weeds
Latest
Roomba creator wants to do for gardens what he did for your floors
Let's be honest: while planting your garden can be fun, weeding it usually isn't. Not unless you enjoy crouching down for long stretches, anyway. You might not have to endure the drudgery for too much longer, though. Roomba co-creator Joe Jones and Franklin Robotics are launching Tertill, a robot that weeds your garden all by itself. The machine automatically roams the soil, using sensors to identify small plants (you use collars to protect young crops) and chop them down. It's solar-powered, so you don't have to dock it -- you can even leave it out in the rain.
Must See HDTV (September 10th - 16th)
With football and new TV series premieres, we're ready to call it officially fall. Keep an eye out for brand news shows like NBC's Go On and The New Normal, as well as returning favorites like Glee on Fox and the various talent show competitions. Look below for the highlights this week, followed after the break by our weekly listing of what to look out for in TV, Blu-ray and videogames. Monday Night Football Football is back, and it's Monday night, so you know what that means. Hank Williams Jr. is no longer a part of the festivities but the action hasn't changes. We've got a doubleheader lined up with Bengals/Ravens followed by Raiders/Chargers, so wrap up those bedtime stories and get in front of the TV. Sons of Anarchy It may not rise to the level of Breaking Bad or Justified but Sons of Anarchy is one of our other favorite cable TV series, and its new season gets started this week. SAMCRO is dealing with conflict from within and, judging from the previews, out side the club as well. We'll see how the addition of Jimmy Smits to the cast affects this show. (September 11th, FX, 10PM) Weeds At long last, the Showtime series comes to an end this weekend. Some might say it should've wrapped up a couple of seasons ago, but if you're still following the Botwin clan and their assortment of friends, enemies and drug-dealing associates it's time to say goodbye. (September 16th, Showtime, 10PM)
The Air Force will give you $150,000 to blast its weeds with a laser
With the holiday season just around the corner, the Air Force has been busy compiling its yuletide wish list, and it's got some pretty strange requests. Included on its latest call for small business innovations is a curious proposal for a project called "Floral Disruptor – Directed Energy Weed Abatement and Prevention Tool." According to Air Force documents, this project calls for "a device that uses directed energy technology to prevent and abate unwanted plants (weeds) in areas that require control or defoliation." Translation: a ray gun to blast weeds. Turns out, the Air Force spends a handsome chunk of cash each year on weed control -- so much so, in fact, that it's willing to pay $150,000 in grant money to anyone whose device can "deter, disrupt, deny, or degrade the desired objective." Private companies have already begun testing devices that annihilate weeds with lasers, microwave radiation and even sound, which is why the Air Force feels confident that the approach can bear fruit. But before you start entertaining fantasies of mass botanical killings, keep in mind that the government will only accept solutions that don't "target personnel or wildlife." As a Force rep explained to Wired, the idea is to develop an eagle-eyed contraption that lessens its dependence upon costly chemicals and pesticides. Besides, have you seen the Army's front lawn? It's immaculate.
Vudu adds TV shows to its rental catalog, but only some are in HD
Here we go again with a good news / bad news announcement from Vudu, as it's added a nice catalog of TV shows to its library for rent and/or purchase. The bad news however, is that despite having the 1080p / 5.1 audio HDX technology we've come to know and love, it's currently only offering a small subset of them in anything other than standard definition. Like other online stores, there's an odd situation where some things are a decent value (season one of The Walking Dead is $26.99 on Blu-ray at Amazon, $15.99 on iTunes in HD, and $16.99 on Vudu HDX) and others are not (season six of Weeds is $27.99 on Vudu HDX, $23.99 on Blu-ray at Amazon and $38.87 on iTunes) so shop carefully. Given time the library will probably even out more in quality and price and once Vudu is available on more devices (and hopefully in HD on the PC at some point) there will be more reasons to consider it as a VOD option.
Heart Story: One player's quest for iconic affection
The first character I ever made in WoW was a rogue named Lockette. She was an adorable little gnome with green pigtails who I played for 5 minutes while my boyfriend (who'd left himself logged in on the character selection screen) was in the shower. I don't recall much of what I did in the game during those few minutes, but I remember being fascinated by the sight of my character's footsteps on the snowy terrain of Dun Morogh. Looking back on it now, I know it probably sounds like a strange thing to be impressed by, but my gaming experience at that time was limited to sprite RPGs that didn't have those kinds of little details. I wasn't used to being able to affect the environment of a game. So I ran in circles, squiggles, and zigzags, then finally made a small effort at drawing something simple: a heart. That's when I realized the prints fade quite quickly.
Comcast adds Showtime to Xfinity TV online
Almost immediately after expanding its Xfinity TV online services by 150,000 titles, Comcast has announced with Showtime that over 400 hours of the channel's series and movies are now also available via the portal for paying Showtime subscribers. If you aren't keeping Dexter-like tabs on the we-offer-more-content-than-you cable playground banter, this partnership is a first for Showtime and a killer feature for Comcast. In fact, combined with their Starz, Encore, and older HBO and Cinemax online streaming deals, Xfinity TV will now also go down in the annals of history with another first as the only online destination to offer all of the major premium content providers under one cozy URL. As much as we're all for establishing records though, we'd still encourage Comcast to brainstorm on additional ways to keep paying customers -- that is, if it wants to avoid earning another title for losing the most subscribers two quarters in a row.
