Watson Looks for Work

A team of IBM researchers spent four years building Watson, a computer system clever enough to beat the best Jeopardy players in the world. And although the three-day competition marked the end of Watson’s game-show career, it was just the beginning of Watson’s life in business.

One of the things that makes Watson unique is its ability to understand natural language—“getting at the meaning of words and understanding what humans meant, not just what they said or wrote,” says Katharine Frase, IBM’s vice president of research. OnJeopardy this means being able to pick through a riddle of a quiz-show clue; in the corporate world it could be used to decipher the needs of a customer. For example, callers to a help desk often “don’t describe the problem in a language that the person on the other end of the phone understands,” Frase says. A Watson-like system would act as a translation tool, turning English into engineerese.

Once Watson knows what is being asked, it must find the answer. The system that appeared on Jeopardy was preloaded with 200 million pages of encyclopedias, newspapers and works of literature. Any Jeopardy champion has absorbed a good deal of this material over the course of a curious life. But consider the medical literature, where “there’s so much information it seems almost inhuman to ask a doctor to be up to speed,” Frase says. This makes it perfect for the extremely inhuman Watson. One of IBM’s first projects will be to develop a system that would allow a small-town doctor to investigate a strange constellation of symptoms. From here it is easy to imagine a machine built for law or finance, one loaded with every legal decision handed down by the courts or the full text of every financial document published by every publicly traded entity in the world.

But one thing Watson can’t help with is deciding what projects to prioritize. “At this point the hardest problem is figuring out all the things we could do and what we should do,” Frase says. The company hopes to build prototype systems by the end of the year. After four years of education, Watson has passed its final exam; now it’s time to go find a job.

Awful Partying Scenes From Movies and Television

Before the days of Youtube and Jersey Shore… we depended on movies and television to interpret the craziness of debauched partying. Sometimes they made a perfect mirror to the world of those stricken with double vision and shaky sweatiness. Other times they failed horribly.

The filmmakers in charge of these party scenes were either completely disconnected Republicans or seriously abusing mind altering substances.

The Room

On this planet there exists many people who could be classified as genius. There are amazing musicians,  world changing scientific minds and bold groundbreaking filmmakers. None of which can describe Tommy Wisseau. This freak managed to somehow finance a movie that is described by some of the most back acne stricken nerds on the net as the worst movie ever made. Tommy’s take on drinking definitely transports you to another time and place… when you were uncomfortable.

Kickboxer

There was a time when Jean Claude Van Damme was really good at making the same movie over and over. It paid the bills and afforded him many a night with a fiery vixen. The man made the same movie like 8 times… but one of those movies stands out from the rest. That movie is Kickboxer. This movie contains one of the most awkward and bizarre drunken scenes complete with dancing AND a crazy drunken kickboxing master!

Kontroll

Hungary is a place that knows how to party. Understanding this corner of subculture has given them the ability to create the proper drunk wino chick for the big screen. In the Hungarian movie Kontroll, this woman demonstrates her ability to way overact being drunk on the largest escalator in the universe.

Dead Bang

The 1980′s to Don Johnson was a glorious decade where his name was actually relevant. It was so relevant that when he wasn’t totally lighting up the acting world in the smash hit series Miami Vice, he was able to land seriously huge movie roles in films that can only be described as classic. One such film was Dead Bang. Apart from it’s ability to have the word “bang” in the title and not be hardcore pornography, the film also features one of the cheesiest party scenes you will ever witness.

Nightclub

Mexican and other Spanish speaking television is always interesting no matter whether or not you fluently speak the language. They always are able to deliver a hearty laugh. The 1989 movie Night Club features an insane scene of drunkery that comes complete with a bizarre woman and a creepy guy grabbin’ on a boob!

Star Trek: First Contact

One of the major problems with drunk scenes is the trouble actors and actresses have NOT going completely insane while they act it out. Even the Star Trek universe wasn’t immune from the horrors that overacting can do to a film. This drunk scene from Star Trek: First Contact is a bit much, even for the most pristine virgin Trekkies.

Barfly

You would think a movie entitled Barfly would be counting on good drunk scenes for it’s success. It seems like there should’ve been a meeting during production about the threat of not acting drunk properly. This old guy went too far with the scene instead of his career.

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U.S. Smartphone Market: Who’s the Most Wanted?

U.S. is the biggest buyer of smartphones in the world.

