Technology and Innovation

GR-I267TR INTERNET REFRIGERATOR

Why worry about what’s in your fridge-freezer, when your fridge-freezer can worry about it for you? This massive silver, side-by-side (one side’s the fridge, the other the freezer) monster contains a touch-sensitive LCD screen that contains all manner of wonderful things. It’s got full Internet and email access a built-in TV and MP3 player and an organiser.You can leave your mates or family members messages and recipe tips, and even kee p track of the entire contents without ever having to open the door, It’s also got an external ice dispenser offering various levels of ice, from crushed to cubed. How cool is that? Very cool indeed.

If you do fancy doing a Delia, or for that matter, an “Awight mate, pukka!” Oliver, then you’re going to need a top-notch cooker to cope with it all, especially if you like your Sunday roasts. TheTerim Dual Fuel Range Cooker is big enough and sturdy enough to cope with just about anything you can throw at it, on it or into it. Available in easy-to-clean brushed stainless steel, it’s got four main gas rings on the hob, plus an additional central wok burner to really stir-fry things up.The rings may be gas, but the 51 -litre main oven and 31 -litre side convection oven are both electric.The Terim’s got a digital auto-programmer and a warm storage compartment to keep things in while you wait for the other bits of your meal to play catch-up.

Soprano Jug Kettle

Kettles may come in different shapes and sizes, but when it comes to boiling water, they’re all much of a muchness: fill, boil, pour, drink. End of tea- or coffee-making story. But this chunky, brushed-stainless-steel and graphite effort from Morphy Richards is about as blokey-looking a kettle as you can get. It’s even got a butch, off-the-telly mobster name for added toughness. The Soprano is fast too, and comes with a robust handle for better grip, a removable limescale filter, and twin water-level indicators. Best of all, its got a pleasingly retro whistle feature that lets you know when its job is done.

BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID

Extreme killer robots know the way to San Jose

Mark Pauline makes robots that look like they want to kill you. Head of the Survival Research Laboratory, the body that organised the Art Of Extreme Robotics exhibition in San Jose, he gave visitors a view of robot art at its most terrifying. The SRL staged demonstrations have provoked criticism since September 11 .As Pauline often presents his work within enclosed environments;the results create the same claustrophobic terror felt by the people trapped inside the World Trade Centre. Another exhibitor was Eric Paulos. As part of his Experimental Interaction Unit, he developed the l-Bomb. Firing a magnetic pulse that destroys all magnetic media within its cone, you wouldn’t want this robot anywhere near your credit cards.

SONY’S ALL-SINGING, ALL-DANCING ROBOT
Following on from the huge success of their puppy-like AIBO robots, Sony has unveiled a new prototype that can sing (yes, sing) and climb stairs. The new “toy” is capable of maintaining an upright position while walking on two legs and can be programmed directly from the PC.
The SDR-4X is sensor-loaded and operates using 38 independently moving joints fed information from the unit’s real-time control system. One of the key features Sony boasts about is the robot’s ability to sense variations in the surface it’s walking on and adjust its walking pattern accordingly.The robot’s not only capable of achieving a stable and flexible walking pattern, but can also assess its course over varying terrain and navigate objects, such as stairs, in its path. You’ll also be able to program the biped to move around as you see fit, by hooking it up to a PC over a wireless link. Even if our mechanical friend takes a tumble, don’t worry, it possesses the mobility to stand up again.
Using image and voice recognition to respond to people’s faces and voices, it can also recognise up to ten different individuals through front facial image capture, even against complex backgrounds his is achieved by using seven microphones placed inside the robot’s head to locate a sound source and recognise individual speech and tone. As well as voice synthesis, the SDR-4Xalso  expresses emotion through an advanced range of fluid movements in its body. Not just a walker and talker, it can sing and dance according to the different music and lyrics programmed into its software.
More functional uses for the robot have not been detailed by Sony, who is tight-lipped about a release date for a consumer model, only suggesting that one will be available before the end of the year. Rumour has it, however, that the SDR-4X will not come cheap: early estimates are it could cost as much as a luxury car.

NOKIA 8270 CDMA PHONE
$175 (£125)
Even if no one calls, you’ll look incredibly stylish and popular with the new Nokia 8270 CDMA fashion phone. Weighing just three ounces, the phone comes with user-changeable Xpress-on colour covers (in orange, green, silver, white and magenta) and is the first Nokia in the American market with the signature bright blue backlight. Additional highlights include the ever-present customisable ringtone (with a special feature for individual identification tones), a standard 750m Ah lithium-ion battery, a phonebook with up to 250 entries, an alarm clock and a calendar. Nokia has also thoughtfully included a built-in mini-browser with Internet connectivity and two-way mobile text messaging.

GE OVENS WITH SABBATH MODE
from $399-$2/499 (£275-£1750) Oy vey! Dinner again and no plans already. GE Appliances has teamed up with renowned restaurateur and chef Laura Frankel (of Chicago and New York’s Shallots Restaurant) to create a line of kosher wall ovens, smooth-top electric slide-in and smooth-top electric drop-in ranges with the intruigingly unique “Sabbath Mode” A-okayed by kosher-certifying agency Star-K,the Sabbath Mode overrides most modern ranges’ integrated 12-hour automatic shut-off, enabling observant folks to keep food warm all day. The mode also puts a kibosh on tones and timer beeps, says ixnay to displaying icons and is unnoticeable to non-Jewish owners.

POGO! FLIPSTER PORTABLE AUDIO PLAYER $450 (£315) MP3 is sooo last week now that PoGo! has introduced the Flipster, the first fully portable MP4 player. Impersonating a flip phone, the $450 Flipster comes with 128MB of internal memory and has been designed to support SD/MMC cards (ever considerate, PoGo! promises future expansion is possible).The device can play CD-quality MP3,WMA and AAC digital music files, and display both Microsoft Windows Media videos (MP4) or high-resolution digital photographs on its LCD screen. Business peeps borrowing their kid’s Flipster will appreciate the device’s voice memo capability (and most likely the games that come bundled as well).

CORBIN MERLIN ROADSTER
Easily the slickest-looking street-legal vehicle to hit the road so far in 2002 is the Corbin Merlin Roadster. Coming in candy-apple red, tangerine, black or silver, the Merlin is a scissor-door one-seater, custom-built around a Harley-Davidson 88-cubic-inch, twin-cam-balanced, fuel-injected engine. With front-wheel direct drive and steering, and three-wheel disc brakes, the Merlin can hit over 100mph, and registers, insures and parks like a motorcycle. The car has a fully integrated dashboard, including an AM/FM stereo and CD player, and at only 117 inches long, manages 4.5 cubic feet of trunk space.

Have DVD recorders just got affordable? Well, almost, as Philips releases cheaper models to attract the masses

When Philips launched the UK’s first DVD recorder, the DVDR 1000 (73 65 5/5), we were cock-a-hoop.The only problem with this mighty piece of hardware was its £1,300 price tag. A little expensive for your average punter, even without considering the confusion surrounding the raging DVD format war. Weil, to address both these issues, Philips has launched two budget models, the DVDR 980 and 985. All right, so admittedly £800-£900 isn’t budget money, but, hey, it’s a start.These DVD+RW/DVD+R burners are running with the format F5 reckons will win out in the end,so you could do a lot worse than take the plunge. As you’d expect, you get the principal DVD recordable features (index navigation, recording on the next available disc space), but the DVDR 985 also offers iLink connection so you can record home movies from your camcorder. Both models are available now