Filed under: Gaming

What better way to complement your LEGO-fied Wii than to build a LEGO-based Zapper holster for your Wiimote? mrklaw managed to do just that with a colorful assortment of old blocks, and yes, he even left an opening in the rear for the nunchuck. There’s also a finely crafted trigger depressor that mashes in the B button underneath, but we’ve no idea how well this thing would hold together after hours of flailing around while trying to peg on-screen baddies. Nevertheless, it’s a whole lot cheaper (provided you’ve got the parts, and c’mon, you’ve got the parts) than the alternatives out there, and it’s a darn good excuse to bust out the bricks your SO made you lock away after your 28th birthday.

[Via NintendoWiiFanboy]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Robots

We’re really enjoying the Pleo manual’s list of things you shouldn’t do with your Pleo. Officially you should make sure you don’t:

• Abuse Pleo
• Get Pleo wet
• Throw, drop, or violently shake Pleo
• Sit on Pleo
• Place Pleo near heat or flames
• Place Pleo in sand, soil, or mud
• Leave Pleo with other pets or animals capable of biting or damaging him
• Risk overheating Pleo by covering him with a blanket during play
• Allow small children to play with Pleo unsupervised

So naturally we had to whip up our own supplemental list. We think you should never, EVER:

• Let Pleo know where you keep the cash
• Taunt happy fun Pleo
• Let Pleo have more than two drinks
• Divulge to Pleo Bush’s famous secret family recipe for baked beans
• Pretend that Pleo will love you back
• Feed Pleo after midnight; get it wet
• Attempt to housetrain Pleo by rubbing its nose in own e-xcrement
• Call the cops, man, Pleo just needs a place to crash for the night
• Punch Pleo, especially in the gut — Pleo knows where you live
• Let Pleo continuously check in and out of rehab
• Remove skin, for this is the stuff of nightmares
• Have Pleo spayed or neutered; Despite Bob Barker’s incessant recommendations this will not stop the impending robot revolution

Leave your own below. Fear Pleo.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

You may no longer be able to get your NBC fix on iTunes, but you may soon be able to soothe that downloader’s angst with the fine motion pictures of the Fox Corporation. AppleInsider claims Apple and Rupie M. are close to a deal that would put Fox’s full catalog on iTunes, which would basically end a year of standoff negotiations between the two. AI says that it was actually Apple that backed down at the table, and that Fox will be allowed some pricing flexibility for new movies. That’s pretty interesting, considering how resolute Apple’s been on the pricing issue as it applies to music — looks like movies get a little more love from Mr. Pixar. Either way, we won’t find out what’s what for a while — AI also says that the deal won’t be announced until after the holidays so as not to interfere with DVD sales.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Features, Robots

Hard to believe it’s been almost two years since Ugobe’s Pleo was first announced, but today one of our very own showed up at our doorstep, sweet as a newborn (new-hatched?) Camarasaurus. Pleo‘s certainly undergone a lot of physical changes since we saw it in the early days, now sporting a more adorable shape (as well as cameras and sensors studded all over its precious little head). A few first impressions and fresh details

• Pleo’s skin is rubbery-sticky (a little like the soles on a brand new pair of Cons). We can totally see this thing feeling like a dinosaur.
• The motors on this thing are loud. Like, kind of distractingly loud. Yet somehow it remains ineffably adorable. You just want to take care of the little bugger.
• You hatch it early on by flipping its power switch and petting it until it awakens from its deep, late-Jurassic-era slumber.
• Jury’s still out on the Tim Allen-esque grunting noises.
• Ugobe PR let us know that the first version of Life OS (the software that powers Pleo) isn’t really set up to “evolve” as it was supposed to, but there will be new versions of Live OS in 2008, which will enable behavioral optimizations and that “evolution” thing.
• There will be an SDK! Take that, Aibo. Poor, poor Aibo, dead as a dino–never mind.
• Despite having a massive, heavy NiMH battery pack, it’s only 2200mAh;

We’re still letting Pleo get situated and acquainted (read: charge) but we’ve got a hand-on gallery below, and video and plenty more Pleo details after the break. So, who’s down for a quick refresher on chaos theory?

Continue reading Pleo unboxing, er, hatching — photos and video

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Wireless

In what is surely a sign that the mania around the upcoming 700MHz auction is reaching absurd levels, cable operators Comcast and Time Warner Communications both issued press releases today confirming that they would not be bidding in January’s auction. You might recall that both Time Warner (which is owned by Engadget’s parent company’s parent company) and Comcast are part of SpectrumCo, which snapped up 137 licenses covering 20MHz of spectrum the last time the FCC put airwaves on the block, so there was some speculation that the venture might ante up again this go ’round — especially since TWC CEO Glenn Britt was running around making vague proclamations about it. Still, it looks like Sprint’s exit from the alliance was enough to shelve any such plans, so it looks like the big players are still Google and Verizon. Good thing too — with this much hype over Good vs. Evil, the racket over Good vs. Evil vs. More Evil vs. Frustratingly Incompetent would be deafening.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!