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Don’t be fooled. Pedaling around on a bike that chills your beers probably won’t result in much weight loss. In fact, you may actually pack on a few as you enjoy the beechwood aged fruits of your labor. The bike has a heat pump attached to the pedals so the more you pedal the cooler the beer set inside the copper coil will get. It is just the incentive the lazy couch potato needs to get up and start moving. Next up, tackling the fresh air of the great outdoors. [PEGE via Treehugger via DVICE]

Boston Dynamic’s BigDog is already an impressive and freakishly animal-like beast, but Darpa it seems has bigger plans in mind and is asking for a smarter, bigger BigDog. The upgraded robot needs to carry 400 pounds of payload, run 20 miles on any terrain and survive un-refueled for a whole day to please Darpa’s request. Plus it must be way quieter so it’s more useful in real combat situations and have a smarter brain so it can steer itself autonomously as it trots after its soldier masters.

It’ll have to cope with stairs, water hazards, desert levels of heat and arctic levels of snow and ice, navigate through GPS waypoints, and it’ll have to respond to speech and gesture commands—at which point you imagine a soldier commanding it to “sit!” and giggle slightly. But only slightly, as none of these enhancements seem too beyond the pale, given the already amazing development of BigDog.

Just one sad point though: Darpa’s labelling the new machine the “Legged Squad Support System” or L3. Would it have been a bit much for the military eggheads at the defense research agency to exercise their imaginations and dub it K9? Much better name. [FedBizOpps via DangerRoom]

Filed under: Portable Audio, Wearables

Remember that Body Trainer headset unveiled by Sega Toys earlier this year? If not, there’s hardly a better time to refresh your memory given that it’s coming to US soil via ITAMI. The rebadged FiTrainer comes equipped with a heart sensor and built-in one-liners to keep you going when your muscles are just dying to return to the couch. ITAMI also has the nerve to claim that “Wii Fit is history, while the FiTrainer is the future.” At any rate, the headset packs a trio of exercise modes — walking, jogging and aerobics — and by utilizing proprietary algorithms and subliminal encouragement from a variety of Pokémons, it tells you exactly how to exercise in order to “achieve maximum results.” We’re only told that the device is “coming soon,” but you can certainly procrastinate signing up to hear more so that you completely avoid ever bringing this nuisance / assistant into your life.

[Via I4U News, thanks Chris]

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Wearables

Remember that Body Trainer headset unveiled by Sega Toys earlier this year? If not, there’s hardly a better time to refresh your memory given that it’s coming to US soil via ITAMI. The rebadged FiTrainer comes equipped with a heart sensor and built-in one-liners to keep you going when your muscles are just dying to return to the couch. ITAMI also has the nerve to claim that “Wii Fit is history, while the FiTrainer is the future.” At any rate, the headset packs a trio of exercise modes — walking, jogging and aerobics — and by utilizing proprietary algorithms and subliminal encouragement from a variety of Pokémons, it tells you exactly how to exercise in order to “achieve maximum results.” We’re only told that the device is “coming soon,” but you can certainly procrastinate signing up to hear more so that you completely avoid ever bringing this nuisance / assistant into your life.

[Via I4U News, thanks Chris]

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Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Unafraid to incite elitist gamer geek unrest, respected video game industry analyst Michael Pachter has supported a prediction by GigaOM that Wii Fit will outsell Grand Theft Auto IV this year. Yeah, you read right: the latest entry into what is arguably the biggest hardcore video game franchise around is gonna get whooped by an exercise tool — we’re not shocked, we’re just laughing. GTA4 was dominating at first, but with time interest has waned while Wii Fit and its included Balance Board peripheral have stayed hot despite supply shortages. Nintendo’s hardware-focused strategy seems to be working; the Balance Board install base is approaching 12 million, or roughly 30% of all Wii owners. You can bet it’ll be put to good use in future games and other, less mainstream applications even after folks have given up on losing weight and resigned themselves once more to lifelong loneliness.

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I’ve always wished I could work out at a Chuck E Cheese’s, but there has never been an exercise machine that combined the drudgery of sit-ups with the fun of arcade basketball. Until now! Guitar solo wahh whahh neeeyaa! The Ab Solo is a crazy contraption that has you do sit-ups and play basketball at the same time. Don’t believe me? Hit the jump for a video of it in action, complete with that guitar solo I just tried to type out.

[Ab Solo]

Filed under: Laptops

We were suitably impressed by ASUS’s netbook moniker-defying N10 when we got our hands on it earlier this month, and it seems to at least be able to hold its own with Call of Duty 4, but if you’re looking for a bit more information to inform your potential purchase, you may want to hit up the link below to check out Mobile Computer’s full review of the ultraportable. As you might expect, they were especially impressed by the N10’s performance compared to standard netbooks, but they’re a bit perplexed as to exactly what the target audience for it is, describing it as an “interesting technological exercise,” but one that sits uncomfortably between traditional netbooks and regular Core 2 Duo-based laptops and ultraportables. Still, we’re guessing the N10’s uniqueness alone will win it a few admirers, and if that $700 price tag ever gets knocked down, it’d no doubt have plenty more.

[Thanks, Michael A]

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Filed under: Laptops

We were suitably impressed by ASUS’s netbook moniker-defying N10 when we got our hands on it earlier this month, and it seems to at least be able to hold its own with Call of Duty 4, but if you’re looking for a bit more information to inform your potential purchase, you may want to hit up the link below to check out Mobile Computer’s full review of the ultraportable. As you might expect, they were especially impressed by the N10’s performance compared to standard netbooks, but they’re a bit perplexed as to exactly what the target audience for it is, describing it as an “interesting technological exercise,” but one that sits uncomfortably between traditional netbooks and regular Core 2 Duo-based laptops and ultraportables. Still, we’re guessing the N10’s uniqueness alone will win it a few admirers, and if that $700 price tag ever gets knocked down, it’d no doubt have plenty more.

[Thanks, Michael A]

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If you think parts of your face are out of proportion, like some Japanese people apparently do, there are tools available today that can help correct your ugliness. No, not plastic surgery. Too messy. Too obvious. I’m talking about tools like Kogao Meiku Beruto (small face make belt), which wrap your misshapen melon in gentle fabric, and bind those unsightly bulges and that caveman forehead into oblivion. The Tex Mex men’s mouth narrower, on the other hand, is straight out of a Saw movie.

See? Everything is completely normal within the Japanese beauty industry. Both products are priced below $10 and require a mere three minutes a day for full effectiveness. [Trends in Japan]

If you think parts of your face are out of proportion, like some Japanese people apparently do, there are tools available today that can help correct your ugliness. No, not plastic surgery. Too messy. Too obvious. I’m talking about tools like Kogao Meiku Beruto (small face make belt), which wrap your misshapen melon in gentle fabric, and bind those unsightly bulges and that caveman forehead into oblivion. The Tex Mex men’s mouth narrower, on the other hand, is straight out of a Saw movie.

See? Everything is completely normal within the Japanese beauty industry. Both products are priced below $10 and require a mere three minutes a day for full effectiveness. [Trends in Japan]