Screen Grabs: the G1 gets some serious love on 'Weeds' and 'True Blood'
Screen Grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today's movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dt com. If you're unfamiliar with either Showtime's series Weeds or HBO's True Blood, we'll catch you up to speed really quickly. The former is about a widowed housewife living in California who sells stolen gadgets to make ends meet for her family, while the latter is a Southern-fried tale of a Louisiana town infested with vampires plus a cute young woman who can see the future, and uses her power to predict Nokia's product roadmap for 2010. No? Well, that's what we thought we saw. We'll tell you this much: we definitely spotted the G1 in both shows this week. Yes, in Weeds Andy took a call from Nancy, and boom! Android screen, while on True Blood, Eric did some evil, tanktopped talking on his own. Who knew vampires were nerds? Second shot is after the break. [Thanks, Brendan]
Blu-ray releases on June 2nd 2009
What an improvement from last week's unimpressive slate. Not only do we have a few day-and-dates like Defiance and He's Just Not that into You, but we also have the greatest Blu-ray demo disc since Planet Earth from the BBC in the way of Nature's Most Amazing Events -- yes they are very amazing, but we still prefer the original name Nature's Great Events. But that's not all, as we are also getting the fourth season of Weeds as well as a number of classic catalogs worth checking out like The Gradute and Fletch. Defiance (Paramount) Revolutionary Road (Paramount) Nature's Most Amazing Events (BBC) He's Just Not That Into You (Warner) NFL: Road to Super Bowl XLIII: Pittsburgh Steelers (Warner) Spring Breakdown (Warner) Weeds: Season Four (Lionsgate) Home (Fox) Air Force One (Sony) Anaconda (Sony) Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (Sony) Glory (Sony) Bruce Almighty (Universal) Inside Man (Universal) Fletch (Universal) Dark Blue (MGM) Navy Seals (MGM) The Graduate (MGM) Out of Time (MGM) Road House (MGM) Rollerball (MGM) Walking Tall (MGM) Direct Contact (First Look) Elsewhere (E1)
Don't mess with Animal Crossing
This video of a sped-up Animal Crossing cleanup initiative highlights one of the weirdest design decisions made for the game: weeds. We get the idea of encouraging the player to keep up a daily routine, but by punishing you for not playing, after a certain amount of time you no longer want to play the game again. We have long since exiled ourselves from our town, out of fear of facing a weed-infested wasteland, full of cute, yet angry neighbors who hate us for ruining their shot at getting that glasses case over to Admiral. Of course, two minutes of pulling weeds would not be entertaining at all to watch if Games Radar hadn't applied the basic principles of British comedy, as exemplified by Benny Hill: 1) speed up footage and 2) overdub "Yakety Sax".
Blu-ray movie releases for the week of July 23rd
For those out there who have been yearning for some Prince in glorious TrueHD, your prayers have finally been answered. This week, The Artist Formerly Known as Prince and Now Just Known as Prince is featured on Blu-ray in his cinematic masterpiece, Purple Rain. The vertically-challenged singer/actor/maestro plays The Kid, a promising musician at the start of his career who has to struggle against prejudices and his own past in order to reach super-mega-stardom. The movie came out before most of the readers of this blog were even born, but is considered a classic by uh, Prince fans. Here is the full list of titles this week: The Host Weeds: Season Two Purple Rain Out for Justice Rounding out the list is the successful Korean creature horror flick, The Host, the second season of Weeds, and Out for Justice, a Steven Seagal movie that somehow managed to make his other movies look like Citizen Kane. The Host and Weeds look like solid purchases, but everything pales to next week's releases when we finally get 300. Pre-orders for that title have been massive and expectations are incredibly high for the high-def versions of the Spartan epic. Hope you have your pre-orders in -- it's gonna be a hard one to find.
HortiBot: the autonomous, GPS-enabled weed eradicator
HortiBot won't go down as the first robot with weed extermination as its sole mission in life, but this particular robot ups the ante in a serious way. Conjured up by a team of Danish agricultural scientists, the three-foot by three-foot autonomous machine is "equipped with a computer and GPS to find the exact location of weeds," and being that it's also reportedly self-propelled, you hardly have to keep an eye on it. Moreover, the device can be flanked by an array of weed-removing attachments depending on a farmer's specific needs, and promises to curb "herbicide usage by 75-percent." Currently, the cost of one Hortibot would run around $71,000, but the crew hopes to land a manufacturing partner and reduce those charges when it (hopefully) goes commercial.[Via Slashdot, image courtesy of HortiBot]
Blu-ray movie releases for the week of May 28th
This week's Blu-ray release list is looking a little bare -- only two movies, a TV show, and one concert. The most interesting releases are probably the Chinese epic The Curse of the Golden Flower and the Showtime dark comedy, Weeds: Season One (which also happens to be one of the first TV shows to be released on Blu-ray). Check out the full release list below: The Curse of the Golden Flower Basic Instinct: Director's Cut Weeds: Season One Chris Botti: Live with Orchestra and Guests Though this week was a little underwhelming, next week looks like one to look forward to. We'll be getting ten new Blu-ray releases including Hellboy and Trading Places. Mmm ... remember when Eddie Murphy was still funny?
New Illinois robot seeks and destroys pesky weeds
Oh robots, is there anything they can't do? Apparently they can now search for and completely obliterate weeds, which really is something that we've always wanted them to do. A team of scientists at the University of Illinois have developed a robot that searches for weeds, chops them off, and then sprays herbicide all over the weed stump. The as-yet unnamed robot (which we'll be calling the weedinator for the time being) packs a Windows box with a 80GB hard drive (including WiFi), stands at about two feet tall, is a little over two feet wide and is nearly five feet long. Dr. Lei Tian, the lead scientist on the project, says that his new robot will improve efficiency of herbicide use by being precise about the amount of chemical use. We're not sure exactly what the WiFi is for, but it's probably used to brag to nearby robots about how many weeds it's just fragged.[Via Robot Gossip]
