Starkey believes that robot use increasing could become a problem if it is left up to the military, businesses, and the unqualified rather than legislative bodies. The increase of robots in use since 2000 has increased rapidly, and sales of professional and personal service robots are estimated to total 5.5 million in 2008. Estimates suggest that more than 11.5 million will be produced in the next 2 years, and that production costs of robots in the last few years has declined by over 80% since 1990. This means that they will be all around us and eventually taking over the world in the next few years (sorry…I scared myself ).

Service robots are currently being used in all walks of life, from child-minding robots to robots that care for the elderly. These types of robots can be controlled by a mobile phone or from a PC, allowing input from camera “eyes” and remote talking from caregivers. Sophisticated elder-care robots like the Secom “My Spoon” automatic feeding robot; the Sanyo electric bathtub robot that automatically washes and rinses; and the Mitsubishi Wakamura robot, used for reminding people to take their medicine, are already in widespread use.

Despite this no international legislation or policy guidelines currently exist, except in terms of negligence. This is still to be tested in court for robot surrogates and may be difficult to prove in the home (relative to cases of physical abuse).

Starkey worries that we aren’t lookijng at the potential risks of robots: “Research into service robots has demonstrated close bonding and attachment by children, who, in most cases, prefer a robot to a teddy bear. Short-term exposure can provide an enjoyable and entertaining experience that creates interest and curiosity.

“However, because of the physical safety that robot minders provide, children could be left without human contact for many hours a day or perhaps for several days, and the possible psychological impact of the varying degrees of social isolation on development is unknown.

“At the other end of the age spectrum, the relative increase in many countries in the population of the elderly relative to available younger caregivers has spurred the development of elder-care robots. These robots can help the elderly to maintain independence in their own homes, but their presence could lead to the risk of leaving the elderly in the exclusive care of machines without sufficient human contact.”

Well…I was hoping he would be all apocalyptic in his concerns, but I guess he just cares about people being left with out human contact. Pffft…people. Carry on with your concerns about the best diet pills and take no heed to Professor Starkey’s concerns. He is obviously a mad scientist .

The SABRE (Self-healing cellular Architectures for Biologically-inspired highly Reliable Electronic systems) project. The part of the project to be carried out in Bristol will be based at Bristol Robotics lab (BRL), which is jointly run by the University of Bristol and UWE. Grab your ipods and relax under the sun while you read about this fascinating technology here.

IS anything more freaky than a robot that has feelings? IF anyone has ever watched the classic Sci-Fi TV shows like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, etc. they have probably seen some form of non-humans like dolls and robots being like humans. Other than the need for the best acne treatment like humans, these robots were able to do almost anything else a humnan could, and do it to the point of mass destruction to humans in the end. The lesson was always that robots (People alwayas pronounce it robutts in these shows for some reason too, but that’s another rant.) were evil.

European researchers are developing robots in tune with our emotions. Feelix Growing is developing software empowering robots that can learn when a person is sad, happy or angry.

The learning part is achieved through the use of artificial neural networks, which are well suited to the varied and changing inputs that ‘perceptive’ robots would be exposed to. Look at the pic of this robot.

They can’t make a robot doll. Dolls are freaky enough. Then make one that is a robot doll? Keep that thing away from me. Only thing worse maybe would be to make it look like a clown.

As you all know, people send you 50 friggin’ apps to add to your Facebook profile everyday. Once in a while there is actually a half way decent one that you may like. Few and far between, but the Scrabulous Ap, which is basically identical to Scrabble is one that millions have found and are more than happy with.

Now, Hasbro has decided to sue the makers for copyright infringement stating: “This is theft of intellectual property,” Blecher said of Scrabulous. “It’s really no different from when the recording industry faced the issue of folks posting music on sites like Napster and letting them copy it for free.”

(Give me a break with that comparison…lol)

Mark Blecher, general manager for Hasbro Digital Media, said in a telephone interview that his employer’s goal is to promote its authentic, legitimate Facebook application. After a bit of corporate performance management they have finally created the Official Scrabble Ap after the Scrabulous one has been out there for nearly 2 years.

So it begs the question…is Scrabulous doing anything wrong here? If you clicked over to the link for Scrabulous you can see that it is about as close to Scrabble as you can get with out actually calling it Scrabble. As far as I know, Hasbro actually offered to buy the application from the makers of Scrabulous, but were asked to pay millions for the rights. Never coming to any agreement, so now we are at the point where they will be sued over the Facebook creation.

Facebook representative Brandee Barker replied with this statement:

We believe that games are an important part of the social experience on Facebook and have been impressed by the creativity and innovation of the games that developers — both large and small — have built on Facebook Platform. In the case of disputes such as the one involving Scrabulous, our hope and expectation is that the parties can resolve their disagreements in a manner that satisfies the parties, that continues to offer a great experience to gamers and that doesn’t discourage other developers from using Platform to share their creativity and test new ideas. Over the past year, Facebook has tried to use its status as neutral platform provider to help the parties come to an amicable agreement. We’re disappointed that Hasbro has sought to draw us into their dispute; nevertheless, we have forwarded their concerns to Scrabulous and requested their appropriate response.

At a much smaller price of $50 a license compared toe the Microsoft cost of $200 this is the big news of the day. How is it going to pan out? What have you heard about the issues Google faces? From a quick listen to a news report today I got the impression that the Google software has some security issues.

Here are some of interesting facts:

1. 100,000 small businesses are running a trial of what is Google Office.
2. The paid version will cost $50 per account per year and will get the buyers 10 gigabytes of storage and telephone support.
3. Google’s Dave Girouard claims that at $50 a year, Google will make money.
4. General Electric and Proctor & Gamble are running small trials of these applications.

read more…

Why do I bring this up? Well I talk to other bloggers that use various blogging platforms as well as those who publish articles online and find that many times they just have issues with the platforms of choice checking simple things like word counts, grammar, and spelling. Generally I just suggest that they write their articles in Word and then transfer them into their blog box so that they are up to code. The more I talk to people the more I realize that they don’t have a word processing program , or any office software whatsoever. I’m not about to recommend they run out and drop a few hundred dollars on an office suite, so what is their option?

Open Office is their option. It is virtually identical to Microsoft Office in function and it is completely compatible with other office suites. The kicker is that it is completely FREE. It is also open source and available to distribute.

Take a look at the Product Description:

OpenOffice.org the product is a multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites. Sophisticated and flexible, OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office, and the vendor-neutral OpenDocument standard from OASIS.

Available in over 65 supported languages with more being constantly added by the community, OpenOffice.org runs stably and natively on Solaris, Linux (including PPC Linux), Windows, Mac OS X (X11), and numerous other platforms. Our porting page lists the platforms (ports) that OpenOffice.org can run on.

Written in C++ and with documented APIs licensed under the LGPL open-source license, OpenOffice.org allows any knowledgeable developer to benefit from the source. And, because the native file format for OpenOffice.org is the vendor-independent OpenDocument open standard, interoperability is easy, making future development and adoption more certain.

Get Open Office:
Open Office

So really this is one of those things like e-mail, or instant messaging that everyone needs. There was always one of them you had to pay for, but now you do not. So I decided just to at least mention it here for all those that need an office suite, but don’t have the cash to buy one.