Yeah I saw that. Completely funny concept!

I saw that too. Thanks for posting and everything, but that story is from the 7th of April. It was reported by The Register at least. Probably /. too.

Reason I'm posting is that the Reg gave the project a roasting. They reckon it's typical of the over-hyped MIT media lab. I think that's unfair, at least in this case. It seems like a pretty groovy idea to me.

Ouch! :-) The problem is that I've been buried in work-related issues the last week and haven't had time to dig up as many good stories as usual. We've been surviving almost exclusively on user-submitted ones, which tend to be older and are usually things that people saw on some other blog site (like slashdot). Normally, you see our stories turn into user-submitted ones on Slashdot a day or two after we post them. Don't worry, things should get back to normal pretty soon.

I'm one of those people who used to put my alarm clock on the other side of the room when I had to get up early to make sure I didn't turn it off to easily. So, I'd buy one those Clocky robots if I still had to get up early.

I don't think I'll buy Clocky to wake me up - I have a 70's era K-Mart LED clock, replete with faux-woodgrain, that does the job well. And a dog and a wife who ensure that I don't return to snoozin'.

But...differential drive, solidly built, and battery powered, to boot? This thing is too good to be true from an "I'll take it apart five minutes after opening the box" standpoint.

I'll have one under my tree. Maybe two.

Oh, I'm sorry if that seemed harsh. Like I said, I was really posting about the reaction that this project had already received.

I'm probably just grumpy 'cos I sent you two stories that didn't get posted. Maybe that's cos they had the wrong subject line... For the record, one was a story from the BBC and the other from Gizmodo. This seems reasonable to me, as perhaps not everyone here will check both of those.

Certainly, I think that stories should appear here before slashdot. The Register I'm not so sure of. It's probably good to have all relevant stories here eventully though. Makes the archive more useful :D

So, to that end. Here's the slashdot "discussion" from the 25th of March http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/25/0017259&tid=222

Here's the mean Register's article from three days later http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/28/mit_clocky/

Note how they utterly slag it off, and, I reckon, descend to miserable depths of sexist abuse at the end. If you're reading this Reg Writer - :P

Yep, I've been incredibly busy too. I try to help steve with some story suggestions and perhaps post a story once every blue moon. Hopefully, my time will free up a little and I can get back to posting too so we can stay ahead of the game.

As far as clockly. I mean shagadelic, yeah baby! Sounds like she put shag carpet on there for shock absorption? So this thing rolls around periodically during the night banging into the wall hard enough to need shock absorption? Uh, I'm a light sleeper. So, I don't think I'll be getting one. But, Yeah man shagadelic, cool baby, and like Zowie man!

I predict that in 10 years, when cars get even more computer controlled capabilities installed, someone will hack your car to make it drive away from you when you try open the door. :)

BTW, if they keep adding computerized intelligence to cars, when will cars cross the line from being vehicles to being considered robots?

I don't think it's supposed to roll around at night. Surely it sits on the bedside table acting as a clock. Only in the morning does the fun begin.

As for cars crossing the robot line.. When did your washing machine become a robot?