According to The Nielsen Company’s monthly surveys of U.S. mobile consumers from July-September 2010, consumers planning on getting a new smartphone had a very clear preference: A third (33%) wanted an Apple iPhone. Slightly more than a quarter (26%) said they desired a device with the Google Android operating system (OS). And 13 percent said they wanted a RIM Blackberry.

But consumer preferences can be fickle. Those same surveys for January 2011 – March 2011 show just how much things have changed: According to the latest figures, 31 percent of consumers who plan to get a new smartphone indicated Android was now their preferred OS. Apple’s iOS has slipped slightly in popularity to 30 percent and RIM Blackberry is down to 11 percent. Almost 20 percent of consumers are unsure of what to choose next.

Those dynamics are already translating into sales. Half of those surveyed in March 2011 who indicated they had purchased a smartphone in the past six months said they had chosen an Android device. A quarter of recent acquirers said they bought an iPhone and 15 percent said they had picked a Blackberry phone.

Which brings us to the installed base of smartphone consumers: As of March 2011, 37 percent of mobile consumers who owned a smartphone had a device with an Android OS. Apple’s iOS, claimed by 27 percent of consumers, is now outpacing Blackberry, which has 22 percent of the market.

Yawns Are Contagious When You're with Friends

Studies have linked contagious yawning in humans to our capacity for empathy. In fact, scientists have found that those who exhibit empathy easily and often also do more yawning because someone else yawned.

If contagious yawning is indeed a sign of empathy, then we should probably do it more with friends and acquaintances. Because we have an empathetic connection with them that we don’t have with strangers. An Emory University research team decided to test that idea—with chimpanzees, who also yawn contagiously.

Researchers Matthew Campbell and renowned primatologist Franz de Waal,  studied 23 chimpanzees who live in two separate groups. Each chimp watched 20 minutes of videos of others chimp either yawning or just resting. Chimps who saw yawning chimps from their own group yawned 50 percent more than when they watched yawning chimps from the stranger group. Theresearch is published in the journal "Public Library of Science One".

Interestingly, chimps paid more attention to the videos of unfamiliar chimps. Because unfamiliarity breeds concentration. Whereas familiarity apparently breeds [Yawn sound.]

Stress tests devised to reliably reveal personality in birds

Most dog and cat owners will happily describe their pet's disposition down to the smallest, human-like detail. But how much of that is over-reaching anthropomorphizing and how much is an individual animal's actual "personality"shining through?

Researchers in the U.K. devised a series of tests to see how individual animals respond—both behaviorally and biologically—to different situations, choosing as their subjects 22 captive greenfinches (Carduelis chloris).

Test 1: Who's scared of a cookie cutter?Each hungry greenfinch must face a small brightly colored cookie cutter in their food bowl. Some brave birds disregarded the novel intrusion and dived right into their feed within seconds. Other finches tarried for more than half an hour without working up the courage to eat from the adorned dish.

Test 2: What's so interesting about Q-tips? With no food or water in the cage to distract the birds, a bundle of white Q-tips, tied together with string, is placed near one of four perches. Most birds declined to touch the new object, but some curious birds did flit to the nearby perch for a closer look.

Test 3: How stressed are you, really? A behavioral reaction to a new situation only tells part of the story. To hunt for the physiologic response during these actions, the researchers screened the birds for their oxidative profiles, a blood-based measure of metabolites that can boost energy but can ultimately hamper cell repair.

The researchers found that fear of the cookie cutter and curiosity about the cotton swabs "were consistent within individuals across days, and thus constitute personality traits in the greenfinch." And "both traits were related to oxidative profile." The most cautious birds had the highest levels of oxidative stress, and those that were most curious had better protection from the metabolite damage. The team cautioned, however, that "not all personality traits may be linked to hormonal stress responsiveness."

Personality research in animals is not new. Certainly other apes show indications of having nuanced individual personalities, and some researchers have even proposed personalities for invertebrates such as octopuses.

Rather than trying to pigeonhole Polly as an introvert or extrovert, the researchers hope to use these findings to look for larger implications about how these individual variances might affect survival in the wild.

"Neophobic birds—those that are afraid of new things—may suffer high costs of oxidative stress and die early," Kathryn Arnold, of the Environment Department at the University of York and co-author of the new study, said in a prepared statement. Being chary, however, promises some immediate benefits, she noted. These birds "might also be less likely to be eaten by a predatory because they are more wary than bolder birds."

The results of the study appear in the May issue of The Journal of Experimental Biology.

