Germany has churned out the one or the other humanoid in recent months, but Myon might actually be the coolest deutsche robot out there. The little guy stands 125cm tall and weighs 15kg. He was designed by Cologne-based design studio frackenpohl poulheim [GER] and developed at Berlin’s Humboldt University as part of the European ALEAR (Artificial Language Evolution on Autonomous Robots) research… → Read More
It seems not only Japan, but also Germany is capable of producing super-advanced humanoids. Case in point: AILA, a fembot [GER] developed at the Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz (DFKI/German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence).
AILA, in her current form, stands 170cm tall. There are 22 joints in her body, a 3D camera, two laser range finders, six wheels shes moves… → Read More
I need to move to Europe for several reasons, but the one that’s relevant right now? 3D broadcasts of top-tier football (“soccer”) leagues. Sky Deutschland has announced that it will broadcast the March 14 match between Bayer Leverkusen and Hamburg (that’s the second place team versus the fourth place team). Lucky devils. → Read More
These clever little German kids toys from Kaufladen cost about $400 and are pretty silly but I think the best part is when DaddyTypes writes:
Kids in the US get play kitchens. Kids in Germany get play sales kiosks. Which country has a childhood obesity problem and which one has already pulled out of the recession? That’s what I thought. → Read More
It lost the top spot in 2008, but in 2009, Panasonic submitted the most international patent applications (according to a preliminary report released by the World Intellectual Property Organization on Monday). Panasonic filed a total of 1,891 applications, topping the 1,847 of major Chinese telecommunications equipment producer Huawei Technologies (which was the No. 1 in 2008). → Read More
In the intricacies of high-level European diplomacy, there’s two things Paris and Berlin can agree on: Conan is better, and you’d better not be using Internet Explorer. A French government agency is now advising citizens of the French Republic not to use Internet Explorer because of security concerns. It’s 2010, and we’re still writing “IE isn’t secure!” stories. Amazing. → Read More
Microsoft’s PR folks in Germany have officially asked journalists not to use or talk about Apple products during their events. Why? Because one journo said his iPhone kicked ass. 9to5 has a translation of the German story which essentially amounts to a Microsoft asking a journalist not to use his Apple products at an event. → Read More
Deutsche Telekom’s e-book reader probably has gone the way of the Dodo, but the Germans are still getting a home-made Kindle competitor. The device, dubbed txtr, was announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair that’s happening in Deutschland right now, and it will become available in that country as soon as December 1 (as pre-order).
The txtr is the product of a Berlin-based start-up of the same name. → Read More
Scoreloop has just announced it closed its second financing round, with a $2.8 million / €2 million cash injection from new investors Earlybird and existing investor Target Partners, which was the seed funder for the Munich-based company. The funds will be used to fuel the growth of the company and to establish (or solidify) its position, especially in the realm of the iPhone. Since launching… → Read More
Good news for German football fans who use T-Mobile. The company’s Bundesliga Total service is coming to cellphones. That means you’ll be able to watch every single game played in the first and second division from the comfort of your iPhone, G1 and G2. This is all live, by the way, not cheap-o highlights sent to your phone hours after the game has ended. → Read More
You’d usually find the best vending machines in Japan… until now! There are plans to introduce vending machines in Germany that sell gold. That’s right: 100 percent pure gold. → Read More
Bad news for German gamers. (As I understand it, we’re huge in Baden-Baden.) A bill is about to be introduced to parliament, after having been rubber-stamped by all sixteen of the country’s interior ministers, that would ban the sale of all violent video games. What’s a violent video game? Any game “where the main part is to realistically play the killing of people or other cruel or unhuman acts… → Read More
It’s one thing to develop an interface that lets you control slow-moving robots with your thoughts alone, but it’s quite another to let you play pinball that way. But a machine built by researchers at prestigious Technische Universität Berlin in Germany makes just that possible. → Read More
A study conducted by the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) shows that Germany is the world’s leading country when it comes to grid-connected solar photovoltaic capacity, clearly besting all other nations. → Read More
We all would have guessed it and now IIEE Spectrum Online has come up with some detailed and up-to-date statistics (from last month): Japan boasts the world’s highest density of robots. → Read More
This strange video comes from Berlin’s ad agency Scholz & Friends. I always wondered what those Saturn stores were. Has anyone seen Cherry 2000 recently? → Read More
