The lucky Irish will be able to purchase the iPhone from Friday March 14th. The carrier will be O2, the same as in the UK, and the handsets will be priced at €400 and €500 ($605 and $755) for 8GB…

The lucky Irish will be able to buy the iPhone from Friday March 14th. The carrier will be O2, the same as in the UK, and the handsets will be priced at €400 and €500 ($605 and $755) for 8GB and 16GB.

Tariffs run from €45 up to €100 per month, even though the only differences are the number of inclusive minutes and SMS messages – all plans get a flat 1GB of data per month.

Product page [O2]

Via [wired.com]

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The Urban Street Concept Bike from Cube belongs to the descriptively obvious school of product naming. The carbon fiber bicycle is yet another take on the folding bike theme, an increasingly popular niche (and if you don’t know why you’d…

The Urban Street Concept Bike from Cube belongs to the descriptively obvious school of product naming. The carbon fiber bicycle is yet another take on the folding bike theme, an increasingly popular niche (and if you don’t know why you’d need a folder, try living in a European apartment with no elevator and little rooms).

The bike collapses around a central hub just behind the handlebars, which is locked and released by the red handle you see in the photograph. The seat post slides in and the rear wheel flips around the bottom bracket (counter-clockwise as shown). Designer Gregor Dauth claims that the fully-folded Cube will fit in either a tiny Smart automobile, or inside a rucksack. A closer look at the actual folding process, though, shows that to achieve this contortionist feat you have to take the wheels off, which seems like cheating.

The Cube doesn’t skimp on extras, though. The brake levers contain LED lights, as does the seat post, both of which are powered by a hub dynamo. Front and rear disc brakes, and eight speed hub gears will start and stop the bike, and big 28″ wheels will glide over city potholes. And for a folder, it looks damned cool.

Product page [Cube via Tree Hugger]

Via [wired.com]

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View-Masters were a part of just about everyone’s childhood. For those trying to relive those days, Minnesota artist Debra Dressler has come up with these handmade clocks made with genuine vintage View-Masters. As you might suspect, “handmade” and “vintage” are usually codewords for “expensive,” and at $145, that’s pretty much the case here. However, if that’s a tiny more money than you want to spend on a clock, you could probably build one using a newer View-Master fairly easily. [Unusual Goods]

Via [gizmodo]

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UK robotics professor Noel Sharkey is raising a fuss over the US Defense Department’s intention to put $4 billion into “unmanned systems” in the next year or two. One fear is that spillover from all that R&D will give terrorists new ways to build effective GPS-guided suicide bombers for $500 or less.

“How long is it going to be before the terrorists get in on the act? With the current prices of robot construction falling dramatically and the availability of ready-made components for the amateur market, it wouldn’t require a lot of skill to make autonomous robot weapons.”

But Sharkey has other more philosophical issues, ones that echo Isaac Asimov’s own concerns of more than a half century ago.

Says the New Scientist:

Sharkey is most concerned about the prospect of having robots decide for themselves when to “pull the trigger.” Currently, a human is always involved in decisions of this nature. But the Pentagon is almost two years into a research programme aimed at having robots identify potential threats without human help.

But Ronald Arkin of Georgia Tech, the Siskel to Sharkey’s Ebert, states that because a robot has no emotional baggage, it could be a much more “ethical” killer:

Arkin suggests trying to design ethical control systems that make military robots respect the Geneva Convention and other rules of engagement on the battlefield… “With a robot I have the ability to be sure that a robot will never harbour the intention to injured a non-combatant,” he says. “Ultimately they’ll be able to perform better than humans.”

This day, Sharkey, Arkin and others are discussing these matters at length at a symposium called “The Ethics & Legal Implications of Unmanned Automobiles for Defence and Security Purposes,” hosted by the Royal United Services Institute in London. [RUSI; New Scientist; Reuters]

Via [gizmodo]

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CyCool Uses Your Own Cycling Energy To Cool You [Design]

Stationary biking may be fun and healthy, but unless you’re sitting right under an air conditioning vent, you’re gonna get hot. Real hot. So why not use the energy generated by all that furious pedaling to power a fan that cools you off at the same time? Sounds brilliant to us as long as you can shut off the fan occasionally so you’re not always getting the cooling effect. There’s nothing worse than cycling in the wind when it’s cold. [Yanko Design]

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