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French Kicks can not be accused of musical laziness. They blend manic rhythms, crooning vocals, and keyboards atmospherics to truly unique ends. This New York-based trio utilizes the original post-punk ethos and suffuses it with pop melodies. If ambient music were disco, French Kicks would rule the dance floor.

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During a Friday night preview of the Roboexotica event in San Francisco, which will take place on Saturday, Simone Davalos' cocktail robot 'El Espanol Baracho' applies its special elixir to a Spanish Coffee. Roboexotica, which has been taking place for a decade in Vienna, Austria, and which is visiting San Francisco, is an exhibition of robots geared to serve and mix cocktails.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

SAN FRANCISCO--Since I was one of the first people to arrive Friday night for a preview of this weekend's cocktail robots exhibition here, I was going to get the first drink.

David Calkins, one of the organizers of the San Francisco version of Roboexotica--an event that has been taking place in Vienna, Austria, for a decade--had set up his robot, Chapek, and, determining it was ready, asked me to tell the machine what I wanted to drink.

This was after, of course, Calkins had finished getting Chapek ready to go.

"Let's see if it turns on and explodes," he said, "which it has in the past."

He flicked a switch and Chapek was ready.

"Hey," he said, pleased. "It didn't."

Chapek, which is named after Karel Capek, who coined the term "robot," is a small robot with a mischievous face, wiry metal arms, and an attached control box where you tell it what kind of cocktail you want it to mix up and serve you. The choices? Gin and orange juice, a gin martini, a vodka martini, and a

UPDATE: Toshiba is expected to release a notebook PC this year that uses a chip based on the Cell processor, the same chip used in Sony's PlayStation.

Toshiba Qosmio G40

(Credit: Toshiba)

The Toshiba Qosmio G40 notebook will sport a SpursEngine SE1000 chip based on the Cell Broadband Engine, which is also used in the Sony PlayStation 3.

The Cell Broadband Engine is a multi-core chip architecture jointly developed by IBM, Sony, and Toshiba. It is derived from IBM's Power Architecture, which was once used in Apple notebooks and desktops. Today, IBM uses the Cell processor in a line of blade servers.

Samples of the SE1000 chip began shipping from Toshiba on April 8. Toshiba has said it expects sales of 6 million units within the first three years.

SpursEngine reference board

(Credit: Toshiba)

The SpursEngine can do high-definition video encoding and decoding of MPEG-2 and H.264 streams, among other capabilities. The four processing elements inside the chip have a clock frequency of 1.5GHz, while boasting a relatively low power envelope of 10 to 20 watts.

Some other features of the SpursEngine: Its multimedia engine can deliver up to 48 GFlops (billion Floating point operations per second) or 12GFlops per processing element. Every element has 256KB of integrated memory. The circuit board (photo) supports a PCI-Express Base Specification Revision 1.1.

Toshiba also plans to release a TV with the Cell processor.

Mother's Day is Sunday, people. And while my own dear Mother should be receiving something in the mail tomorrow, I'm not always this on top of things. So, with sympathy for those of you who are still looking for something a little gadget-y to give your mum this holiday, here's a shortlist of suggestions.

iPod Shuffle: This one's a no-brainer: it's inexpensive, and it comes in a lot of fun colors. It's flash-based and workout-friendly. Most importantly, it's widely available at retail stores. For bonus points, preload it with a playlist that you make just for her.

Flip Video Ultra: This budget digital camcorder can take 60 minutes of Web-quality video, and it's easy to use. Not bad for $130.

BlackBerry Pearl 8130: Tell your mom you bought her a pearl, then whip out this sleek smartphone. Just because she wants GPS and 3G support doesn't mean she should carry around a black brick.

Mio DigiWalker C230: If mom's new to GPS, she'd appreciate this easy-to-use navigation system. And it's so low-priced, you can even throw in a tank of gas.

Canon PowerShot A590 IS: Whether she's shooting travel pictures or documenting life with the children (or grandchildren), mom's got to have a good camera. This one costs less than $200 and takes great pictures. It's also got manual controls, if your mom likes to be a bit more hands-on with her camera settings.

Canon Pixma iP2600... (Read more)

(Credit: Michelle Thatcher/CNET Networks)

Driving through West Hollywood earlier today, I found myself stopped by a gaggle of paparazzi standing in the middle of the road. I'm not sure who they were trying to shoot, but for the first time I kind of understood how they felt. I mean, we here at CNET were all over the Lenovo IdeaPad U110 like a 'razzo on a starlet. First, there was the news that it had arrived in CNET Labs. Then we posted our initial impressions after using the laptop for a day. And finally, the full Lenovo IdeaPad U110 review. But who were we to resist? The little laptop is simply the most beautiful laptop we've seen in years.

Other laptop-related reviews we posted this week include the Averatec 2575, a reasonably priced 12.1-inch ultraportable, and the Lapworks Futura laptop desk. We also saw more leaks about Dell's new Inspiron line, and the 9-inch Asus Eee PC landed in our Labs.

