When you can’t use a mouse because of too much Guitar Hero, don’t fret; alternative means of controlling your computer’s cursor are just over the horizon. The University of Washington is developing a vocally controlled mouse interface that’s completely hands free!

Similar to speech recognition that aids in typing, the vocal joystick makes using a mouse as simple as humming mantras in front of your computer. Using different vowels and sounds, the vocal joystick is able to create cursor motion and clicking functions as if you were using an ordinary mouse. However, playing Minesweeper is still a pain in the ass.

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Sylvain Calinon’s creation, the Robotic Portrait Artist, has received a makeover. Check out its sweet new mustache and beret! It truly has the look of an artist.

This bot is able to recognize human faces and extract relevant characteristics from them. Then, it draws portraits of captured images by converting them into vector art.  The produced result is better than anything I could put down onto paper. Then again, I’m not programmed to draw. If I was, I’d be Bob Ross.

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We wonder if this decision has anything to do with Lenovo being one of the greenest of the big tech companies. Though a torch isn’t really “eco-friendly”. Designing the 2008 Olympic Torch might knock Lenovo down a notch on the green scale.

Though with that notched peg, Lenovo is sure to gain a ridiculous amount of name recognition with how disgustingly over-hyped the summer Olympics always are. Now the only questions is, can a computer company design a satisfactory torch? Looks cool, but will it satisfy the world’s hunger for flame? — Andrew Dobrow

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Okay this is nothing new really, we all have remote controllers at home, some of us are lucky enough to have a home network hooked up to all appliances so that you can control the microwave in your kitchen all the way from your neighbor’s house.

Fuji Housing is showcasing this new household robot at their showrooms in Osaka. The teddybear-ish Chapit is actually smarter than it looks. The voice-recognition capability allows the Chapit to understand when you shout at it (up to 10,000 different commands), hook it up to your home network then you will have an electronic slave to turn your lights on and off (video), switch channels and get on to the in-ter-neto (video). The built-in camera allows you to do video conferencing with your friends on webcam or on 3G video-calls, you can also check your hair on the screen just before leaving the house (video).

The Chapit is due to launch in 2008, with a lot more added features comparing to the recent model, price is projected to be around $1700. –Sam Chan

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One of the models that deserve attention in the Winter line-up of AU KDDI would be Sanyo’s W42SA. This phone supports a new kind of handwriting recognition that does not require a stylus, instead you would be using your thumb to “stroke” over the number keys. Of course you can still use the usual T9 predictive text system, but just face it, there are a lot of words that even the Japanese don’t know how to pronounce properly, names and places with difficult Kanji for example (Chinese characters); and when you don’t know how to pronounce them, there’s no way you can type using Kana or romanization.

Of course this function is not needed if you use a fully alphabet-based language, but apart from being able to recognize thumbwriting, the Smooth-touch keypad (literally) can also be used for scrolling, similar but not as smooth as the Multi-Touch on iPhone obviously. The NikkeiBP team finds the Smooth-touch works pretty well, the built in 2 megapixel autofocus camera worked reasonably given that the overall thickness is only 19.4mm (49×99x19.4mm 117g), the smooth hinge design and huge buttons are also praised.

The 2.4″ QVGA screen, full HTML browser, music player and GPS all do their job as promised. The only nudge here is that Sanyo has not been maximizing their technology as you cannot use the Smooth-touch pad to control the cursor in the browser, and surprisingly there are no games that abuse such technology. Also, the battery doesn’t last too long when playing music. Ah well there’s no perfect phone after all. — Sam Chan

Sanyo W42SA review [NikkeiBP]
Thumbwriting video [NikkeiBP]
Smooth-touch scrolling video [NikkeiBP]