Note it’s a 3D scanner, not a 3D printer, so stop thinking about the Makerbot in all its glory. Surprise surprise, HP is teasing its new TopShot Laserjet Pro M275, which is being hyped as a high end scanner for the masses. Problem is the retail price is a bit of a downer. More on this after the jump.

The M275 is a smuch a product as top notch marketing as it is a technological amrvel. Keep in mind that as a 3D scanner, it can scan several physical objects then render it in 2D. What?

Yes, it produces a 2D image. Great resolution too. But isn’t this a 3D Scanner? Right. It is very much a 3D scanner, meaning it SCANS whole objects and NOT create 3D renditions of them. For that kind of job, why, there’s the Makerbot. This could be a hit in offices of design studios and architects.

Oh yeah, the M275 costs a ... Read more »

Relax, this isn’t a tragic case of an otherwise benign household helper doing itself in. When you watch the video, you’ll realize it’s being done in the name of science. It’s a test that involves a particular type of thrill seeking wherein the subject dives off a steep edge then launches a parachute for a smooth descent. In other words, base jumping.

The robot is called Paraswift and for now, it doesn’t do much except scale heights and dive off high edges. What for? When it’s finally free of kinks, the Paraswift could serve as a tool in aerial 3D imaging. Clever, right?

The research labs investing in the R&D for Paraswift are curious though, being a rare alliance between a Swiss robotics firm and Disney. Yes, the House of Mouse.

Seen above is the Paraswift being showcased to a group of onlookers. For the visceral stuff, just shift your eyes downward.

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. NASA is embarking on a new Moon mission. So all those people who thought NASA’s best days were behind it, why, they thought wrong. But to be realistic and honest here, this is an unmanned mission. That’s what happens when space shuttles have been retired and the Russians are troubleshooting rocket problems. And please, this isn’t a thinly veiled mission to search for Decepticons.

GRAIL is an ambitious multi-stage effort to study the moon and determine its origins. If you’re wondering when it goes live, why, it already has. GRAIL launched on its moon mission at Cape Canaveral on Thursday. GRAIL is composed of two satellites (Grail-A and Grail-B) loaded with enough sensors to gather data on the moon’s gravitational field.

The satellites are scheduled to reach the moon’s orbit by the holiday’ ... Read more »

Last time Glonass was mentioned here at Geeky Gadgets–a full ten months ago–it was fairly terrible news. Alas, for launching stuff into space is risky business. Almost a year hence, however, and the Glonass tracking system is now live and available on your smartphone. But wait, before you amrvel at the precision of Russian satellite locators, here are a few important details.

Actually referring to Glonass as GPS is innacurate. You have your GPS and then there’s the Russian equivalent: Glonass. Like a lot of fancy tech from the former Soviet Union, it was originally intended as a military application. But don’t worry, Glonass won’t go Modern Warfare 2 on the world yet.

The really great news is the additional 22 Russian satellites orbiting the Earth are now feeding Qualcomm chipsets. This means that starting next year smartphones powered by Qualcomm ch ... Read more »

Smozzy a new Android app let users who have a  T-Mobile unlimited messaging plan, browse the web without the need for a data plan. The application has been designed to work similar to a browser but rather than using a data plan, URL’s you enter are then sent via SMS to the Smozzy servers which then relay with the new content back to your Android device via SMS and MMS text message.

Smozzy explains:

"NOTE: This app currently works with U.S. T-MOBILE SERVICE ONLY. This application may send and receive a large number of messages, so use of it without an unlimited messaging plan is NO ... Read more »

Okay, maybe the title slanted this compelling bit of news a little too far in the conspiracy nut corner. It couldn’t be helped–a Washington D.C. based tech company has announced plans to build a whole 35,000 resident simulation city in New Mexico bereft of actual residents. Its purpose will be technology testing for various clients in the corporate world, whether they be industrial, scientific, commercial or all three combined. Is this suspicious? It should be. The project would cost somewher ein the neighborhood of $200 million. There’s no word on investors, but Pegasus Global Holdings Inc. might be footing the bill on its own.

Who are Pegasus Global Holdings Inc.? A contractor apparently. A little googling reveals their core business is in the ambiguos field of "risk management” and "strategic solutions” with a special emphasis on servicing the energy ... Read more »

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo revealed today that the service currently has 100 million "active" users, and receives around 400 million pageviews per month.

During a "state of the union” meeting this morning at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, CEO Dick Costolo revealed, for the first time ever, that the service currently has 100 million active users, and receives 400 million pageviews per month, up from about 250 million in January of this year.

In addition, Costolo said that half of Twitter’s users log on ever day, but only 60 percent actually publish tweets. The remainder simply read others’ tweets. Some never even login, even if they have an account.

"The 400 million monthly uniques number shows that people are ... Read more »

Adobe has been finalising their new Flash Player 11 since its beta launch back in July, but Adobe has this week edged a little closer to launching its final build by rolling out another release candidate for its Flash Player 11 this week. In the attempt to try and keep its Flash product relevant in a world where its banned from iOS devices and struggling to make it mark on Android devices.

Adobe is taking a different direction with their latest Flash Player 11 aiming it at gaming, high-end video, and in-house company applications. Now including 64Bit support and JPEG XR image support which offers better compression than conventional JPEG images and which is now an international standard.

Together with their "Molehill” interface for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, that will be of parti ... Read more »

It looks like Nike may have something new to announced today, according to Matt Halfhill from Nike Kicks, who received an invitation from to a special event where they will unveil a new product.

Nike

Matt was flown out to LA for ‘a big announcement’, and when he got there he was given an iPod Shuffle

with a personal message from Dr. Emmet Brown, which said "Welcome to Los Angeles. If my

calculations are correct, over the next 24 hours you are about to see some SERIOUS SH*T!”.

The video below shows a teaser of the Nike Air Mag’s from Back To The Future, which Nike are expected

to announce later today, we have no idea how much they will cost, although no matter how much we

... Read more »

Twitters real time search results disappeared from Google back in July as their previous deal had run out and the two companies were unable to reach an agreement on the new deal.

Microsoft also had an agreement with Twitter for real time search results in its Bing search engine, and unlike Google it would appear that Microsoft has been able to come to a new agreement with Twitter.

The two companies announced the new deal on Twitter, and whilst no details of the deal have been revealed, the original deal ran for around two years so they could have signed a new two year deal which will include Twitter results in Bing.

Source Geek Wire