The world needs humanoids, and Fuji Soft is heeding that call. It just unveiled its new humanoid line at the ever-popular All Japan Robot Tournament, and while the robot doesn't have a model name yet, one of the delightful personalities pictured above is named Sakura-Chan and both seem pretty keen on a bit of robo-Sumo. The mobility and capabilities of the bots seems pretty standard, with an LED visor for facial expressions, speech recognition and a camera for taking in this odd carbon-based world it finds itself in. What's more interesting is the Robovie-style off-the-shelf parts inside: Atom CPU, Ubuntu OS and WiFi, all of which are compatible with the Eclipse development environment. The robot should be hitting the streets (of Japan) in early 2010 for a supposedly competitive price. Video is after the break.

Remember that Mini 210 mentioned in HP's leak from a few months back? Looks like it's on the comeback as the Pine Trail-powered replacement for the Mini 110 (noticing a trend here?). Logichp has some fancy press pics, and additionally, online retailer eCost lists the little guy for $321 and claims 1GB of RAM, 160GB to 250GB HDD, 802.11b/g/n, card reader, and Windows 7 Starter Edition, a.k.a. the new norm for netbooks.

[Thanks, Tim]

[Thanks, Matija]

You didn't expect it to rain Pine Trail netbooks without MSI dropping a new Wind, did you? Come January the $330 10-inch Wind U135 will replace the older Diamondville U100 with its new 1.66GHz Atom N450 CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, Windows 7 Starter and a six-cell battery. But the U135 gets updated with more than just new netbook specs -- the Taiwanese netbook pioneer has slightly tweaked the chassis with a new keyboard, touchpad and lid design. Read on for our thoughts.

Welcome to the Engadget Holiday Gift Guide! The team here is well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties of the seasonal shopping experience, and we want to help you sort through the trash and come up with the treasures this year. Below is today's bevy of hand curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the holiday season.

Here's something that'll fix a bit of your 27-inch iMac ails. Apple just released a graphics firmware update 1.0. Order of the day? To "address issues that may cause image corruption or display flickering." Download away, and let us know if you troubled souls have seen some relief.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

The NookDevs team hasn't wasted any time poring over the recently-released Nook 1.1 update, and there's good news: 1.1 can still be rooted, and rooted 1.0 devices will stay that way after the update. In other news, nookdevs team member robbiet480 just sat down with Nookaholic for an interview, and he dished a few tidbits: the Nook's Android build is called "Bravo," the internal WiFi had to be tweaked to stop turning itself off every three hours, and Bravo itself is basically Android 1.5. Nothing major, but we're definitely getting the feeling the Nook is going to be leading a double life as both a mom-friendly ebook reader and a happy-hacker hardware playground from here on out, you know?

[Thanks, Cameron]

As you may or may not have heard, Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell announced that he was leaving the company late last month, but neither he nor Microsoft was doing much talking at the time about what he would be doing next -- other than that he would be "looking at a number of opportunities that will expand his career beyond being a CFO." Well, it looks like he will still be a CFO after all -- this time at General Motors. That move was just made official today, and follows news earlier this month that GM's current CFO, Ray Young, would be transferring to China. As you might expect given the executive situation at GM, however, there's plenty of speculation that this hire might be more than what it seems, and folks already talking that Liddell may actually be being groomed to take over as CEO of the company once he gets a bit more experience in the automotive industry.

You know, there are some things in life you never expect to do twice: get divorced, fall into the same puddle, write a post about scalp massagers. But here we are, looking at the OSIM uCrown 2 -- an AA battery-powered "soothing head massager" that will jingle your worries away while using "patented air pressure technology, vibration, magnetic therapy" and heat to make your cranium a warm and cozy place to be. We give it credit for looking less like it came from the set of Spaceballs than your typical fare, but quickly take it back because of the ridiculous asking price of $200 and the fact neither model is brave enough to wear the uCrown with their eyes open.

CES 2010 might be just around the corner, but it sounds like Nokia's next big move might be at Mobile World Congress in February. Well, not quite at MWC: Espoo actually pulled out of the tradeshow earlier this year, but now we're hearing that there will be a private Connecting People event in Barcelona on the first and second days of MWC. That's particularly interesting because one of the reasons Nokia pulled out of MWC was to increase focus on its own Nokia World conference, so we're guessing nothing major will be coming out in Spain -- but we can't help but agree with this poignant Babelfish translation of Engadget Spanish's post on the same subject: "Fulfilled mission, Nokia: you have been able to attract our curiosity."

This one's been the subject of rumors for months now, but it looks like Samsung's NX10 "hybrid" DSLR (not to be confused with Samsung's NX-10 desktop PC) has finally shown itself -- assuming these shots are indeed the real thing, that is. That "hybrid" bit comes from the fact that this one fits in somewhere between a DSLR and a Micro Four Thirds camera, but there's unfortunately little else known about it apart from what you can see on the camera itself. It will apparently come bundled with an 18-55 mm lens, however, and it'll apparently be able to shoot up to 7 frames per second. Hit up the link below for a few more pics to get a better idea of its size.

Looks like we're going to see a steady trickle of Pine Trail Atom N450-based netbooks before the dam bursts wide at CES 2010, and next up today is Fujitsu, which just officially announced the MH380 that hit the FCC last month. Basic specs are slightly better than usual, with 2GB of RAM, a 250GB drive, built-in Bluetooth and a standard six-cell battery under a 10.1-inch 1366x768 screen, but we're most intrigued by that little divot next to the trackpad, which functions as a scroll wheel. We'll definitely have to check that out in person when we get to Vegas -- hopefully Fujitsu will have some pricing and availability details for us then as well.

We don't know, but it seems like RIM has enlisted a couple more CDMA engineers because the gap between new devices launching on GSM and then making their way to CDMA has been getting noticeably smaller over time. The BlackBerry Curve 8520 was launched on T-Mobile only a few short months ago, and it's already made its way to both Verizon and Sprint. It's not the same powerhouse as its older sibling the Tour, but this device packs a heck of a lot of punch into a very pocketable package. Read past the break for our extended impressions.

Right on schedule, the Barnes and Noble Nook is kicking out a software update (we rebooted to get the download to start). We've heard this will fix some of the issues we had with the unit in our review -- but we'll update you once we've had a little time to play around with it.

Some things we've noticed so far:

• Page updating on the E Ink display does seem to be a tiny bit faster. Nothing mindblowing, but a little bit better.
• B&N has fixed the page numbering issues. There is now a clear number and progress bar along the bottom of the screen.
• Overall the navigation and color screen loading times seem improved. The experience is definitely faster -- even scrolling through book covers seems a bit improved.
• There is still pausing and lag in the UI. This isn't a sea change, but it's clear they've cleaned some elements up.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

Yes, you might recall a version of Sony Ericsson's mighty X10 getting FCC approval last week -- but this one isn't quite the same. This time around, we've got WCDMA 850 / 1900 accompanying the quadband EDGE, which is heartwarming news for anyone on AT&T, Rogers, Bell, or Telus, though the complete lack of branding on the FCC's test unit leaves us to speculate wildly over which of those carriers (if any) will brand the unit -- and more importantly, whether any will be on shelves before frickin' 2011. In the meantime, we're guessing SonyStyle sales are a lock -- so get your save on.