Honda has a handful of attractive electric vehicles up its sleeve, and it'll be showing the enticing prototypes at the Tokyo Motor Show starting December 3. The best of the bunch is this compact two-seater, named the Honda Small Sports EV Concept, built to maximize "the fun of driving while achieving excellent environmental performance." Most of the details are top-secret so far, except a few alluring drawings, two of which you see here. [via Autoblog]
The Icon Solo flashlight is scarcely larger than a ballpoint pen, but cranks out 30 lumens, nearly twice the output of the original version introduced a couple of years ago. We tested one, and it's remarkable that such bright light can blast out of such a tiny package, illuminating an entire room. Great for when you need a whole lot more light than your smartphone can produce. This aluminum mini-torch is available in titanium gray for $24.99.
Sony is losing money on TVs right now, but that might be a temporary situation if Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer has his way. He aims to somehow connect televisions, smartphones, PCs and tablets all in one beautiful platform of the future. Or you could just connect a home theater PC to your TV, watching that while keeping your iPad within reach -- and call it good.
Good news: You can still have your burgers and fries after the Apocalypse comes. That's the promise of this $249 Blacktop Grill Fryer, which surrounds a deep fryer with a small griddle and a larger grill, all powered by propane. It'll be perfect until the propane runs out. [via Geekologie]
He's not as smart is Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but maybe that's a good thing. The diminutive AMP (Automated Music Personality), a $400 robot rolling out sometime next year, streams music and brings you a beer in his little cupholder. Controlled by a smartphone app for Android and iOS, the little 2-foot-tall guy follows you around, doing his best to entertain you while keeping you from getting too thirsty. Cute. [via The Verge]
Could this be the smartphone of the future? Way beyond Nokia's "kinetic interface" concept we saw last month, now Nokia is now showing off this outlandish concept it calls HumanForm. Hit this link to see the video, but suffice to say this bendy/flexy object interacts with you via gestures, is touch sensitive with what the company calls an "electro-tactile" surface that let you feel images, can recognize your moods, and rocks a form factor that's hardly recognizable as a smartphone. Time-traveling Captain Picard, I think you dropped your smartphone. [via Engadget]
If you've discovered the joys of microfiber and how it can magically clean fingerprints off glasses, phones and nearly anything else, you'll like this Wipe T Shirt. It's like an ordinary shirt, except there's one key difference: It has a microfiber patch that makes it a lot easier to clean stuff using your shirttail. Too bad this first iteration byGenerate Design is a too-steep $89 -- it's an idea that might catch on if somebody could think up a better-looking style and price it right.
NASA is getting serious about its Space Launch System with its Orion capsule on top, and now it's announced its first manned mission. The first flight is set for 2014, when people will travel farther away from the Earth than they have since 1973, taking two orbits around the planet and speeding up to 20,000 mph before the craft splashes down in the Pacific. It's a start, with the ultimate destinations being asteroids, comets and Mars. [via DVICE]
Speech recognition is now a reality, and one of the last barriers to entry, price, has just been broken by Nuance Communications. It's now selling its Dragon Express for $49.99. Available now on the Mac App Store for OS X, it's a less-powerful version of Dragon Dictate for Mac and NaturallySpeaking for PC, which we use every day and couldn't live without. We'd recommend letting others iron the bugs out of this early cheap version first, but it's great to see advances in speech recognition, something we think will soon be actually useful in most circumstances, becoming ubiquitous within five years. [via 9 to 5 Mac]
Sorry about all that hype about the iPhone 5, but there's little doubt the next iPhone is on the way, maybe by next June. The big question is, what will it be like? Here we go again: Sources say the iPhone 5 will have a 4-inch screen, aluminum back, capacitive Home button, it'll be a lot flatter and faster (but with shorter battery life, ug), it'll have a 10-megapixel camera, and Siri's name will be changed to "Assistant." It's all a rumor, though. Just a rumor. [via MacRumors]
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