All your unicellular buddies are just going to love this. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is rallying a trio of student-built nanobot teams to compete at the world's most popular sport, which will be the second time nanosoccer has accompanied the RoboCup Open. The difference with this year's competition is that the public will be invited to watch. Of course, with a playing field the size of a grain of rice, a microscope will be used to show the crazy antics of the remote-controlled robots as they bat around nanoballs the diameter of a human hair. Sounds harmless, but just you wait: before you know it these little bots will start marrying Spice Girls and faking on-field injuries just like the pros.

ASUS is firing up the legal team to address what it percieves as defamation on the part of Gigabyte. In the line of fire is ASUS' Energy Processing Unit, which Gigabyte claims isn't a technological change on the part of ASUS, but instead "numbers marketing" and "cheating end users." Gigabyte says ASUS also misrepresented the energy saving numbers on Gigabyte's competing DES motherboards, and had plenty of other nerdy trash talk for its rival. "How can you believe it? Everything [Asus] say are lies," was the money quote from a Tom's Hardware article on the subject, and ASUS isn't going to take it lying down. "This 'disinformation' is not only extremely damaging to ASUS but also completely misleading to the consumers. ASUS reserves the right to take legal action against any individual, organization or corporation which creates or spreads such rumors." We love a good nerd fight, and this is shaping up into a right proper one.

Most bug-inspired robots do a much better job of creeping us out than giving us the warm fuzzies, but this here Swashbot R/C robot from Crabfu is just too cute for words. It kind of looks like he's trying to find his little robot buddies so they can sing a song about slushies before nap time, while simultaneously dragging a cinder block behind him. You know, cute. Video is after the break.

Good news for the cyborgs in the crowd: the ruling by the International Association of Athletics Federations that barred double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorious from a shot at the Olympics has been overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Detractors from Oscar's entry into the Olympics have cited a suspect study that says Oscar could be using as little as 25% of the energy of other sprinters, thanks to the mechanical advantage of his "Cheetah" prosthetics, which basically act as springs. Others feared that this could set a dangerous precedent for the entry of bionics into athletic competition, but the ruling was rather tightly worded, and if related cases come up they will be tried individually. Of course, Oscar still has to qualify, and his personal best in the 400 is about a second off the qualifying time for Beijing. Even if he can't make it, he plans try for the world championships and the London Olympics in 2012.

Brilliant, just brilliant. As if Rock Band wasn't living room clutter enough, Activision is busting out a drumset for Guitar Hero IV, and now Konami is getting in on the "pretending to play music" meme with its very own Rock Revolution title. If the oversaturation of incompatible music peripherals wasn't enough to make you take pause, the janky-ass nature of Konami's kit certainly might. Granted, there are more things to hit on Konami's set, Rock Revolution allows you to improvise in between the proscribed hits, and doesn't require that pesky kick drum until midway through its five difficulty levels, but MTV Multiplayer's Patrick Klepek didn't have too easy of a time hitting on it, while his buddy did a lot of plastic smashing attempting to improvise -- not a promising start. Oh, what was that? We can play "Sk8er boi"? We take it all back, when can we buy?

[Via Joystiq]

While OLPC tries to wise up to the real demands of the market and build a cheap laptop that people actually want -- which means Windows XP for most -- Walter Bender, OLPC's former president of software and content for the project is taking his open source Linux-based Sugar OS and has started up a new non-profit to aid its development. Bender still has the vision of an open source learning OS, and plans to give Sugar full support for other low-cost platforms like the Eee PC. Ooh, burn.

While yesterday's minuscule shot of this Atom-based UMPC explained the form factor quite well, this here picture shows the unit in a much better light. Otherwise there's little new info on this U2010 from Fujitsu, but that $1,300 pricepoint isn't a great start. Was this whole "Atom is cheaper" thing just a cruel, cruel myth?

[Via Pocketables]

The folks at UMPCFever got in some quality time with the upcoming Aigo MID (an Asia-centric version of the Gigabyte M528), which hasn't really been seen much outside of tradeshows so far. Apparently MIDLinux 2.0, which the device ships with, is running really well these days, which is encouraging given how abysmal it was earlier this year, but that didn't stop UMPCFever from swapping the OS for some Windows XP. While the Intel Atom processor seems to be beefy enough to handle what was requested of it, Intel's promised energy savings were not evident in the device, with a runtime as low as two hours. We suppose the best news is that Aigo's selling this starting at around HK $6000, about $770 US, a major improvement over the M528, but it still seems to be a far cry from the sweet spot for this type of device. Hands-on videos are after the break.