The Great White iPhone: How Apple Spun A Tech Fail Into A PR Win

"Finally" is the headline on Apple's homepage announcing the arrival of the white iPhone. It's Apple poking fun at itself for a long drawn-out techno failure, and shows exactly how Apple's again sprinkled a potentially bad affair with unicorn dust, and spun it into incredibly positive PR.

"By poking fun at itself with the 'Finally' remark, Apple looks a world away from the defensive company it appeared to be in 2007, when a few rogue questions caused an Apple PR to step in and halt an interview with British TV’s Channel 4 News," Rich Leigh, a PR rep with 10 Yetis and a columnist for a top U.K. PR magazine, tells us.

Just as the rumors had suggested, the Apple store went down for maintenance early this morning, and when it popped back up the white iPhone 4 was available to Apple buyers around the world. It's been a long wait, and the matter has been on many a mind for pretty much an entire year...because it's been almost that long since we were promised a white iPhone 4 by Steve Jobs himself.

It didn't arrive when the iPhone 4 went on sale in mid-2010 because Apple couldn't get its hardware working properly--the white coloring, combined with the iPhone 4's unusual glass frame meant the phone's proximity sensor and camera unit didn't function as they needed to. In other words, it was a big technological failure, from one of the world's biggest companies on one of its market-defining products.

Somehow, that's not the broader public perception, however. It's even thought that the much-delayed device, which mysteriously disappeared from Apple's website soon after it emerged it was failing in manufacture, could help boost iPhone sales through the summer and satisfy the consumer urge for Apple gadgets until a much later-than-expected launch of the next iPhone. The boost could be as much as 1.5 million extra sales per quarter.

Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller gave a rare interview yesterday to deflate the location tracking furor that's erupted recently, but they also were prepared to discuss the white iPhone. Schiller confirmed "it was challenging" to finally produce the device to satisfactory quality standards because "it's not as simple as making something white." Indeed, there's actually "a lot more that goes into both the material science of it--how it holds up over time...but also in how it all works with the sensors." This is a tacit confirmation that everything we'd heard about the technological difficulties was true, and that Apple and its manufacturing partners did make a big mistake--announcing a product that couldn't actually be produced in volume and go on sale.

Jobs, for his part, noted that Apple chose to pursue the white iPhone instead of simply dropping it from its plans (as perhaps other firms would've done, minimizing their loss) as part of an internal learning curve. Talking about the technological challenge of perfecting the white paint for the device and optimizing how the sensors work, Jobs said: "We obviously think about this in a generic way because you have a white iPad." Apple learned its lessons from making the white iPhone work and applied them to the newly refreshed iPad 2's front glass.

This kind of admission of failure from Schiller is almost chummy--it puts you, us, anyone who has tried and failed squarely on Apple's side. Jobs's assertion the company wanted to learn from its error is even more interesting--and could even be called admirable. Then there's that Apple.com homepage--"Finally." That's a trick to make the white iPhone affair funny, personal, with a self-deprecating "sorry, guys!" sense of humor you may use with friends.

It's Apple's sleek PR at work again--pulling off the same sort of maneuvers that ended the "antennagate" affair (do you even remember the details of that now? Bet you don't. And neither do millions of consumers who've bought the "flawed" iPhone 4 since).

Leigh reminds us that the trick isn't exactly new, "especially in the world of tech and video game PR." In fact, another recent example is that of the long-anticipated video game Duke Nukem Forever, which had been repeatedly delayed. Leigh reminds us "to appease fans, Gearbox Software's President Randy Pitchford put out a video entitled "A very special message from Gearbox Software," in which the company poked fun at yet another release date setback"--the video's been viewed half a million times, and rarely "disliked."

But in Apple's case, Leigh says, where "the white iPhone initially failed on the face of things, all it did is serve to whet the appetites of potential customers." Apple is "simply put, a PR monster," Leigh says, and its might and the "level of fanboyism surrounding the brand" definitely helps because "this sort of about-turn isn't easy to do."

Leigh also hints that Apple may be using the device to deflect attention away from the location fiasco, beating the "spying accusations in a straight reach-for-reach race" and this may be a deliberate ploy--although we're dubious on this suggestion, since Apple had to have the white iPhone engine engaged long before the location kerfuffle blew up.

In any case, the timing certainly didn't hurt Apple in its moment of good PR need--but the real power of its positive press comes from the company's willingness to look human in the face of failure.

