Sega took the wraps off its latest invention in Tokyo, a robotic canine known as iDog that can be used to compose and play music. It also dances to the beat. According to the Japan Today news site, the four-legged automaton features a number of switches located on its nose and other parts of its diminutive body that are used to create and play music. It has other buttons that cause the pet to light up or express emotions. The mechanical beast also features onboard sensors that detect and react to movements when it is held in an owner’s hands.

Serving a rapidly expanding base of customers for mass storage, Western Digital announced they will enter the market for miniature hard drives with a family of 1-inch drives that enable a variety of handheld consumer devices. WD’s miniature drive entry is expected to ship in the second calendar quarter of 2005. The 1-inch hard drive will spin at 3,600 RPM and will be available in capacities up to 6 GB. This new hard drive will be offered with the standard CF II interface and form factor, which enables it to fit into the millions of currently available devices accepting CF II cards, as well as easily integrate into future products.

Croker is based on the ‘Poker’ idea twisted into a unique and completely new kind of gaming. The are five cards open. Flip the cards you want to replace by clicking on them and on the button ‘Deal’. The more you flip, the more life you lose. Once your life is over the game ends.

A new Internet worm is squirming through Microsoft’s MSN Messenger chat network. According to an advisory from F-Secure, the new W32/Bropia-A worm uses MSN Messenger to lure users into downloading one of the following files: “Drunk_lol.pif”; “Webcam_004.pif”; “sexy_bedroom.pif”; “naked_party.pif”; or “love_me.pif.” Once executed, Bropia-A also drops a variant of the Rbot backdoor Trojan. Rbot represents the large family of backdoors fitted with the ability to control a victim’s machine remotely by sending specific commands via IRC channels.

Natural Widgets announced the release of NaturalRecorder, a cellular phone call recording software. This first of its kind technology allows mobile phone users to retain important information from their phone conversations by automatically recording phone calls without any user intervention.

Keep your blood pressure records on your mobile phone or RIM BlackBerry PDA. UTS Blood Pressure J2ME edition v. 1.0.2. allows tracking blood pressure and pulse on any Java-enabled mobile phone and on RIM BlackBerry PDA as well.

Now you can have safe, secure, portable storage of your confidential business and personal data with 21st Century Locks’ biometric fingerprint ClipDrive Bio USB Flash Drive and the Outbacker USB biometric fingerprint Hard Disk Drive. The devices are non-operational until a validated fingerprint or password is received.

An “evil twin” is a bogus base station that latches on to someone using new “Wi-Fi” wireless technology. Victims think their laptops or mobile phones are connected to bona fide wireless internet connections. They may then transmit valuable bank details or other personal information, not suspecting that they are being intercepted by cybercriminals.

A man who claims he has been receiving unsolicited emails from a US company for two years is now being sued by them, for branding them spammers and reporting their actions to ISPs. Jay Stuler is now on the receiving end of a lawsuit from New Hampshire firm Atriks, which alleges Stuler caused financial harm to the firm and caused it to lose contracts. The suit also states that Stuler had been making defamatory statements, including calling CEO Brian Haberstroh a “criminal” and the company “a notorious spam gang”, which the suit denies.

Users may pay a penalty in battery life for the increased performance found in the new “Sonoma” Centrino platform from Intel. Although Intel has aggressively power-managed the platform–for example, cutting the chip set’s internal clock by half–the combination of one new feature, PCI Express, and the faster processor speeds may result in a slight decrease in battery life.