What would you call a remote-controlled, six-legged robot toy (pictured above) for kids that can shoot all kinds of projectiles? Its designer, Jaimie Mantzel, is already calling it “The Greatest Toy in the Universe” (and we think that he might be right there), but he wants you to give it a cool name.

Although unnamed, the new toy is quite impressive with its customizable armor and weaponry. It walks on six legs and can be remotely controlled. There are various launchers, which can be turned and tilted remotely, for shooting projectiles and you just have to press the fire button a little longer to shoot a projectile farther. The armor falls off when hit just right, which makes the toy perfect for robot battles. But for conducting a battle, you will need at least two of these. That appears to be a great idea to sell more units, who knows, they may come in multi-packs.

But if you are lucky (and more than that, having a great imagination), you can end up with one for free. You just have to suggest a name here and if it gets selected, you will win a unit completely free. But if names are not your area of expertise and you have a thing for designing, just come out with an armor design for it. If that’s chosen, you play with a free unit.

As you will see in the first video below, the robots shown off are prototypes. The finished toys will be coming with improvements and other attachments. Mantzel will be working with Wow! Stuff to produce and distribute the final product. The toy company has released a promo video for the toy (second clip below).

The post Crawling Robots Battle with Awesome Weapons and Armor (Video) appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Basically, the DragonBot is a robotic stuffed animal with Android as its brain. The smartphone docks into its face and effectively functions as the face, showing various expressions by ways of its virtual eyes and mouth. The Android phone is also what controls its articulated limbs and torso. But that’s just the beginning.

It is very good with language, works with visual cues by way of the front-facing camera, and helps children learn all sorts of things. Kombusto is also connected to the Internet, presumably over WiFi/3G/4G via the smartphone inside. Communicating with the cloud, it can gain the collective experiences of all other DragonBots, allowing them all to learn what each individual bot has learned. And you can remotely control Kombusto by way of an app on your Android tablet.

The DragonBot was developed by researchers from Harvard, Northeastern, and MIT, so you know it’s kind of a big deal. They’re also saying it’ll cost less than $1,000, though it’s not clear whether or not that includes the smartphone brain.

The post Android-Powered DragonBot Toy Learns From The Cloud appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

They’ve shaped it to look like a conventional camera, including the “bump” where you might normally find a hot shoe, but that’s not really a functional bump. It’s just for look. You can then pop out the side cap to reveal a USB connector, which is used both for transfering images and video off the camera and for charging its internal lithium-ion battery. It takes microSD cards up to 16GB.

The images can be up to 1.3MP (1280×1024) and the videos can be up to 720×480 in resolution, despite the CLAP having a 2MP F2.8 lens. You can expect image quality to be similar to that of an entry-level webcam, it seems, so it’s probably a better idea to whip out your iPhone or Droid instead. I don’t see this tiny camera being all that more discreet, considering it’s shaped like a camera and has a very obvious lens too. It also doesn’t help that you have no viewfinder to frame your shot.

Shrug. I guess there’s a place in the market for almost anything and there are certainly worse ways to spend $49.95. I can think of lots of better ways though.

The post Are you ready for the CLAP? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

As you may recall, the guys at Bandai decided to release a color version of the Tamagotchi last year, but that wasn’t really enough to get people interested again. We’re much more interested in the PSP Go and Nintendo DSi, right?

For the newest iteration in this franchise, Bandai is coming out with the Tamagotchi ID. From what I can see, it gets the 1.44-inch color display of last year’s model, but you also get the ability to “customize” it to some extent. There’s also mention of downloading content from the mobile web, like virtual items and mini-games.

Look for the Tamagotchi ID to launch on November 23. Look for it in Japan in your choice of six different colors for $57 each. I’d say that a Tamagotchi smartphone app could be more successful, but you have to remember that Bandai is targeting seven to nine-year-old girls with this. Then again, this is Japan. They might have smartphones already.

Source: Crunchgear

The post Pocket Pets Resurrected with New Tamagotchi ID appeared first on Mobile Magazine.