Google's Click-To-Call

Google's mobile ads let consumers click a phone number and immediately call an advertiser. You'd be surprised who's using it.

A year ago, the Google ads team launched a new feature for mobile phones called Click-to-Call, which, as its name would suggest, lets advertisers include a phone number in their ad that users can click to place a call. 

That’s creating a paradigm shift in online advertising. For over a decade, when you, as a consumer, saw an ad online, it's pointed you to a website. Now, with the advent of advertising on mobile phones, there's no reason ads can’t patch you straight to the advertiser, instead of requiring you to fumble about their website trying to find what you want to know.

"We see a lot of mobile queries coming in on the evenings and weekends," Google Director of Mobile Ads in the Americas, Michael Slinger. "Our hypothesis is that these are coming in when people are not in front of their work computers."

Another paradigm shift also seems to be taking place--and it's one reflected inwhich industries are using Click-to-Call with great success. It turns out it’s not just the neighborhood pizza shop capitalizing on your late-night cravings. 

Many of the advertisers that are also seeing great response from Click-to-Call are those selling big-ticket items, like car insurance or cruises. 

Why those industries would love the feature is intuitive. They do most of their sales over the phone. Any system that can bring them a warm lead--for cheap--is a system they want to use.

"Within the cruise industry, about 80-85 percent of transactions take place over the phone," Willie Fernandez, director of marketing for World Travel Holdings, parent company of Cruises.com, tells Fast Company. "Clearly we want to drive as many calls as we can."

But what about consumers? Isn't car insurance or a cruise too big of a ticket item for someone to be inquiring about on a device as casual as a mobile phone?

It turns out consumers aren't making these calls as a result of scrolling through their devices while hanging out at the neighborhood bar, seeing an ad, and saying to themselves, "Gosh darn it, I think I would like to go on a cruise!"

Instead, it turns out, consumers are no longer just using their phones for making Foursquare check-ins or playing Angry Birds. People are actually increasingly using their phones for the kinds of productivity tasks they used to do exclusively on computers, like researching major purchases.

Tolitha Kornweibel, director of online marketing for Esurance, said the lightbulb went off when she saw a Yahoo Nielsen study showing people are using their mobile phones inside the home almost as much as they do outside.

"We realized that people were on their couches, watching television, becoming exposed to advertising, and then doing things on their phones like making calls," she says.

Esurance is using Click-to-Call in their ads so they can be front and center when one of those users starts looking for car insurance.

While Click-to-Call is available for both search and display ads, Fernandez and Kornweibel both tell us they use it in search ads only because they want to get in front of people who’ve already demonstrated that "purchase intent."

Kornweibel suggests that, though it may seem counter-intuitive that the feature would work with expensive items, it’s in fact because the items are major purchases that they generate the calls. Choosing a bouquet to send to your mother for her birthday is easy enough to do though a website or app. But for more complicated purchases, Kornweibel says, "When I’m ready to ask tough questions, I want to talk to a licensed insurance agent."

Google said "millions" of calls are made through the feature every month, though they declined to be more specific. So far about 500,000 advertisers are using the feature.

Why You Will Want Apple, Google To Track You???

Apple and Google have been summoned to a Senate hearing on privacy matters, partly in the light of revelations that both firms track historic user locations in their devices. Apple's facing an early, highly speculative federal lawsuit on the matter. And it all focuses on alleged violations of user privacy. But in the very near future, you'll probably actively prefer that Apple and Google track your location--albeit under tightly defined privacy protection rules.

Apple's current PR kerfuffle rests on a file called "consolidated.db" hidden deep within the code of iOS and which never gets sent anywhere. The file contains a time-coded list of the phone's approximate position based on previously geo-located cell phone masts and known Wi-Fi networks. It only became an issue when researchers revealed last month how it could be used to track a user's position, historically speaking, and the press went crazy about it. Steve Jobs has now, allegedly, weighed in on the matter saying Apple doesn't track user location, and he's right--because Apple doesn't get to see it and the file is for internal use in the iOS device. It's possibly even a bug left over from an earlier experiment at fast-acquisition of a previously known network or for swifter A-GPS location locks.

Google has a similar file buried in Android, and according to Steve Jobs and other commentators it most definitely does use it to work out where you've been, for its own mysterious purposes.

In fact, if you look at some recent and older patents from Apple, bearing in mind the current vogue for social sharing and the upcoming wave of NFC wireless credit card tech, you're going to prefer Apple and Google track your whereabouts all the time.

