Robopanda™ is a playful and talkative interactive friend. With his engaging personality and bright animated eyes, Robopanda™ loves to share stories and jokes, play games, sing songs and talk with children of all ages. He’s a fun-filled robotic bear who can even crawl on all fours and return to a sitting position. Designed to work without a remote control, Robopanda™ is controlled directly by touch and sound. You’ll experience hours of delight and entertainment playing with him and his …

AppleInsider and CrunchGear report that starting Friday, SoftBank’s new “iPhone for Everyone” campaign (read translated webpage) will offer the 8GB Apple iPhone for free, as long as you sign up for a new 2-year contract. The promotion will runs through May 31.

In the meantime, SoftBank will sell the 16GB Apple iPhone for a bit discounted price—just 11,520 yen (about USD $119), and you can even pay for the smartphone in monthly payments, which come out to less than $5 a month during the 2-year agreement.

SoftBank subscribers will still have to pay monthly voice and data charges, of course, although as AppleInsider notes, the carrier is chopping its standard data plan (about USD $62 per month) by more than 25%.

As in the U.S., of course, the Apple iPhone 3G is still $199 for the 8GB and $299 for the 16GB model—although if you’re a Reward Zone member at Best Buy, you can snap up an 8GB Apple iPhone 3G for $99 (February 28 only).

Just for info, AppleInsider thinks the promotion could simply be a way for SoftBank to clear out its inventory in advance of a new Apple iPhone, which may well arrive this summer. That said, AT&T has yet to offer any promotional deals, which suggests that it isn’t having any trouble moving its Apple iPhone stock.

In any case, if you’ve been pining for a new iPhone and you live in Japan, looks like Friday is your great shiny day.

Ian Pearson, a futurist (he’s not an engineer), says that logically our body heat would provide all the energy needed to power-up the high-tech lenses. And that’s not all: “Digital tattoos” could also become reality to allow us to literally feel the emotions & feelings that the director wants you to feel. Per the piece: “This would allow James Bond fans to feel the thrill of outdoing the enemy or sports fans to experience the elation of jubilant players.”

It’s a long way?: 10 years seems like a quite short time frame for these developments & researchers. The technology for injecting an emotional state (is it legally & safely) via a skin patch is awfully out there, and Contact Lens Television suffers from the problem that our eye simply cannot focus on objects that too close. Some type of projection system or complex light-focusing arrangement could be a solution to the problem, but both of those technologies in a device the size of a contact lens are, again, currently too far from us? People may also feel a bit squeamish about dropping a television into their eye socket…

The closest we can get to eyeball TV today? Head-mounted displays like the Vuzix line of “video eyewear.” Throw in a super-sized Mountain Dew to simulate “the elation of jubilant players” and you’re one step closer to the future.

credit(image): University of Washington

Causes of DLL Errors

There are hundreds of DLL files on your Windows computer, out of which several are shipped with the operating system and several others are added or updated as you add new software to the system or update the existing software. Due to the large number of DLL files on the system there can be several causes of DLL errors. Some of the common reasons for DLL errors are:

• Outdated and incompatible DLL files
• Missing DLL files
• Buggy and corrupt DLL files
• Conflicting DLL files

When you start encountering DLL errors often on your computer, your system is said to be in DLL hell.

Fixing DLL Errors

DLL errors are usually dealt with based on the cause of the error. If you encounter a DLL error soon after installing a new software, it is quite possible that one or more shared DLL files have been overwritten with an incompatible or older version. For instance, you may encounter errors, such as the msnp32.dll error if the file mentioned in the error message is either corrupt or deleted from the system. In this case, if the file is a system file, you may extract the original version of the file from the operating system CD/DVD to fix the error. If the file belongs to a software, you may try to reinstall or update the software to resolve the error message. Although it is not recommended, you may also try to copy the missing file from another computer with a similar configuration or download it from a reliable DLL Internet database to its location on your computer.

At times, errors such as the msvcr80.dll missing error may be displayed if the application being installed on your computer does not support the WinSxS folder (side-by-side cache). This feature is used by a few versions of Windows operating systems to enable side-by-side existence of multiple versions of the same file on a system without causing any conflicts. To resolve the error, you first need to ensure that the required version of the DLL file is in the WinSxS folder. If it is, it may be corrupt or damaged and you may need to replace the file. If the file does not exist, you may have to create a new manifest. The best way to resolve the error in this situation is to contact the application manufacturer for a solution.

Missing DLL errors may also occur if one or more required DLL files are deleted when you remove a program from the PC. In this case, the best way to resolve the issue is to reinstall the program you removed. Next, uninstall the program again but retain the shared DLL files that are needed by other programs.

DLL errors may also occur due to hardware problems. To resolve issues in this case, you may use a good hardware and memory diagnostics tool to detect the problems. If there is a problem with a particular hardware device, you may have to replace it to resolve the error.

Last but not least, regularly scan and repair registry problems with the help of a good registry tool. This is important because many shared and missing DLL errors are generated due to incorrect and invalid registry entries.

The USB 3.0 spec, which is also called as “SuperSpeed” USB, will support up to 10 times faster data transfers than the normal USB 2.0 which is predicted to be lower power consuming.

“SuperSpeed USB is the next advancement in ubiquitous technology,” Jeff Ravencraft, the president of the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the industry group that promotes USB technology, said in a statement on Monday. “Today’s consumers are using rich media and large digital files that need to be easily and quickly transferred from PCs to devices and vice versa. SuperSpeed USB meets the needs of everyone, from the tech-savvy executive to the average home user.”

As for backwards compatibility for this USB 3.0:

The USB 3.0 will remain backwards compatible with USB 2.0 as long as the Type A connector is used. While USB 2.0 is based on uni-directional data flow with negotiated directional bus transitions, USB 3.0 supports simultaneous bi-directional data flows by the use of dual-simplex four-wire differential signal wiring as compared to half-duplex two wire differential wiring in USB 2.0 type.

What does that mean? We’re not so sure, but it sounds fast, fast, really fast. Kudos for the USB Implementers Forum for getting this USB 3.0 specs finalized to the public. After all, where would we be today without USB? Have you ever thought about it? Life would probably be a little bit more complicated… Did you remember serial and parallel connections? huh…

Sizing at 4.4 by 2.4 by 0.55 inches and weighing in at 5.5 ounces, the BlackBerry Storm place itself between the svelte Apple iPhone and the bulky Google G1 in terms of size and overall heft, and it fits relatively comfortably in a your pocket. Below the roomy of BlackBerry Storm’s display you’ll find the standard Call, End, Back, and Menu navigations, while on the top corners are buttons for silencing ringers and locking the screen.

Speaking of which, the big draw of the BlackBerry Storm ($199 with a new two-year contract, available Friday, Nov. 21) is, of course, its 3.25-inch touch display, and it’s a true beauty. With its screen resolution of 480 by as60, the BlackBerry Storm’s touchscreen actually manages to pack in more pixels than the Apple iPhone’s larger, 3.5-inch screen, and the result is a rich, razor-sharp image, perfect for composing e-mails, internet surfing, or watching multimedia such as videos & movies.

Barring its lack of Wireless (Wi-Fi), the BlackBerry Storm makes for one of the most feature-packed BlackBerrys yet, and something tells us that the engineers at Apple company will be giving its ClickThrough display a close (and potentially envious) look. Now, if BlackBerry could whip up a Storm that’s as peppy as the Bold, well … that would be something nice.