartridges use a different formula Static developed.
Last week, Static asked a court to declare that it can sell its re-engineered replacement chips.
Americans love Internet accessibility: In yet another sign that the Internet has become more pervasive, a quarter of adult users have logged on outside the traditional settings of home or work.
Some are lower-income Americans who have no other choice but to do their Web surfing in schools or libraries. But many are younger adults who are “moving toward this anytime, anywhere access,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which conducted the study.
Beside work and home, the most popular places for logging on are friends’ or neighbors’ homes, schools and libraries. Less common are from a relative’s house, Internet cafes and churches.
Only 3 percent say they exclusively use a location other than work or home, but 28 percent of those earning less than $30,000 cited such a location as an access point.
About half of those age 18 to 24 log on outside home or school, although that includes college students. Removing school usage, the 25-34 age group was most likely to use “other places.”
A fluid lens that can focus: Philips Electronics has developed a fluid-based lens whose focus can change using an electrical charge.
Philips, Europe’s largest maker of consumer electronics, said the lens does not employ moving parts, so it is difficult to break and can focus more than a million times without wearing out.
“The idea isn’t new,” Philips spokesman Koen Joosse said. “As far back as the 17th century people made a fluid lens, but it wasn’t capable of focusing.”
The company believes it can mass-produce the lens for digital cameras, camera phones, home security systems and other uses. Many low-cost models of such cameras now have only fixed-focus lenses.
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