Next Monday, Robonaut 2 (R2) --GM and NASA's 300-pound humanoid-from-the-waist-up robot-- will be blasted into space to begin his job aboard the International Space Station. Today, he was prepped and packed onto the space shuttle Discovery in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

R2 is the product of a collaboration between GM and NASA engineers, who have been working together since 2007. He is made up of a head, torso, two arms, and two hands, and will be a complement to Dextre, the robot built by the Canadian Space Agency that was first brought to the International Space Station in March 2008. While Dextre is meant to work in space, R2's job will be to work alongside humans in the space station's Destiny laboratory.

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After nearly three decades on the market, Sony quietly stopped sales of its Walkman portable cassette recorder in Japan on Friday. While the company will continue to sell the model in developing countries, its exit from the Japanese market seems to suggest its time is running out.

"There is still demand in certain regions, including emerging markets, but in Japan there has been a shift to other forms of recording media," a spokesperson said of the company's decision. Indeed, Sony itself did its part to speed up the death of the market it had all but created on its own.

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Network operator Sprint announced its pricing and availability for the Samsung Galaxy Tab today, along with the related plans it will offer. Unlike Verizon Wireless, Sprint will offer Samsung's new Android tablet subsidized with a two-year service contract.

Last Week, Verizon Wireless announced it would begin selling the Galaxy Tab on November 11th for $599.99, with pay-as-you-go data plans starting at $20 per month for 1GB.

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Microsoft's former Chief Software Architect is blogging again -- after nearly five years' absence. Ray Ozzie has posted a disturbing memo, "Dawn of a New Day," sent to Microsoft "executive staff and direct reports." Eh, I thought Ozzie no longer had direct reports. The memo cheers Microsoft's services strategy extending Office and Windows to the cloud. Early sections of Ozzie's missive reads more like a press release for the past -- dawn of the old day -- and bears little resemblance to the interoperable, operating system in the clouds pitch that he made for years -- at least until PDC 2009. That said, he also issues a warning about a post-PC era Microsoft executives shouldn't ignore. Seeing as Ozzie was ignored before, what hope is there that they'll listen now? As I asserted 10 days ago, "It's a shame about Ray Ozzie."

The memo's timing is most certainly not coincidental. October 18th news about Ozzie's demotion and imminent departure came the day before Microsoft announced Office 365, essentially a forthcoming extension of the existing cloud-based productivity suite strategy. Office 365 represents a cloud services strategy many steps removed from the one Ozzie originally articulated for Microsoft. Ozzie represented a different vision. Microsoft dispatched the visionary before asserting an extension to the Office-Windows-Windows applications stack, rather than fully embracing the cloud-connected -- anytime, anywhere and on anything -- strategy he long advocated. Ozzie's memo comes just days before Microsoft convenes PDC 2010, on October 28th. In the strangest of coincidences -- or not if Ozzie is trying to make another point -- the memo is dated the 28th. There is no date stamp on the blog post, but it looks like an October 25th posting. His last gargantuan memo was Oct. 28, 2005, so timing has two points of significance -- the five-year anniversary and his last word before the next Microsoft developer conference.

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Though Amazon doesn't disclose how many Kindle e-readers it sells, the online retailer today announced that the latest generation Kindle devices are the fastest selling Kindles so far. 24 days into the fourth quarter 2010, the 3rd generation Kindle has already passed total Kindle sales for the entire fourth quarter last year.

This sales explosion is no doubt the result of the Kindle's increased availability after it launched in retail stores early in September. Consumers who may have never seen a Kindle before finally gained the ability to feel how lightweight it is, and see its new higher contrast screen.

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Wi-Fi Direct certification has begun. The Wi-Fi Alliance announced today that products from Atheros, Broadcom, Intel, Ralink, Realtek, and Cisco will be the first Certified Wi-Fi Direct hardware in the test bed for the new wireless networking standard.

The key feature of the new Wi-Fi Direct standard is that it lets devices with 802.11 wireless radios communicate directly with one another without the need of a wireless router between them. Wi-Fi Direct devices near one another can transfer content at speeds 25 times faster than they could with Bluetooth 2.0. As a result, the standard has been referred to as a Bluetooth Killer in IEEE meetings.

