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The Winglet comes in three sizes, which also have different handlebar heights.

(Credit:
Toyota Motor)

(Credit:
AFP Photo/Yoshikazu Tsuno)

The Winglet comes in small, medium, and large sizes ranging in height from 18 inches to 3 feet 8 inches, with handlebars that also rise to different levels. All three models are about 18 inches wide and 10 inches long. The smallest version weighs 22 pounds, and can be folded and tossed into a (big) bag for optimal shoulder dislocation. All versions of the device take an hour to charge.

No word yet on when we might see commuters atop the contraptions. The company will start testing the vehicle this fall at a Japanese airport and a seaside resort. More testing is planned for 2009 at shopping complexes and other bustling locales.

A parallel link mechanism lets riders go forward, backward, and turn by shifting body weight, making the Winglet potentially useful for maneuvering in tight spaces or crowded urban environments.

Toyota Motor on Friday showed off a new stand-up scooter that could one day be seen zipping alongside the Segway on the personal-transporter superhighway.

A Toyota employee displays a Winglet prototype at the company's showroom in Tokyo. She is riding the medium-size scooter.

The “Winglet” has a body the size of an A3 sheet of paper that houses an electric motor, two wheels, and internal sensors that constantly monitor the rider’s position and make adjustments in power to ensure stability.

Riders can cruise around at a leisurely 3.7 mph–not ideal for rushing to a meeting, but nice for scooting around a shopping mall, perhaps. (The Segway, by comparison, can hit 12.5 mph.)

There’s going to be an Elvis karaoke contest on MySpace. That is not a joke. I can’t seem to figure out whether it’s trying to market Elvis to a younger generation or MySpace to an older one–or if it’s just for kicks.

The contest is a singing one, not an impersonation one, but I’m presuming there will be plenty of video entrants decked out in sunglasses and gold-studded leather jackets. Let’s hope they welcome contest entrants in Elvis regalia a little more warmly than they do with the media.

The News Corp.-owned social network, best known for attracting a demographic for whom the King has always been dead, announced Monday that it will be hosting an official Elvis karaoke competition for “Elvis Week 2008,” which runs from August 9 to 17. It’s in partnership with Elvis Presley Enterprises, and members can enter through August 4 by submitting videos of Elvis song performances to MySpace’s karaoke site. Elvis Presley Enterprises, for that matter, has launched an official MySpace page as well.

The winner gets to perform live onstage at Elvis’ historic Graceland home, backed by entertainers who actually performed with Elvis himself. Ten second-place winners get a DVD of Viva Las Vegas as well as some variety of MP3 player loaded with Elvis songs. Third-place prizes, of which there are 20, are one-year memberships to an “Official Elvis Insiders” club.

In his own blog post, Trend Micro security researcher Rik Ferguson questioned the security practices that could have allowed
Conficker onto such hallowed turf. “Dear Parliament, if you are having trouble cleaning this up, give us a call, we’ll come and do it for nothing,” he offers.

You’d think the British government would be up on the latest and greatest security practices, but apparently even officials there have their problems.

–An additional characteristic of this virus is that for some types of files it can skip direct to the Network from a USB memory stick or other portable storage device (e.g. mp3 players) without hitting the virus checker software. We ask that for the time being you do not use memory sticks or any other portable storage devices on the Parliamentary Network.

The Parliamentary Network has been affected by a virus known as conficker. This virus affects users by slowing down the Network and by locking out some accounts. We are continuining [sic] to work with our third party partners to manage its removal and we need to act swiftly to clean computers that are infected.

The U.K. parliament’s computer network has been infected with the Conficker worm, according to the Dizzy Thinks blog.

To: All users connecting directly to the Parliamentary Network

–We are unable to clean PCs and portable computers which are either not switched on or which are not authorised devices. We therefore ask that if you are running a PC or portable computer not authorised to be on the Network that you take it off immediately.

–If you do identify a problem with the equipment you are running, please contact the PICT Service Desk on 020 7219 2001 when it reopens on Wednesday 25 March from 8am.

–If you are connecting using one of our remote access services, from a Constituency Office for example, a separate communication will be sent to you.
Director of Parliamentary ICT.

We are scanning the Network and if we identify any equipment which we believe is infected with the virus then we will contact you to ensure that the device is either removed from the Network or cleaned and loaded with the correct software to prevent this infection reoccurring.

Below is the text of the e-mail that Dizzy says was sent to users of the infected official network:

You can help us to contain this problem and prevent new infection by adhering to the following advice:

Predictions markets are no longer the province of academic research or consumer services, such as Hubdub and NewsFutures. In a new report from Forrester Research, “Prediction Markets: Wisdom Of The Crowd Comes To The Enterprise” ($279), Oliver Young makes the case that prediction markets are a valuable tool for executive decision-making, lowering the cost of forecasting and increasing accuracy. Many companies have been using prediction markets for years, but Young predicts that collecting the wisdom of the crowd will become more mainstream in enterprises.

Electronic Arts is not alone in its interest in buying Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required to read entire article).

SEC filings show that Take-Two says it has received other offers, but has spurned those as well as the original $2 billion offer EA made last Friday and announced last Sunday, the Journal reports.

For its part, EA has said it wanted to get a deal done before the game’s release. It is also evident that EA’s interest in Take-Two is at least partly in response to the recent acquisition of Activision by Vivendi, a marriage that could potentially turn the resulting video game giant, to be known as Activision Blizzard, into the industry’s largest company.

EA issued a public statement on Sunday saying it had made an earlier offer to Take-Two that was rejected and that it was boosting the per-share price it was willing to pay to make the deal worth $2 billion. But Take-Two quickly issued its own announcement, saying it thought EA’s offer was too small and that it would prefer to wait to have any negotiations with anyone until after the April 29 release of Grand Theft Auto IV, which is expected to be a hit.

The iTunes Store might soon have a yearly subscription option for $129 a year.

(Credit:
Apple)

Three
Mac rumors sites have received anonymous tips that Apple is getting ready to introduce a subscription iTunes service in September.

We were already pretty sure that September would bring new iPods, but Apple might have something more ambitious up its sleeve. MacRumors, MacDailyNews, and The Unofficial Apple Weblog are all saying a tipster spilled the beans about a $129-a-year iTunes service that would piggyback on Apple’s MobileMe service.

The reports are all eerily similar, suggesting that accurate or not, all the sites heard from the same source. Under the new service, Apple would offer unlimited access to half of its iTunes Store–as of an October launch–for $129 a year, or $179 for an iTunes/MobileMe combo deal, in the U.S. only. If you’re already a MobileMe subscriber, you’ll only have to fork over $99.99 for the subscription service, perhaps as a mea culpa for this summer’s disastrous MobileMe launch.

Rumors of an iTunes subscription service are not new; I found reports dating back to 2005 that Apple was getting ready to introduce such a thing. CEO Steve Jobs has historically pooh-poohed the idea of rental music–and such services haven’t exactly taken the world by storm–but Jobs has also said he wasn’t crazy about video-playing iPods and Apple-designed mobile phones, either.

This service introduction would also reportedly include an expanded MobileMe service that would let you access “the cloud” (Apple calls it iDisk) from your
iPhone or
iPod Touch.

While we’re on this track, let me be the first to revive–based on absolutely nothing–the Beatles on iTunes rumors for September. It has to happen one of these days.