Apple filed a patent numbered 12/553,554 last month with the USPTO and sites like Gawker haveused it to argue Apple has plans to "spy" on its users, and even to hint the consolidated.db file is no accident--it's the first stage in Apple's plans. But glancing at the patent it's immediately obvious that the future "location history database" file it mentions has very useful, innocuous purposes. Apple suggests the file could be used to geo-tag photographs taken by the iPhone's camera, presumably long after you snapped the image and forgot where it was. This could help you use the images in systems like its own iPhotos app--which has a "places" feature--as well as other online photo databases.

Apple even mentions the history file could be useful for users to "augment a travel time-line with content," in some kind of post-vacation multimedia creation, or to form part of a "personal 'journal' which can be queried at a later time" (a Captain's Log app, anyone?). It's all about mapping and added value, suggests the text--and though it does talk about how third party apps could call the data through an API, these too are "location aware" apps like the one's we're all signing up to in droves. The specifics of the patent also highlight the location history is approximately defined based on triangulation from known positional data like cell masts and Wi-Fi grids, because using a GPS system for permanent geo-coding would consume too much battery life.

If we dig back in Apple's patent history, we find the firm has long pursued very complex plans for geo-located apps and facilities in iOS. Back in 2009, Apple filed a number of location-based patents relating to turn-by-turn navigation--some of which, by definition, rely on a location history file to work. These are tricks like "intelligent route guidance" and "adaptive route guidance based on preferences" which suggest different routes to a GPS nav destination based on how you navigate there habitually, and perhaps with knowledge about current road conditions thrown in. There's also a "route sharing and location" aspect to the patents, which lets you send historic navigation information to a friend via some social sharing tool so they can copy, for example, that handy route to work you know that avoids a traffic blackspot. One implementation of this tech is a live position-share that happens over the network, which could help you meet up with a pal in a new location. All of these seem useful, and all of them require some degree of location history file--Apple even mentions a facility for users to turn on a special accurate "recording" of location, to help with navigation or possibly sports.

Another patent imagines an iPhone docked to a smart car interface, sharing navigation information and even specific apps for your car--again a system that could be very useful, and which would also require a location history file (or two, or three).

Yet another Apple patent, this time from 2010 and ostensibly concerning an updated alerts system and dynamic app icon alerts and loading, actually is all about location-aware advertising and even automated location-sensitive app uploads. It envisages the kind of location-sensitive ads that would pop up as you strolled near a coffee shop or walked near a tourist location in a new city, ads that would detect where you are and perhaps even tempt you in with a coupon (Groupon-, or perhaps Facebook-style). These are the kind of dynamic location-based ads that would be useful and could work to boost business at ad partners ... and it's easy to imagine them having a historic component: "We've noticed you walked by our coffee shop a couple of times this week. If you were a member of our loyalty scheme, you'd've saved $2.50 by now!".

This sort of functionality may deliver a type of advertising many consumers could prefer--as it's sharply tailored to their needs, rather than irrelevant ads--and it too requires some sort of location history. And don't tell us Google, king of social graphing and placing consumer-tailored ads on everything, everywhere, doesn't plan exactly this sort of uses for its location data from Android smartphones or tablets.

With the imminent arrival of the NFC smartphone "wave and pay," location data and historic location data becomes even more important. Apple's also extensively patented this technology, and has imagined that location data could be used as part of a security check--detecting that, for example, your phone is actually at the NFC-enabled ATM it's data feed is suggesting it is, and that no one has spoofed your data. It's also possible that you'd want Apple to track your phone's location to work out if, while you've been hovering in the New York area all day, at 2 a.m. someone with faked NFC credit credentials that match yours tries to buy casino chips in Las Vegas. This sort of security protocol will become increasingly important as we trust our smartphones to be our wallets as well as our mobile communicators full of personal data and photographs, and it too relies on some form of location history being stored in your device or at Apple or Google's data centers.

And, incidentally, if you're the kinda down on Microsoft for not pulling the same kind of location-recording tricks as Apple and Google (perhaps a hint at exactly how far behind the smartphone curve MS has slipped) then it also looks like Windows Phone 7 frequently sends neat little data packets to MS HQ, each of which contains data on Wi-Fi networks encountered and GPS info...plus a unique phone ID.

