Party harder with the Tundra Midnight Rider tailgating truck If standing in a cold parking lot eating bratwurst and drinking beer is your idea of fun, then here is your ultimate party truck. Developed by Toyota in conjunction with country duo Brooks & Dunn, the Tundra Midnight Rider features a pull out “Chill N Grill” cooking area with a built in infrared barbecue, beer tap, and ice chest, along with a 42 inch flat screen TV hooked up to a butt kicking Kicker audio system. No word on whether the stereo will play anything other than Brooks & Dunn, which could be a deal breaker for me. That’s all great on Sunday, but it looks like it would be tough to use the Midnight Rider when you need to pick up a bed load of mulch on Monday. Luckily, it’s just a one off built for this year’s SEMA show Toyota, via Born RIch

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Retail War May Lead to Holiday TV Deals Saturday November 7, 2009 Judging by early indicators, this holiday season looks to be a great time to buy an HDTV. Reporter Andrea Chang has an interesting story in the Los Angeles times today that says Wal-Mart will be very aggressive in discounting items throughout the season. And, because of that, competing retailers will follow suit. Wal-Mart is already getting into the price-gouging game with an in-store sale that began this morning at most locations. The retailer has discounted several televisions, including the 46-inch Panasonic TC-P46U1 plasma ($788) and the 42-inch Sharp LC-42SB45U LCD ($498). Most retailers are selling the Panasonic for more than $1,000 and the Sharp for more than $600. Even if the sets Wal-Mart is pitching this weekend aren’t what you’re looking for, it will be a good idea to keep an eye on upcoming sale ads. When deals this good hit before Black Friday, we’re likely to see a lot more. Photo

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We should let robots take over the world, expert says Dr. J. Storrs Hall is an expert on molecular nanotechnology and the head of the Foresight Nanotech Institute (which raises awareness about the very same). That means he spends a lot of time thinking about robots. Or, to be specific, the kind of robots that will take over the world. In a piece titled “More on the AI takeover,” Dr. Hall outlines four classes of ‘bots he could see rising up: • Robo insectis: rote, mechanical gadgets (or thinkers) with hand-coded skills, such as Roomba or industrial robots or automated call-center systems or dictation programs. • Robo habilis: Rosie the housemaid robot level intelligence, able to handle service level jobs in the real world but not a rocket scientist. • Robo sapiens: up to and including rocket scientists, AI researchers, corporate executives, any human capability. • Robo googolis: a collection of top R. sapiens wired together in a box running at accelerated speed, equivalent to, say, Google (the company and the search engine together). “Rising up” may be the wrong way to put it, actually. What Dr. Hall is advocating is a future in which we let robots handle whatever load they can, freeing up the rest of us to live more leisurely. “The key thing to remember when thinking about the economic AI takeover is that it is not something we should be trying to prevent,” Dr. Hall continues. “Why shouldn’t we spend our efforts deciding what needs to be done, and let the machines do it?” Why not, indeed? What about you, dear reader? Would you be all for living in a world run by robots? Foresight, via io9

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This high-tech glowing ball lets you wage urban war Urban Defender has gangs of players putting down the guns and knives and instead reaching for what looks like a glowing dodgeball. The objective here isn’t to go after other people, though. You’re aiming for buildings. The game apparently isn’t quite finished yet so the multilayer backend I’m about to describe isn’t in place yet. Ideally, you should be able to take your ball around the city and toss it against buildings, claiming that structure for your team. The ball has an accelerometer inside and is GPS-enabled so that it can upload impacts to a map on a server and mark your territory. That part works, but you can’t score points or play a “game” par se — yet. The ball also acts as your guide. It’ll vibrate and pulse differently when you’re in enemy or neutral territory, and make noises as you claim an enemy structure. Check out the video below for a demonstration. Urban Defender, via MAKE