[Via UMPCPortal]

RINGBO put a song in our hearts the other day, and now that we've pretended to sit in its little robotic seat, we can assure you that the experience is just as magical as the video makes it out to be. In case you're curious, the bumper-mounted IR sensors work great for stopping Junior from knocking over another vase, and the controls really couldn't be simpler. We heard a price somewhere in the ballpark of a few hundred dollars, but there's really no telling until it lands Stateside for reals. Check out our best approximation of the original music video after the break -- and be amazed.

We got to spend a little bit of time with Aliph's new Jawbone headset, and we'll confess we're a tad smitten. The headset is considerably smaller than its predecessor, and the improved earbud design gave us a comfortable fit right out of the box -- with other options waiting in the wings. That old overly-complicated ear hook is gone in favor of a simple, slightly flexible one, clad in leather with the intention of an eventual worn-in feel, but thanks to the new light design we're actually planning on going hook-less -- we haven't managed to shake it off yet, and have already probably caused considerable brain damage in the attempts. The interface is the same invisible one of its predecessor, but the first time you turn it on it's in pairing mode so we had no trouble there. We'd be hard pressed to notice a sound difference either way, but that was never the original's problem. The smaller design does mean a reduction in battery life, which could be a deal breaker for some, but if you're not going to be yapping away constantly the new Jawbone is a useful bit of "earwear," as Aliph would like to call it.

Don't call it Jawbone 2, Aliph's Jawbone sequel is the company's new flagship product, with the old Bluetooth headset being put out to pasture to make way for the new hotness. The new Jawbone is 50% smaller than the original, and includes "NoiseAssassin" technology, a followup on the noise canceling tech of the original. There's a faster processor on board to handle heavier signal processing duties for canceling out ambient noises better and faster, along with that Voice Activity Sensor which lets the Jawbone know when you're talking so the rest of the time can be noise free. A new fast charge battery can suck up 80% of its capacity in 30 minutes, but the overall battery life is lower than the original, with 4 hours of talk time and 8 days of standby. The whole unit weighs in at 10 grams, and is available now for $130 at AT&T retail stores and online at Jawbone's site. Initially it's being offered in black only, but silver and rose gold (pictured after the break) versions are coming soon.

A friendly tipster sent us over some shots of a demo unit of the Jawbone 2 -- which the FCC so kindly leaked for us last month -- that he says his store is getting in stock tomorrow. He also says the headset will sell for $129, that it "looks pretty sweet" and provided some shots that pit it quite favorably against the now clunky original. Enjoy!

Sure, there's something to be said for turning a workout into a game, and the Wii Fit has that in spades, but there's also perks to a system that tracks every aspect of your for-realsies workouts at all times. The THP² Personal Training System from Korea's Nury Tec combines a GPS pod, body fat scale and chest strap hear rate receiver to track your well being during and after a workout. All the gadgets transmit wirelessly to a watch controller, which in turn transmits to a PC receiver to download all your stats to an included program. It's like Nike+ on steroids (minus the steroids... don't do drugs kids!), and with a projected price of $180 when this hits the States this year, not a bad alternative on price either.

And so forth. If you're like many of us, you very well could be weighing your options as the 3G iPhone seems increasingly imminent. Some might have a wad of cash already laid aside, others might be thinking of jumping ship to one of the iPhone's numerous competitors, or just getting some more months of utility out of their current iPhone. And then there's the trouble of disposing of your existing iPhone when you do upgrade. Do you give it to a friend, mount it on the wall, or bury it in the backyard with the hope of growing it into a cute little iPhone tree? The options are endless. Let us know which way you're leaning.

Samsung rightly hasn't wasted much time in finding a successor for its suddenly-vacated CEO position. Yoon-Woo Lee as of today will be taking on the role of Vice Chairman and CEO of Samsung Electronics, swiping the spots from Jong-Yong Yun -- who will remain in an advisory role -- and the disgraced former CEO Lee Kun-hee, respectively. Yoon-Woo Lee is no young upstart, however. He joined Samsung SDI in 1968 and moved to Samsung Electronics in 1977. From 1996 to 2004 he was the President of Semiconductor Business and since then he's been working as Vice Chairman of Corporate CTO. Given Samsung's dominance in the Flash and DRAM memory markets, it's hard to call this a bad move, but Samsung also has appointed Hyung-Kyu Lim to work on new "growth engines" to help Samsung find new ways to make cash as its current strongholds meet stronger and stronger competition. Nice to have you back on your feet Sammy, now let's see some more of those world firsts you're so fond of.