The Way of the Widget

HAVE YOU EMBRACED THE WIDGET MOVEMENT? If not, you will. Widgets are small, often Internet-connected mini-applications that live on your PC, gathering information, keeping you informed and entertaining you.

The new generation of widgets and widget-engines emerged in 2000, pioneered by start-ups. The widget concept gained widespread attention with its inclusion in an early beta of Windows Vista and a shipping version of the Mac OS.

There's no question about it: Widgets are great. Unfortunately, there are four limitations that make them less-than perfect: 1) if you use a lot of them, they'll end up buried under your open windows; 2) they're resource hogs, putting your unsaved applications at risk; 3) each widget "ecosystem" offers an incomplete range of offerings; and 4) current usage patters make it hard to switch from one set of widgets to another.

Of course, I'm going to tell you how to overcome these limitations (otherwise I wouldn't' have brought it up) and build your own "Total Information Awareness" dashboard that will bring real-time information to you every minute of the day. You'll be able to know everything, all the time. Go here to read the story (on Computerworld.com). If you like it, go here to Digg it.

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It's an honor just to be nominated... The awesome BornRich.org blog named me their "Cool Geek of the Week." The "Cool Geek" thing works like this: For the next week, you can ask me questions HERE, and I answer, and the whole thing is posted next week in a regular interview format. I'd like to thank my agent, and everyone on the coast who made this possible, but especially the lovely and talented Instablogs Publisher Nandini Maheshwari and her whole New Delhi posse! 

Japan Winning Fembot Wars

Japan, China and South Korea are waging an all-out war over who can create the best fembot. The competition is not just about beauty, but talent. All three fembots can sing, talk and make facial expressions. Japan's is called the Actroid DER2. China recently unveiled its Dion fembot. And Korea chimed in with the EveR2-Muse. Of the three, Japan's is the most sophisticated from a robot perspective.

U.S. Army Embracing RFID 'Smart Dog Tags'

The U.S. Army plans to replace within 10 years all stamped metal "dog tags" with RFID-enabled SMART DOG TAGS that store health records of each soldier. Medics in the field will be able to use a PDA-size scanner to read each soldier's medical history, and even update it with whatever their treatment is. Already some 13,000 troops are carrying larger prototypes of the new tags.

New Glass CD Shatters Record For Longevity

A Japanese company called N&F Label is selling the first-ever GLASS CD (a recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Air on G String"), which is supposed to provide superior quality sound and last "forever" without ever bending, distorting or deteriorating. The price: $830.

News You Can Lose

Ms. Dewey is a new search engine lorded over by an avatar (played by actress Janina Gavankar) that makes comments, jokes and SEMI-RUDE REMARKS as your results appear. She drinks, shoos away her sycophantic assistant, shoots rubber bands at you and generally entertains you while you're searching. (While you're not searching, she entertains herself by harassing you.) Ms. Dewey is the anti-Google. She's part of an experimental viral marketing campaign for Microsoft Windows Live Search developed by San Francisco-based Evolution Bureau. Bonus weirdness: If you turn up your sound and listen carefully, you can hear an off-camera director giving the actress stage directions.

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Bad Robots

Futaba reportedly plans to sell its new Futuba Robot worldwide for just $1,200 each. The 10-inch tall humanoid robot uses 11 high torque servos and 9 lightweight servos for the upper body for SUPER-FAST MOVEMENT. The robot kit takes two hours to build, and will come with 15 pre-programmed moves or use an included motion editor to build their own. Here comes the VIDEO!

Chinese Theft o' the Week

The Chinese company CMEC plans to start SELLING A COPY of the DaimlerChrysler Smart Car which they're calling the City Smart. Not actually paying for a designer capable of original design and no doubt using semi-slave labor to manufacture it, the car will cost $5,250. The major difference, however, is that the City Smart will be electric.

Real Poker, E-Poker Combined Into Real E-Poker

And that's a Real E-Bad headline... Anyway, Hollywood Park Casino in Los Angeles recently opened an ePOKER ROOM, which uses networked screens built into the poker table in place of cards, chips and a dealer. In future, they say, tables will be networked together to enable room-wide tournaments.

Proof You Can Buy Anything on the Web

Just fire up your browser and all this can be yours:

A USB Christmas Tree

An "Air Piano" Robotic Hand

and even a Mousepad Electronic Drum Set

Gotta-Get-It Gadgets

A new, self-contained headphone radio has SOLAR PANELS on top that charge the batteries. No need to ever replace or recharge the batteries. Forget Duracell. This gadget REALLY keep going and going.... 

Talk about unanticipated convergence. The Street Mouse VOIP combines an IP phone and mouse combination in the shape of a VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE. To you use the headphones, just plug them into the front right tire. Both headlights and tail lights work -- which is an important feature in a mouse phone.

The Kanguru Flash Max is a ruggedized USB "thumb drive" that stores a whopping 32 GIGABYTES of data. The downside? It costs $1499.99.

This $449.95 gadget is marketed as a telescope with a built-in 3.1 megapixel digital camera. But I prefer to think of it as a digital camera with a 45x LENS! (They can't really pitch it that way because the minimum zoom setting is 15x.) The TC 245 Telescope with Video Capture provides 60mm light capture, supports SD memory cards and comes with a tripod.

Japan's Bandai is selling a small, handheld gadget called the Shape Up Advisor that helps the user (it's targeted at Japanese teen girls) count calories, do exercise and REACH FITNESS GOALS.

Shameless Self-Promotion

The Raw Feed

Computerworld - Mike's column about gadgets and mobile computing.

Vegetarian Organic Life - the awesome healthy living newsletter, blog and RSS feed published by Mike's vegetarian organic wife.

Twisted Games

Binball Wizard

Turbo Penguin

Ball Bounce

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Mystery Pic o' the Week

What is it? Send YOUR guess (be sure to say where you live). If you're first with the right answer, I'll print your name in the next issue of Mike's List!

LAST WEEK'S MYSTERY PIC: No, it's not a "space camera," an "eye for a 60-foot robot," or even "the latest innovation in proctology," as suggested by some readers. In fact, it's a "Turret Ball Conformal Window" -- basically the bubble through which the U.S. Air Force's experimental YAL-1A laser beam weapon is fired from a modified Boeing 747-400F airplane. Congratulations to Yali Friedman of Washington, D.C. for being first with the right answer.

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