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In an attempt to keep the PC in the minds of consumers as a capable gaming console, Microsoft on Friday announced that it would launch a web-based gaming store that would allow for the purchase of digital copies of both new and old titles. The store opens on November 15.

While Microsoft itself is a producer of some titles through its own in-house game development subsidiaries, the store would also house titles from its partners as well. "We plan to deliver some of our biggest and best PC franchises on Games for Windows Marketplace from day one," Capcom strategy chief Christian Svensson said in a statement.

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After providing nearly a whole year of sneak peeks, HP has finally made its first Windows 7 Slate available for purchase, the enterprise-aimed Slate 500.

What it is

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Opera Software has released the first build of Opera 11, the first browser in the software family to support browser extensions.

"Opera has always been customizable, but now you can personalize your browser in a new way through Opera extensions," said Opera Co-Founder Jon von Tetzchner in a statement Thursday. "We take pride in introducing new
features to the browser. Now, other developers can join in the fun and share their innovations with millions of people. Everyone using Opera 11 will be able to personalize their browser in myriad ways, which opens up so many possibilities for making the Web a more personal experience."

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Last year, Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski warned of an impending "spectrum crisis" where the demand for wireless connectivity vastly outstrips our ability to support wireless connections. Wireless spectrum is a finite resource.

To tackle this problem, the National Broadband plan includes the goals of increasing the wireless spectrum by 300MHz in the next five years, and by 500MHz in the next ten.

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Finnish mobile handset maker Nokia reported earnings much higher than expected, a month after current CEO Stephen Elop took the reins from longtime chief Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in September. The company reported a profit of 322 million euros, much higher than the 182.5 million euros expected by analysts.

Regardless, this was not enough to save the jobs of about 1,800 employees, whose jobs were eliminated in an effort to streamline the company's operations. In a statement, Elop hinted that these cuts may be only the beginning as the industry as a whole is going through "a remarkably disruptive time."

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It's the question I'm asking myself, so I'll ask it of you. Will you buy one of Apple's two thin-and-light laptops, either the 11.6-inch or 13.3-inch MacBook Air? Apple announced the new computers yesterday. As usual, please respond in comments, or e-mail joewilcox at gmail dot com. Please don't just answer yes or no, but offer reasons why or why not you would buy either of Apple's sleek, thin-and-light laptops.

(For those readers wondering about answers to the question "Which Windows Phone 7 smartphone will you buy?" I'll post today or tomorrow. I waited for international sales to start and for the first reviews to come out (both yesterday). I'm on Microsoft's "frak you" short list, so there are no review units here.)

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Early in 2010, Google announced it was looking to build and test a 1Gbps fiber-to-the-home network in a couple of U.S. cities. Hundreds of interested cities made attempts to convince Google they would be ideal candidates for the new fiber optic network.

Today, Google Product Manager James Kelly announced the first field trials of the fiber technology Google might use in its community deployments
will be built at Stanford University's residential subdivision in early 2011.

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It's been one year since Windows 7 launched to the world, and to celebrate the passing of the year, Microsoft has released some information about the milestones Windows 7 has passed.

Most importantly among them, Microsoft announced that 240 million Windows 7 licenses have been sold worldwide, which gives it a 17% global OS market share. Microsoft communications manager Brandon LeBlanc today said Windows 7 is "the fastest selling operating system in history."

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As expected, Apple on Wednesday launched a new version of its two-year old ultraportable Macbook Air, and revealed a new, smaller version that could be described as the first Mac netbook.

The 13.3" Macbook Air has been bumped up to a 1440 x 900 display, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, Nvidia GeForce 320m graphics processor, and a total unibody aluminum design. Unlike previous versions of the Macbook Air, it has no hard drive; and has shifted over to 100% flash-based memory like the iPhone and iPad. With the shift to Flash memory, the battery life has stretched to 7 hours from the previous 5, has a 30-day standby time, and features instant-on booting.

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