Also this week, Consumer Reports issued the results of its annual assessment of the computer industry, and we were combing the brand repair history to figure out who makes the most reliable laptops. The conclusion? No one brand stands out particularly prone to problems. That's happy news for Dell, who announced this week that it will fix the funky keyboards that showed up on some Vostros, and for Apple, who announced that it would issue refunds to consumers who had to buy a replacement power adapter ... (Read more)

Only the most passionate cell phone geeks know that the Federal Communications Commission holds a treasure trove of information on upcoming handsets. Because the FCC has to certify every phone sold in the United States, not to mention test its SAR rating, the agency's online database offers a lot of sneak peeks to those who dig. And to save you the trouble, Crave has combed through the database for you. Here are a selection of filings from the past week on new and upcoming cell phones. Click through to read the full report.

Motorola A1600

HTC Touch Diamond
Huawei U3305
Motorola
Motorola A1600
Motorola Sidekick Slider
Nokia 6086
Nokia 6210 Navigator
Samsung SCH-W590
Samsung SGH-A237
Samsung SGH-A561
Samsung SGH-D988
Samsung SGH-U200
Sony Ericsson C902
Sony Ericsson R300a
Sony Ericsson W350a
ZTE A66

It looks like EA has made a turn-around in response to fan outrage at its plans for a complicated DRM scheme in two high-profile PC games due out later this year.

Word came out yesterday that Spore (from Sims-meister Will Wright) and the PC version of Xbox 360 hit Mass Effect would implement a new version of the Securom DRM middleware, which not only requires you to keep a game's DVD in the drive to play it, but would need to perform an authenticity check every 10 days, which would have required your computer to be online during that time.

Electronic Arts has high expectations for its forthcoming, PC-only Spore from Sims creator Will Wright. Irritating DRM won't help.

(Credit: CNET)

Amid much fan outrage and negative publicity, it appears EA and each game's respective developer has relented and will instead implement a more benign DRM strategy. Gamer's Hell reported that Mass Effect will now require a one-time online authentication, and it will reauthenticate each time you connect to the game's download servers, but that it will no longer require constant reauthentication. Kotaku reported the same decision has been made for Spore.

On the Mass Effect user forum, the community manager from developer BioWare cited its its "many friends in the armed services and internationally who expressed concerns that they would not be able reauthenticate as often as required," as one of the reasons for the change. Considering that the forum topic in which ... (Read more)

Spotted on Shopper: the Creative Zen Vision:M in the 30GB black variety. No, I am not playing a cruel joke on Zen lovers. You really can still buy the player. Of course, you'll be shelling out more than $500 for one, but that's worth it for a piece of tech history, right? Or...no? You tell me. I can't be the only one that mourned the retirement of this chunky-yet-fabulous portable media device, but I won't be shelling half a grand for one anytime soon. Of course, I still have a functioning one (in green, no less!) in my possession, so that could be influencing my decision a bit. But finding the Vision:M still on sale stirred up fond memories of the player from CES 2006 and onward. Join me as I wax nostalgic, won't you?

Best in Show: Even before the Creative Zen Vision:M crossed the review desks, it was turning heads at CNET. Despite the fact that neither MP3 player editor was able to attend the CES 2006 Best in Show vote meeting to pimp their nominee, the device caught the attention of various other CNET editors and garnered the Best in Show award for being the first MP3 player to show true potential as an iPod competitor. True, it came nowhere near knocking the king from its throne, but it won the hearts of plenty consumers looking for a different kind of player that was actually a quality device.... (Read more)

The 7- and 9-inch models.

The postman brought us a late-afternoon present on this rainy (here in NYC, at least) Friday--the much-anticipated new 9-inch version of the Asus Eee PC netbook-style laptop.

At first glance, it's easy to mistake this for the popular 7-inch version, as the two share a nearly identical footprint. The 9-inch is bigger by maybe a quarter inch, and weighs 2.2 pounds, compared to the original's 2.04 pounds. Opening it up, you can see the display now fills more of the available space, moving the speakers away from the side of the screen.

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, the Eee PC 900 will be available in the U.S. starting May 12 for $549 in both Linux and Windows XP versions. We got the Windows version, which has 12GB of solid state hard drive space (as opposed to 20GB for the Linux version).

We're currently running the 9-inch Eee PC through its paces and will report back with a full review early next week.

March of the Penguins: the only movie in Netflix's top 100 that you can stream

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The "Watch Now" feature on Netflix is a great idea: instant access to thousands of movies and TV shows, available for instant streaming to your browser at the touch of a button. There's just one big problem: despite an advertised library of over 8,000 titles, very few of them seem to be movies or TV shows that I want to watch.

Out of 41 titles currently in my queue, only 4--The King of Marvin Gardens, Das Boot, The Good German, and Pickup of South Street--are available to be streamed. OK, fine--my taste for older movies is probably throwing things off. Surely plenty of newer, more popular movies are available to be streamed, right?

Wrong. ... (Read more)