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Google Dashboard displays your Google addiction Is Google taking over the world? Well, now you can see how much it’s taking over your world with the Google dashboard, listing each of the company’s services you’re using, information you’ve entered, and items you’ve shared. From this one location, you can delete data, change settings and generally manage all your Googleism. We’re big fans of the excellent Gmail and its contacts database, Google Calendar, Picasso Web albums, Google Voice, YouTube, and Google Reader, and appreciate the ability to keep track of them with this new dashboard. A huge drawback is the lack of a dashboard for Google Apps accounts (where you can use your own custom domain name), which is beginning to seem like a poor stepchild to Google when it rolls out new features. We like the idea of controlling all of our Google activities in one easy to find location. Some of our buddies are really worried about computing in the cloud, and are particularly concerned about handing over their personal data and documents to Google. Not us. How about you, readers? Google Dashboard, via Official Google Blog

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Motorola Droids available today, tethering, too Today’s the day Verizon rolls out the formidable Motorola Droid, the most capable contender to the iPhone’s king-of-the-hill status yet. Also along for the rollout ride is its lesser Droid mate, the HTC DROID Eris. iPhone haters will be happy to know that the shiny new Droids can be procured online or in stores without having to wait in line. Along with the big rollout today, there’s a bit of news: Verizon counters a belated iPhone promise with its own tethering at a semi-reasonable $30 a month, letting you use your cellphone to access the data network on your PC or other devices. Tethering is great, but it ought to be offered for free on all 3G cellphones. I mean, aren’t we paying enough? Via Geeky Gadgets and Boy Genius Reports

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Say hello to the 5,000 volt can crusher What do you do when you find yourself with an old 5,000 volt power supply? Hell, you might as well build a can crusher out of it, right? That’s just what Bob Davis did. Bob stripped the unit down to the supply itself, a huge 100 microfarad capacitor and a (broken) meter. After hooking the thing up to a pumpkin (no effect) and an apple (blown to pieces) he turned his sites on an innocent soda can. The video takes a bit to get going, but it’s worth the wait. Just skip to right near the end to get to the good stuff. Bob Davis via GadgetLab

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Space elevator competition heats up, closer to reality You’ve probably heard of the concept of a space elevator, climbing a 22,000 mile long cable that’s attached to a satellite in geostationary orbit over the Earth’s equator. Sounds crazy, but the concept is edging ever closer toward reality. NASA is offering a first prize of $1.1 million to anyone who can create a space elevator that climbs a kilometer at an average rate of 5 meters per second. No one’s done that yet, but the second-place prize of $900,000 was just won by a company called LaserMotive, whose climber shimmied up a kilometer-long cable at 2 meters per second. It’s powered by a stationary laser on the ground, pointing up to a target on the craft, providing enough power for it to lift. There’s still a long way to go, though. LaserMotive and two other teams — the Kansas City Space Pirates and the University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team — are all making progress toward winning first prize. Eventually, though, somebody has to figure out how to make a cable light enough and strong enough to span that 22,000 mile distance. Insert miracle here. Via Wired

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This LED lamp is powered by your phone line Sick of high electricity bills? Well, you know that the phone company is sending a bit of energy through their lines to power phones, right? Why not use that to your own sneaky advantage? This LED lamp plugs in not to an electrical outlet, but to a phone jack. It then uses that power to light up, giving you a light you can feel guilt-free about leaving on all day. Your phone company might not love it, but whatever. They’re the phone company. Uxsight via Gizmodo

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Media Chair focuses all your audio right on you If you liked the idea of the Sound Egg but not so much its aesthetics, say hello the Martin Emila’s Media Chair. It’s the same idea: a comfy chair set up with speakers focused right at your head, but one that looks a lot classier. You know, without all that sound-dampening foam stapled in there. With the Media Chair, you get to pick the color of the chair itself as well as the color and pattern of the fabric of the seat. At least, in theory, as this is just a concept. Which I guess, in the end, gives the Sound Egg a leg up. Being real and all. Renamed via BornRich

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