Via DannyChoo.com, technabob

When I first saw the title, I thought Bandai had introduced a new line of Gundam markers for avid Gunpla modellers. Unfortunately these Gundam inspired pens houses a regular ballpoint ink pen which..well writes on paper. Released as part of their 30th Anniversary of the series, you can get your hands on these limited edition pens for ¥990(approx USD 10) at StrapyaWorld. They definitely look very attractive but I wonder if they’re actually made to scale for Perfect Grade gundams, now that would be REALLY awesome.

Source:
technabob – gundam gun ballpoint pens might blast a hole in your paper

Opening the package, and you’ll find the drive, a USB cable, the power adapter and 2 different pin adapters for use with your power outlet.

The drive itself is enclosed in a simple black casing with only one indicator light for power and blinks when its performing read/write operation. Connectors for power and USB is located behind the unit. You can place the drive flat or on its side as it is heavy enough to balance itself.  I would have preferred if they had included a power switch on the drive itself so that I do not have to reach into my power strip whenever I want to shut the drive off.

After formatting the drive, you’ll only get about 930Gb of available storage. I’ll be splitting the partition into two since my Mac’s only has 200Gb of harddisk space used for Time Machine and the rest will be used for temporary storage. The drive does produce some heat but its perfectly silent despite extensive writing to the drive during my Time Machine backup. Overall the drive is simple to setup and fuss free. They’re going for quite cheap nowadays and this makes them a good purchase for use as a backup drive.

AkibaHobby.net has photo coverage of the recent Dream Party 2008 event which featured lots of interesting looking figures, dakimakura and some really mean looking cars with great anime artwork. I also happen to spot this among the photos:

Yeap ! That’s Cyber Maid Alice which I covered some time ago. It doesn’t seem like they had a working version for demo but just a video it only. Hit the link for the full gallery.

AkibaHobby.net – Dream Party 2008
DreamParty Official Website (Japanese)

Earlier at Nintendo’s Media Summit, Satoru Iwata, CEO of Nintendo has revealed the rumour sucessor to the popular Nintendo DS console, Nintendo DSi. The DSi features dual camera, one on the front cover and another on the hinge facing the players and come with a SD card slot along with built in memory. It ships with software for music playback and Nintendo’s own Web Browser and both the touch screen and display screen has been expanded to 3.25 inches. Its scheduled for launch in Japan on November 1st with a suggested retail price of 18,900 yen. Hit the link for more details and photos of the DSi.

DS Fanboy – Nintendo Announces Nintendo DSi

Via Gizmodo
Naoki Maru of Kyoto, Japan may have built one of the more impressive control devices for a robot. Using what he calls a “master-slave” technology built onto a harness, the mechanism captures the movement of the pilot and transmits it to the robot via bluetooth and replicates the movement. It is currently limited to the upper torso for now and movement for the lower half is controlled via a control pad with its balancing compensated by rapid servomotors and sensors. Hit the link to view more pictures and butt-kicking videos of the control suit in action. It won’t be long when rulership of our planet and other space colonies will be determined by battles fought in arenas with huge giant robots (G Gundam anyone ?).

Gizmodo – Girl Pilots Japanese Fighting Robot With Gundam Master/Slave Control Suit

Can’t get enough of the Eva mania at your work place ? Impress your otaku work buddies with this pair of Evangelion inspired flash drives. On sale from 27 September, they come in 2Gb capacities and are priced at 3,980 yen each. After googling around I came across this chibi version of Rei Ayanami USB Drive which is being made by Buffalo. Priced at 3,980 yen for 2Gb as well, you could order them from Buffalo’s web store (site’s in Japanese, but I think its only available for preorder at the moment.) Check out the rest of their products on their website below.

Anime News Network – Evangelion Entry Plug USB Drives in Japan
PCWatch – Evangelion USB drives
Buffalo – Rei Ayanami USB Drive

Halfway across the globe we have the Western version of an anime convention, the San Diego Comic Con 2008 ! SDCC 2008 was held from the 24th till 27th July at San Diego Convention Center. In Asia we have people cosplaying as Gundams and while in the West we get Transformers cosplayers like above. Check out the gallery below for more pics from the events.

Comic Con 2008 Official Website
AnimeNewsNetwork – Comic Con Exhibits by G4
SDCC 2008 Photo Gallery @ Figures.com

I’m not sure how I should describe this, in a way this is really really cool but at the same time its just so.. ecchi.  Geisha Tokyo Entertainment Inc recently introduced the Cyber Figure Alice for all those lonely otakus out there. How it works is that you’ll get a cyber cube and a few different types of cyber sticks along with a software for your webcam-equipped computer. Once you have setup your computer, you just need to point the camera to the cyber cube, and Cyber Maid Alice will magically appear on the screen where you have placed your cube. Using the cyber sticks, you can “interact” with this new figure. And by “interact” I mean you could peep at her, touch her and naturally, undress her as well. Interesting, no?

Of course there could be many other applications but this technology is still too cool to be ignored. I’ve first heard of such technology, Augmented Reality from NASA’s research lab (if I’m not mistaken) to tag virtual notes and user guides for use in their space station technologies. But of course we could always rely on the Japanese to come up with whacky use of high tech gadgetry. Imagine building a Gundam using virtual parts, you could use it to mix and match different models simply by downloading new parts online and assembling it virtually.

CrunchGear – Lonely? Try fondling Augmented Reality Cyber Maid Alice

According to MSNBC, Sega Toys has built a 15″ tall robotic “female companion” aka girlfriend targeting the lonely adult male market in Japan. EMA, as it is known, stands for Eternal Maiden Actualization (whatever the heck that’s suppose to mean) is capable of singing, dancing, handing out business cards and of course… kissing. It’s priced at $ 175 and will be on sale this September but there’s no word on what other abilities it can perform or if you could train it to do….. erm.. other stuff . Rumour has it that TakaraTomy is producing a robotic wife, while Sony is still putting their final touches to robotic mistress =))

*Pic on the left is Chii from from Chobits while EMA is on the right.

MSNBC – Japan makes robot girlfriend for lonely men

I just got myself a new mouse to replace my crappy no-brand optical mouse which I have been using with my Mac. I was having a hard time choosing one till I finally settled with the Logitech MX518. I’m currently using a Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 on my desktop and it doesn’t come any close to the MX518. With an adjustable resolution of up to 1800dpi and 8 configurable buttons including 2 DPI switching buttons, the MX518 is truly an impressive mouse. Given the feature set and the price, the MX518 seems like a reasonable purchase considering there’s a lot of good reviews on this model even though its been around for a while (still one of the top rated ones compared to the laser alternatives).

Sadly, there is no love for the MX518 on my Mac. The package came with drivers for Windows Vista and XP only and even Logitech’s official site does not offer proper drivers for it, so I was only able to use the standard 3 buttons and scroll wheel on my Mac out of the box. So folks, be sure to look for that smiley Mac face before buying a peripheral for your Mac next time.

Fortunately though, there are third party drivers that allows you to detect and configure these buttons. One of these is a shareware called USB Overdrive which lets you assign functions to the additional buttons. However, I couldn’t assign anything to the DPI  switching buttons on the mouse itself so I’m only able to use 6 of its buttons, but the 2 DPI switching buttons are still pretty handy for me since I could switch the responsiveness when I’m doing graphics or when I’m gaming. To get the full experience, the drivers that works in Windows lets you customize the mouse even further, but I’ve yet to try that out. Overall I still find the MX518 to be a great mouse since it fits my hand really well and it is very responsive when you set the DPI to its highest settings.

Logitech – MX518 Gaming-Grade Optical Mouse
USB Overdrive