Going Loco with my mate ApriPoko

I love my gadgets, and this one is cute as well as cool. Toshiba are developing a voice-activated robot called ApriPoko that learns how you use your infrared devices.

Lil’ ApriPoko, who weighs in at just over 2 kg and stands 11-inches tall, senses the use of an infrared device and learns by asking the user “What did you just do?” and then storing the user response. This then lets the user issue voice commands to activate and control infrared devices.

MyTake – Even PCs and Macs come with remotes these days, so you could in effect get ApriPoko to manage your content aggregation via a few simple instructions (OK maybe I’m stretching a bit there). But, the idea of having a learning bot that understands how you consume and interact with your infrared devices could spawn a number of highly individual uses for Lil’ ApriPoko, like the one mentioned above, or you could get him to turn the air conditioning on..and off….

HD DVD feeling blu

Having been around the first time Sony fought a format war, I kind of thought that they deserved better luck this time around. After losing out with the BetaMax format over 20 years ago, it’s looking increasing likely that the company’s high definition DVD format (Blu Ray) is about to be crowned winner as the biff-up that is HD DVD Vs Blu-Ray draws to a close.

The HD DVD corner has become an increasingly lonely place as more and more of its supporters defected to Blu-Ray, the most notable being Warner Bros and most recently, Wall Mart. The only one still in the HD DVD corner is Toshiba, and it looks like they are about to call it quits with News agency Reuters quoting an unnamed Toshiba source as saying: "We have entered the final stage of planning to make our exit from the next-generation DVD business."

Blu-ray, developed by a Sony-led consortium, looks to be the future of disc-based movies, but is the future in discs? With broadband speeds increasing, movie downloads on the increase, hardware like Apple TV and software like Xbox 360’s Video Marketplace already out there, you have to wonder why we’re still talking discs.

MyTake - When I asked a good mate of mine his opinion, he’s response was: “So that makes 99 per cent of the market standard DVD and 1 per sent Blu-Ray”, he’s got a good point there. Market saturation is a long way off and the hardware is still expensive – and I don’t just mean the Blu-Ray players, you’ll need a HD LCD/Plasma to go with it. There’s still competition in the market for Blu-Ray, they need to pay attention to the life cycle of the DVD and look at the development of downloadable movies – I think it’ll be a photo finish.