Gearfuse

I’m not driving with you anymore. No way. I’ve had enough bruises to last me a lifetime, thank you very much. Nope, I’d like you to meet AIDA, short for Affective Intelligent Driving Assistant. Basically this little guy will take my place, and hopefully take my place as your punching bag. I’m tired of dressing as a robot anyway.

AIDA uses sensors both inside and outside of the car to create “a platform comprising of a personal robot and an intelligent navigation system that aims to bring an innovative driving experience.” So yeah… basically a robotic backseat driver. Focusing less on the waypoints and more on driver behavior, AIDA gets to know you and your car on a more personal level than some might be comfortable. Check out the demo vid after the jump.

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This is a potential game-changer. In a real stunner, Microsoft and Yahoo! have announced an agreement which will attach Microsoft search engine Bing will now power Yahoo! In return, Microsoft will receive advertising and sales power from Yahoo! in their Bing and Yahoo! search results. The agreement will last at least 10 years.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says the agreement will provide “the scale necessary to more effectively compete, attracting more users and advertisers, which in turn will lead to more relevant ads and search results.” Can this agreement take down the Google machine? Probably not, but it can surely cause a dent in their revenue. Hit the jump for the BNO press release.

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If you’re one of the lucky people who own a first-gen PS3 model (back when WiFi wasn’t standard and shit), your system has what’s called an Emotion Engine chip. Think of it as an extra heart for your PS3 that allows you to have a full Playstation 2 inside. Sony removed it a few years back to cut costs and now only a very limited number of titles are supported. To boot, Sony is also selling a lot of PSX games on the Playstation Network, so the incentive to add the EE back into the system is low.

But there is hope. According to a patent filing from last year (December, specifically), Sony is working on a way to compile and decompile the Emotion Engine. This will allow PS2 backwards-compatibility through software emulation, thus keeping us fanboys happier than ever.

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Last.fm, one of the bestest music services to ever grace the Internet, is losing its three co-founders. Felix Miller, Richard Jones and Martin Stiksel are bowing out of the company and “handing over the reigns” to parent company CBS. CBS purchased Last.fm for $280 million in 2007, enabling the company to grow itself even further. I hope that this won’t mean radical changes for the company, as the announcement is a bit random.

I’ve been using Last.fm for years and I love it. It truly helps me keep track of my music and I love finding out what trends in music I’ve been following. If you want to see my profile, it can be found here.

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Any DIYer worthy of the title should know about Lady Ada aka Limor Fried. She’s the ultimate maker and when I ran into her last week at a Gawker party, she brought along an Arduino-based robot she was working on. Needless to say, such a technophile needs an appropriate business card to match. Limor’s feature pop-out Spirograph shapes that you can use to create fun ’80s designs.

Badass? Far from it. Mind-blowing? Absolutely.

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Take a near-bankrupt automobile manufacturer and a company that makes personal transportation vehicles used mostly by colleges and you’d think you’d have a disaster on your hands, correct? Apparently, such is not the opinion of General Motors and Segway. The two companies are teaming up to create the PUMA, or Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility Project. The vehicle, shown above, will feature a 35 MPH top speed and will get a measly 35 mile charge on its lithium battery pack.

OK, I get it. Cool idea. Rad vehicle. But 35 miles on one charge? Sounds pointless unless I can recharge it in 15 minutes at any electrical outlet, don’t you agree? Regardless, if this doesn’t bankrupt GM, I don’t know what will.

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We’ve covered our fair share of persistence of vision gizmos here on Gearfuse. You know, you wave something around in the air and the message is written in the air. You can easily get a kit and build your own POV toy but why bother? You most likely have an iPhone so just download the Light Writer app from the App Store. While I haven’t checked it out yet (and would love to), the app apparently lets you draw text and clipart in the air through POV techniques.

Can the iPhone really become a dedicated POV device? From the looks of these PR images, I’d say there’s a damn good chance.

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Karl Lagerfeld wants you to know that even though he’s old and the head of Chanel, he can still crank out innovative, wallet-busting products that are completely unnecessary. Take this Chanel Segway, for instance. It comes with some ridiculously expensive Chanel bag, logos emblazoned all over the vehicle (including the rims) and has extra big tires for when you’re stuck in the sand in Laos whilst on a photo shoot.

No word on price but if you have to ask…

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Praise be to Beetlejesus! If you’re like any normal human being, chances are there’s been a time where your cellphone has started to die and you bring up the age-old question: “Hey, does anyone have a charger I can use?” Of course not! You’ve got an LG and I’ve got a Samsung. Ray has a Motorola and Christie has the Nokia E63. Do you see the issue? There’s no standardization on mobile phone charging, but luckily, all that is about to change.

The GSM Association announced at the Mobile World Congress that all of the UK’s mobile phone companies have signed up for the idea of a universal charger. Hopefully, American companies will follow suit. The new charger will use 50-percent less energy when standing by and features a microUSB connection as the charging port. The idea is that by 2012, most phones around the world will use the new universal charging standard. I think it’s a fantastic idea; let’s just see how well it gets executed.

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Ladies! Do you love to munch rug? Find pleasure in shoving a cucumber in your vagina or anus? Excellent. Pay attention.

After awhile, you’ll most likely have built up an impressive collection of sex toys that rivals that of Star Jones’. Do yourself, your husband and the environment a favor and dispose of these toys properly. Instead of throwing it out and leaving it for Ted the Garbageman to find, use this official Sex Toy Recycling Program. Send ‘em a box of dildos and you’ll get a $10 credit towards a new one from their online store. Not a bad deal, right? This company will even clean and dismantle your vibrators and dildos to ensure they’re disposed of properly.

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