Yeah, this is just what everyone needed: more pointless electronic rubbish to clutter up your desk. Lacking the charm of other useless USB accessories (USB sushi: it's got cred!), Brando opted to give a regular Plasma Ball the USB connectivity it never wanted. For $16.99, the ability to awe your colleagues and family members with an interactive light show they've seen dozens of times is within your grasp! Hey, at least the base isn't lined with blue LEDs.

While a number of recent space-based experiments have proven quite successful, it must not have been Ted nor Gadget's day. The daring duo that made up the MAST project was supposed to "test the survivability of a thin, braided tether in space," but due to a glitch in the restraint system that "kept Ted from pushing away hard enough to keep unreeling the tether from its spool," the once hopeful mission has come to an ill-fated close. Rather than reaching a full kilometer, the tether was only able to reach a few meters before coming to a stop, but the team at Tethers Unlimited aren't calling it quits just yet. They did admit to not knowing precisely what caused the costly mishap, but the crew also suggested that they'll try to use the small amount of data they did gather to analyze "how a short tether behaves in microgravity." Don't worry fellas, there's always next time.

Thrown together by well-traveled ODM Inventec, i-mate's new Momento series of digital picture frames break some important ground. First of all, they do WiFi -- a seemingly obvious feature for this category of devices that's inexplicably missing from a majority of the mainstream models currently in the marketplace. Next up, the Momento is among the very first commercially available devices to support Microsoft's SideShow concept for secondary displays that should (theoretically, anyway) untether all manner of information from the PCs on which it typically resides. In that respect, the Momento is very much a first-generation device -- but as a picture frame, we came into the hands-on expecting a certain level of refinement, now that they've had a few years to ripen on the vine. Does the unit deliver on its promise as a highly connected, Vista-compatible accessory? Does it deliver as a plain ol' frame, for that matter? We took the $200 Momento 70 -- the smaller of the two, clocking in at 7 inches of diagonal real estate -- for a test drive to get some answers.

Alright, so we're taking this survey episode of propaganda quite lightly, but apparently an alarming amount of guys would give up their "must-have" woman for that "must-have" gizmo. Reportedly, a UK survey conducted by GfK NOP on behalf of mobile price search agent (read: spam bot) 60207 found that nearly one out of every eight men surveyed would willingly ditch their girlfriend -- but not their 'fro -- for a hot gadget, which was classified as a svelte HDTV, iPod, or some other desirable inorganic object. While the 16 to 24-year olds were quickest to swap a person for a gadget (17-percent), only 2-percent of the happily married 55 to 65-year old crowd was willing to throw away their silver anniversary for something found at Circuit City. Also of note was the female reaction, as nearly six-percent of ladies admitted that they would kick their man to the curb for a lovely piece of electronic kit, but considering just how much the dames have fallen for gizmos of late, this isn't all that shocking. So while holding onto your SO might not be all that difficult a fortnight into February, don't be alarmed if things get testy around June.

[Via TechDigest]

In celebration of Children's Day (which is also the day we celebrate Cinco de Mayo), our pals running the Robo-One competition announced a prizefight for what they've apparently dubbed Robo-One GP 2006 (Season 1) to take place in Bucheon Robo Park. The fighters: Japan's infamous Dynamizer on this side; Korea's Gadget on the other. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to see the fight (seems like they neglected to set up a Pay-Per-View feed), but surprisingly even despite the Dynamizer was hooked into a rig that mimicked its master's movements during the bout, the hand-controlled Gadget remained victorious. A severe blow was surely never dealt to Japan's national sense of pride. We understand the 13 year old boy controlling the Dynamizer was heard shouting "I'll get you next time, Gadget -- in space."