Blog: Garmin offers some APIs so Web sites and its GPS units can communicate, while MapQuest announces a beta version of an ActionScript interface for Flash fans.

Filed under: Household, Robots

There's not much that gets us more excited than new cleaning bots -- yes, we're unabashed iRobot fanboys -- so we always want to be the first to know when a fresh product comes along (we did a little happy dance with our dog when the Roomba for Pets was announced earlier this month). Luckily, then, we caught wind of the linked thread on Roomba Review (your home for all things, um, Roomba), in which a purported insider delivers some details and pics of upcoming revisions to the Scheduler, Discovery, and Roomba Red models: the 560, 530, and 510 (whose supposed retail packaging is pictured above), respectively. New features are said to include a 'lighthouse (peripheral to indicate which room is cleaned)' and integrated display, with upgrades also coming in the form of a redesign (pictured after the break), easily-swappable parts (wheels, motors, etc.), greatly improved battery life (1,500 hours versus the current 350, allegedly), and automatically-activated virtual walls. Pricing will range from CAD$300 to CAD$450 ($279 to $418), according to the RR member, so now we have to squirrel away at least that amount of dough along with however much more it's gonna cost to pick up those completely new bots we've been promised for the holidays.

[Via Electronista]

Continue reading Roomba revisions coming in September?

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

When Palm launches its new type of handset on Wednesday, it could be the industry's first Linux-based smartphone.

New street-level view in Google Maps shows panoramas and offers zoom-in feature to read signs.
Images: Google's view from the street

A bacterium discovered by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists that is toxic to Colorado potato beetle also has been found to be toxic in varying degrees to gypsy moth, small hive beetle and tobacco hornworm.

Fifteen cetacean species occur in Bristol Bay, a spectacularly rich area of marine life, including the endangered bowhead, blue, fin, sei, humpback and sperm whales. A planned lease sale area in Bristol Bay overlaps with critical habitat designated for the eastern North Pacific right.

If you look through the history of economic innovation (at least over the last few hundred years), you notice a pattern: for all the talk about how patents are required for innovation, true innovation only seems to occur after key patents expire. The history of the steam engine is quite instructive on this, but it's true of many other inventions as well. For Memorial Day this past weekend, the Associated Press ran an article all about the sudden rise in popularity of infrared grills for home use. Despite the technology first being invented in the 60s (for drying paint on cars), it was a very limited market until the key patent expired in 2000 and real innovation could occur that would allow such grills to be produced economically for backyard use. Chances are the market is a hell of a lot bigger today than it was before the patent expired. However, there's an even bigger point hidden towards the end of the article. The traditional patent defenders always claim that without a patent, the original inventor will simply get left behind. However, that's not at all what happened here. Char-Broil, makers of popular backyard grills could have gone out on its own and produced their infrared cookers without the help of Thermal Electric Corp., who held the patent. However, knowing that Thermal Electric Corp. understood the technology better than anyone else, they still formed a strategic alliance with them for the production of Char-Broil's grills. In other words, the patent slowed down the production of backyard grills in the space, which have only enlarged the market. At the same time, the loss of the patent hasn't destroyed Thermal Electric's ability to profit. Far from it: it's opened up new opportunities for it.