This entertaining video shows two humanoid robots in a realistic boxing match.

No RoboGore, just two robots doing their best to win.

Filed under: robots, video, and battle

So this guy, deeply in love with his girl and not sure how to propose, wrote a Bejeweled video game for Nintendo, handed her the game machine and watched as she played ... and a picture of a giant ring dropped down.

Then he popped the question.

I'm sure it was much to his relief - and that of nerds everywhere - that she said "Yes!"

Filed under: wedding, bejeweled, and video game

Jim Jannard had a problem.

Most of us would love to have the problems of the billionaire founder of the Oakley Sunglasses company. Wealthy beyond most people's wildest imaginings, Jim was still discontented. The $130,000 Sony cameras he bought were just not good enough to film Oakley commercials!

Good enough for others, like George Lucas, but not good enough for Jim.

If it were you and me, we might complain about this problem to our friends but it's likely we'd do anything about it. But Jim's made of stronger stuff. He decided to start his own camera company and make the camera he dreamed of making.

This camera, called the RED ONE Digital Cinema Camera, has been out for about six months now, and RED's skunkworks have been developing new models.

Today, they were introduced. The Red EPIC is an even fancier camera than RED One.

Scarlet is probably of more interest to the readers of this site. Scarlet roughly doubles the megapixel count of previous digital video cameras, creating the most rich, beautiful and detailed images you could imagine. It looks like a ruggedized version of a point and shoot camcorder, but has sophisticated manual features, and its metal housing oozes quality. And it costs $3,000, which may look expensive to you but is similar in price to HD cameras with similar manual control options.

I'm looking forward to seeing Scarlet in person, but unfortunately I'll have a long wait: it will ship sometime in 2009.

(The link is to Engadget because RED's site is extremely difficult to reach as of this writing).

Filed under: red, digital camera, video camera, photography, and digital cinema

How sincere is your smile? Point your mug at a video camera and this device, developed by Omron, will tell the world whether you really mean it.

Okao Catch, as the device is called, can help robots of the future understand humans better. It also has more mundane applications, such as determining patient moods in hospitals and helping to coach actors.

Filed under: smile, video, and mood analysis