German company Neoi has apparently developed the world’s thinnest QWERTY phone. That’s bold! Know what’s even more bold? A company inserting its name into Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence formula as a marketing ploy (see upper right hand corner of the above photo). That, my friends, takes some brass ones. This better be one amazing phone, a phone the likes of which Einstein himself would… → Read More
Last week’s attacks in India have reminded us all of the keen danger that terrorism poses. But one tool that was to be employed at airports to combat terrorism, those body scanners that sometimes reveal a person’s, well, person, came under criticism. Fighting terror (inasmuch as you can fight it) is great and all, but should people literally be exposed in the process? The Germans say… → Read More
Ha! Remember when the Half-Life 2 source code was stolen a few years ago, showing up all over BitTorrent, IRC and the like? It turns out that Valve, once it was able to determine who was responsible (with the help of the FBI), a German fellow by the name of Axel Gembe, attempted to offer him a job! The company offered him the job in order to lure him to the U.S. so he could be arrested. Gembe… → Read More
Zee Germans get the first crack at the BlackBerry 8900, to which RIM has added the Curve moniker. It’s very similar to the BlackBerry Bold, but only has EDGE (instead of 3G). That, and its camera is one notch higher than the Cruve’s 2-megapixel one, coming in at 3.2 megapixels with flash. Fancy man. It’s scheduled to ship this month for €5 ($6.27) with a two-year contract. Or… → Read More
This statement from a Microsoft spokesperson, as told to Edge, has the Internet mildly interested: We can confirm that Gears of War 2 will not be available in Germany or Japan indefinitely. Then, a short time later, Microsoft rushed to clarify the statement, saying it had “no announcement” has been made regarding the game’s release in Japan. When you consider that Gears of War was the… → Read More
Facebook may be the world’s largest and fastest growing social network, but apparently Germany remains a tough market to crack for the company. The site is just ranked 19th on Alexa’s Top 100 list for this country, 10 positions behind StudiVZ, its local clone. While Facebook currently has a German user base of an 800,000 (according to the site’s ad placement tool), StudiVZ boasts a membership… → Read More
Good luck trying to use VoIP app Sipgate on your iPhone in Germany, since a court there just effectively banned it. T-Mobile, which is Germany’s exclusive iPhone provider, had argued in court that the application encourages users to jailbreak their iPhone. By jailbreaking the iPhone, users would be violating T-Mobile’s terms and conditions, apparently punishable under pain of death. → Read More
Not actually the actual chair the teens actually built in actuality. Two 17-year olds in Germany got busted on Saturday for tooling around town on their undeniably awesome office chair outfitted with a lawnmower engine and bike brakes. It’s being called the world’s fastest office chair but I’d be really interested to see how fast it actually goes and also the office chair that’s the second… → Read More
Not Japanese but German robots have been leased by the Chinese government to uphold the law during the Beijing Olympics. Berlin-based Robowatch Technologies has sent a total of 16 security robots to China. Two years ago, they were successfully deployed in German stadiums during the soccer world cup. → Read More
They have been secretly tested for 2 months and are now ready for delivery: bullet-resistant bras for 3,000 German police women who are in frontline duty. What may sound like a joke is in fact a serious safety precaution. If a female office is shot wearing just a bullet-proof vest, she can suffer from injuries sustained from metallic or plastic parts of ordinary underwear. The new bras, however… → Read More
Photo credit: Pam Roth The World Intellectual Property Organization reports Japan dropped to second place worldwide in terms of patent application filing in 2006, giving up the pole position to the US for the first time in 43 years. The United States Patent and Trademark Office received a total of 425,966 of patent applications. Japan’s Patent Office trailed with 408,674 filings. China… → Read More
A German court has ruled that having an open, unsecured Wi-Fi access point isn’t tantamount to copyright infringement. Follow the logic for a minute: you’ve got a wide open WAP, and someone comes along and downloads a Metallica album off The Pirate Bay. Metallica’s record company finds the IP address, your IP address, and sends a letter to your ISP demanding retribution. You then… → Read More
The German government today announced plans to build 30 wind farms in the North and Baltic Sea north of Germany. Each facility will cost $1.57 billion. The first farm will become reality this year. By 2030, a total of 25,000 megawatts are supposed to be produced when the grid of interconnected wind farms is finalized. With the record investment, the German government said it wants to increase the… → Read More
At Germany’s new grocery story of the future (already in use by residents of the present) shoppers can use mobile phones to check out while they shop. The store has created free software for your phone that allows you to use your camera to capture barcodes as you shop. Once finished, just press a button and all your purchases come up as a single bar code. Slide your phone under the barcode… → Read More
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