ASUS gets Computex 2011 started early with a tablet teaser, asks us 'pad or phone?'

Oh ASUS, what are you up to now? The company that brought us the wildly popular Eee Pad Transformer has another new tablet brewing in its design labs, which we're promised we'll get to witness for the first time at Computex 2011. Until then, we've been provided with a trio of images to pore over and get the guessing games going. The slate device, whose size and software remain unspecified, is said to feature a bump (above left) and a clip (above right), though there are no explanations given about the function of either. You may see both images in their full size after the break, along with a teaser image from ASUS' Facebook page with the slogan "break the rules: pad or phone?" stood in front of a tablet silhouette. That provides plenty of clues for aspiring Sherlocks out there, but little concrete knowledge. Ah well, Computex is just a week away.

Notebook Italia

TechinStyle.tv

Emoti-bots turn household objects into mopey machines (video)

Some emotional robots dip deep into the dark recesses of the uncanny valley, where our threshold for human mimicry resides. Emoti-bots on the other hand, manage to skip the creepy human-like pitfalls of other emo-machines, instead employing household objects to ape the most pathetic of human emotions -- specifically dejection and insecurity. Sure it sounds sad, but the mechanized furniture designed by a pair of MFA students is actually quite clever. Using a hacked Roomba and an Arduino, the duo created a chair that reacts to your touch, and wanders aimlessly once you're rump has disembarked. They've also employed Nitinol wires, a DC motor, and a proximity sensor to make a lamp that seems to tire with use. We prefer our lamps to look on the sunny side of life, but for those of you who like your fixtures forlorn, the Emoti-bots are now on display at Parsons in New York and can be found moping about in the video after the break.

Emoti-bots

Microsoft shutters Pioneer Studios, we pour one out for J Allard

It's been about a year since he left Microsoft, but the J Allard era came to a more definitive close yesterday, with the shuttering of his brainchild, Pioneer Studios. Microsoft opened the incubation lab more than three years ago as an entrepreneurial space where designers could toy around with new consumer technologies. The tragically shelved Courier tablet was first developed within Pioneer's exposed brick walls, where Allard and his Alchemy Ventures team also worked on the Xbox, Zune and Windows Phone 7. Now, however, a Microsoft spokeswoman has confirmed that the downtown Seattle office is no longer occupied, telling CNET that many of the lab's employees have either left, or moved on to different positions within the company. Pioneer co-founder Georg Petschnigg left Microsoft in April to pursue an "undisclosed new venture," while fellow godfather Jonathan Harris is still at Redmond, where he serves as "principle experience director," according to their respective LinkedIn profiles. The spokeswoman didn't offer a specific reason for the decision, but in a now-ominous video posted to Microsoft's developer site back in October, Petschnigg acknowledged that the unit's innovative spirit would frequently lead to dead ends. "Often times our work just doesn't go anywhere," he explained, adding that Pioneer would only pursue projects expected to bring in more than $100 million a year. "That's one of the perils of being an entrepreneur." See the full video after the break.

PC World

CNET

Eole concept watch has turbine bezel, shows time when you blow

Traditional electronic watches may be practical, but there's nothing elegant about battery power. With the Eole watch concept, designer Julien Moise envisioned a device that's powered by blown air, displaying the time only when you want to see it. Sure, compulsively blowing on your watch in a meeting is less discrete than sneaking a peak under the table, but you'll still have your BlackBerry around for when you need to count down the minutes until freedom. There's also a weather indicator and alarm function, so we assume there's a battery in there that's doing more than keeping time -- an alarm that only sounds when you blow wouldn't work too well if you're asleep.

DVICE

Julien Mo�se