Robots with a tray of drinks

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Jun 17, 2002

SAN FRANCISCO (NYT) -- Remember Rosie the Robot? The idea of robotic home helpers is at least as old as The Jetsons, but few of the models released over the years have made much real-world splash. Now, a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur is giving the home robot another try -- with a laptop-based hybrid kit.

Evolution Robotics grandly bills its ER1 as a "personal robot system." It is essentially a laptop (which you provide) that sits on an aluminum chassis equipped with rubber skateboard wheels. A foot- long arm with a hand grip carries a USB digital camera. Creators of the ER1 say that it will be able to roll around its environment and bring you a frosty beverage on a hot summer day or play your favorite music just by seeing a CD in your hand.

Evolution Robotics, a start-up that is based in Pasadena, Calif., and is backed by the technology incubator Idealab, is selling the ER1 at its Web site (www.evolution.com). An assembly kit, which comes with software and can be put together in less than an hour, is $499.

Don't expect to see the little guy baking meat loaf anytime soon. Both Evolution Robotics and early testers say that the ER1 is geared more toward hobbyists than homemakers.

A sad reality

NEW YORK (NYT) -- Major airlines fervently hope that business travelers will return to the fold in full force and at full fare once the economy perks up, but the Business Travel Coalition has more bad news for them on that front. Throughout May, the group surveyed more than 400 of the most frequent business travelers, people who anticipate buying an average of 38 round-trip airline tickets this year. The findings: an overall anticipated reduction of 10.6 percent in air trips; growing inclination to book well in advance for cheaper fares, even at a cost of some scheduling inconvenience, and more use of low-fare carriers. About a fifth suggested the changes in behavior were permanent, no matter what the major airlines do. Also, 40 percent said they had already replaced some air travel with car or train transportation.

A world-record antiquity

LONDON (AP) -- A 2,000-year old Roman sculpture of Venus sold at auction for $11.7 million -- a world record for an antiquity, Christie's auction house said.

An anonymous collector bought the Jenkins Venus, also known as the Barberini Venus, a marble depiction of the goddess of love. Christie's said the sculpture, believed to have been made in the first or second century, had been expected to fetch $2.9 million to $4.4 million, but a telephone bidder bought it Thursday for $11,652,175.

The Jenkins Venus had been part of one of the most significant English collections of ancient sculpture, held at Newby Hall, near Ripon in North Yorkshire, northern England. It was offered for sale by its owners, the Compton family, to pay for the restoration of Newby Hall and its stables.

The previous highest auction price for an antiquity, $11.3 million was paid in 1994 for a 9th century B.C. Assyrian gypsum bas-relief.

Inflatable speakers?

NEW YORK (NYT) -- Summer means inflatable: inflatable beach chairs, rafts, inner tubes, even the occasional giant blue banana. Now that Ellula HotAir has come to the United States, you can add speakers to that list.

Ellula's inflatable speakers ($49 at www.audiovideoman.com and budshop.com, and coming to Bloomingdale's stores in August) shrink into easily portable six-inch-wide discs when not in use, and inflate in no time. You have the option of plugging them in, but with six AA batteries, they can do without a wall socket for up to 18 hours.

Beneath the clever design, science is at work: special transducers (the sound-generating part of speakers) are glued to a corrugated plastic board pointing up into the inflatable body. The plastic skin makes the sound resonate the way a traditional speaker's horn, or diaphragm, would. By eliminating the horn, HotAir speakers emit sound in almost every direction, providing clarity and range that a listener sitting behind ordinary stereo speakers wouldn't get.

For $49, the sound quality is surprisingly high, until you cue up OutKast on your connected iPod or CD Walkman and crank it to 11. The good news is, Ellula is devising a set with a small but, alas, noninflatable subwoofer. Also in the works: an inflatable radio that serenades you as it floats in the pool.

Selling yesterdays in a bottle

DALLAS (Cox) -- From his soda shop and Web site, Hamilton Rousseau helps customers relive childhood memories of Moxies and Maine porch swings, or cold Sun Drops and dusty Carolina roads. He reunites homesick Northeasterners with their beloved birch beer and transplanted Texans with Big Red.

"I wanted to create an experience that takes you back to the past, and in that regard, it has been very successful" he says of his Dallas-based business, Ifs, Ands & Butts at www.ifsandsbutts.com.

Rousseau said the idea for the shop came to him one night in 1995, when he went out to buy cigarettes and sodas. "When I was a kid in South Carolina, I remember there were all these brands around. Crush and Nehi had more than a dozen. I started trying to find some of these sodas and found out some of them were still being made."