Anybots' humanoid robot trains to do the dirty work (CNET News.com)

Anybots is a start-up company in Mountain View, Silicon Valley. The company is in the process of making humanoid robots. Me and Miriam Olsson were assigned to go there and talk to the creators of these humanoid robots. Miriam did a detailed story for the CNET News and I did a video story for CNET TV.
I spoke with Trevor Blackwell, founder of Anybots, and saw humanoid robots that may one day be used to perform dangerous tasks. We had a close look at walking robot Dexter and its pneumatic limbs. After Dexter, Anybots' team built robot Monty, which is on wheels and has arms. Trevor said that humanoid robot would be the mixture of these two robots. He plans to put upper body of Monty on the lower part of Dexter.
It was interesting to know something about the innovations taking place in the field of robotics.

Here is the video report:

http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6173790.html?tag=ne.video.6175714

Link to Miriam's story:

http://news.com.com/Baby+steps+for+Dexter+the+robot/2100-11394_3-6174922.html

Old innovation becomes available to public (CNET News.com)

A family of a videogames collector donated all his games to Stanford University. The collection contains more than 25,000 titles. Henry Lowood, curator for the history of science and technology collections at Stanford University libraries, and his team are in the process of filing all the videogames and make them accessible for people to play them.

http://news.com.com/1606-2-6174194.html

Al Gore wants more engineers (CNET News.com)

Last week I blogged from a keynote Al Gore, former vice president and Oscar-award winner, held at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose. He talked about the need of new engineers when the old ones retire, and that they have to build new systems to help up the climate crisis and make this a better world to live in.

http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-6173081.html

IT is hot again!

Those long-gone dot.com days could be here again. The fact is that the IT companies who have gone public so far this year have been performing very well. And they have managed to attract much more capital than the same time last year.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/31/BUGSOOV0SK1.DTL&hw=hermansson&sn=002&sc=645



Ralph Hermansson

H1-B visas

Last week I wrote, as I mentioned, about the H1-B visas for foreign tech workers. One way of finding out whether your subject is controversial or not is, I guess, the numer of e-mail you receive from readers. Using that parameter, this must have been my most controversial article so far. One reader wondered why foreign farm workers won't be granted the same kind of visa and concluded "I guess MONEY talks." Well, I can't argue with that.

Ralph

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/06/BUGAIP3SAV1.DTL&hw=hermansson&sn=001&sc=1000

Humans fiddle while the planet heats up (CNET NEWS.com)

I interviewed Ms Terry Root, a Stanford Professor on the issue of Global Warming and Climatic Changes affecting Plant and Animal Kingdoms and Humans. The interview lead to a whole lot of interesting debate in the Talkback. Check out the Video links and Newsmaker link.

Newsmaker:
http://news.com.com/Humans+fiddle+while+the+planet+heats+up/2008-11392_3-6172739.html?tag=ne.fd.mnbc

Video:

http://news.com.com/1606-2-6172567.html?tag=ne.fd.mnbc
http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6172550.html?tag=ne.video.6172567
http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6172249.html?tag=ne.video.6172550
http://news.com.com/1606-2-6172237.html?tag=ne.fd.mnbc

April Fools

This is professor A.P.Rilföl, from Yôke University. He has made a great innovation, which today was announced on Spectrum's web site.

It is the first time ever that Spectrum publish a April Fool's article, and I am sure there will be a discussion about it during the news room's next meeting. Is it good or bad for such a serious magazine to publish something like this?
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/apr07/comments/1752