Less annoying adverts, super-smart navigation, location-based and journey-habit-based special offers, enhanced wireless credit card security ... why wouldn't you let your phone (and, possibly, Apple and Google) record your approximate location? There'll be questions of trust, and hack-proof security, but pretty soon you're not even going to think twice about it.

PlayStation Network Remains Down Indefinitely After Hacker Attack

Six days after Sony first announced that its Playstation Network had been experiencing difficulties, the network remains down.

Sony shut down both its PSN and Qriocity services last Wednesday after an “external intrusion.” The company has not given any indication as to when the network, which connects more than 70 million users for multi-player games, might be running again.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have an update or timeframe to share at this point in time,” reads the latest update from spokesman Patrick Seybold on the Playstation Blog.

Last Thursday, the same blog had cautioned that “it may be a full day or two” before the network was restored.

Angry Playstation users vented their woes on Twitter and on Playstation’s Facebook page, where each of three posts about the outage has accumulated more than 20,000 comments. Many threatened to buy a Microsoft Xbox, mentioned how bored they were without PSN, asked Sony to be more transparent about its rebuilding process or expressed anger at the hackers who allegedly attacked the network.

Some suspected that Hactivist group Anonymous was responsible. The group had previously targeted Sonyafter the company filed a lawsuit against George Hotz, a 21-year-old hacker who unlocked the PlayStation 3′s operating system.

In order to ensure the network’s integrity, Sony wrote that it is rebuilding both services. Investigations into whether users’ personal information, including credit card numbers, were compromised in the attack are still ongoing, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The State Of Our Robot Overlords, On The Day Skynet Becomes Self-Aware

"The Skynet missile defense system goes online April 19th 2011, declares war on mankind, and triggers a nuclear apocalypse two days later." So says James Cameron in theTerminator story, anyway. Bearing this in mind, here's a sample of the cutting edge tech of our real robot overlords. You may be forgiven for thinking we have nothing to fear. But wait 'til the last one...

Philly's robo-pitcher

For the Brewers-Phillies game on Science Day yesterday, University of Pennsylvania engineers created the Philliebot--a one-armed, three-legged robot pitcher that could toss a ball at up to 40 miles an hour. Sounds awesome, and the arm-powered machine seems a little more human than the more usual spinning-tire artificial pitcher. Tragically, Philliebot didn't quite deliver on its promises.

Rubik's Cube solved by an android

Willow Garage's PR2 robot is one of the few real androids that can be bought today--albeit for research purposes in academic institutions. He's an impressive machine, but PR2 is clunky, chunky, and far from the dextrous machines we're used to seeing in the movies. But is he totally devoid of fine manipulation skills and brain power? Check out this clip from engineers at the University of Ulster--PR2 is smart enough to solve a Rubik's Cube.

Packbots probe Japan's reactors

It's no nuclear holocaust, but the ongoing drama at the crippled nuclear powerstations in Fukushima, Japan, is captivating the world and worrying many in Japan. Recently two Packbots were sent in to the plant, accessing zones that hadn't been entered since the disaster to try to assess the extent of radiological pollution. The repurposed war droids found dangerously high levels--demonstrating their usefulness in one swoop, as no human would safely be able to gather this data.

Robots dance, too

The Sarcos research 'bot is an unusual hydraulic-powered full-body android that dynamically balances itself in a very similar way to how humans do. As part of his researchinto this balancing process, CMU's Ben Stephens taught his Sarcos to dance--using motion captured from a real dancing human--to demonstrate how the robot can make complex moves that upset its center of gravity, and still not fall over.

China's dog 'bot

Remember BigDog--the four-legged, self-balancing, autonomous-navigating, gas-engine-powered monster designed to aid soldiers in the field? Check out FROG--the Four-legged Robot for Optimum Gait. It's a research project from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It's a far, far cry from BigDog's amazing all-terrain skills, but the robot can manage different styles of walking, climb over low objects, and is intended to be the skeleton of a future robotic triceratops.

The real Terminator, Petman

We saw Boston Dynamics' Petman prototype some while ago, behaving merely as a pair of self-balancing legs that were designed to emulate real human walking gait so they could act as a repeating "wearing-out" test bed for equipment designed for people. Check these lovely legs out:

And then look at this image. It's what BD now plans to turn Petman into--a full humanoid robot. Given BD's military-research ties, and cash injections from DARPA, it's impossible to ignore how its plans to skin the metallic Petman droid in a plastic casing remind us of the famous rubber-clad "skinjobs" from James Cameron'simagination. Judgment Day, anyone?