ZDNet reports that it has received information from tipsters claiming that Apple will release new Mac Pro models next Tuesday, adding a hexacore Core i7-based model to its lineup.

I’m gett…

9 to 5 Mac reports that Apple has added support for “3Tap” a…

We’d be naive to think manufacturers were twiddling their thumbs while Apple pimps out its iPad. Sure enough, there could be as many as 50 tablet devices from competing manufacturers worldwide this year, according to mobile microprocessor company ARM.

In anticipation of the upcoming tablet invasion, ARM has rented out more space at the Computex electronics trade show in Taipei to accommodate the new devices, according to ComputerWorld.

“The first tablet devices will launch in the second quarter by [mobile network] carriers,” said Roy Chen, ARM’s worldwide mobile computing ODM manager, during a press meeting in Taipei. “You’ll see a lot more in the third quarter.”

ARM licenses its microprocessor technologies to many manufacturers for their mobile devices, so we can trust that Chen has some inside knowledge about upcoming tablets. (The iPhone’s processor is ARM-based, for example.)

Chen noted the majority of the tablets will launch in China, but that “companies everywhere” are delivering tablets as well. He didn’t name specific companies. However, in the United States we’re aware of upcoming tablets from HP and Dell. And before the iPad even lands, startup Fusion Garage plans to release its JooJoo tablet.

Wired.com last year predicted that 2010 would be the year of the tablet after hearing from industry sources that several major manufacturers, including Dell and HTC, were planning to launch tablets.

See Also:

• Dell Names Secret ‘Slate’ After Non-Existent Apple Product …
• Would You Buy an iPad? Wired Readers Weigh In
• HP’s Windows 7 Slate Strikes at the iPad
• Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet
• The Wired Tablet App: A Video Demonstration

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

This amazing Lego mecha is, according to the authoritative Brothers Brick, the first walking Lego mecha that “also boosts aesthetics”. We take that to mean that it actually walks by picking up its feet rather than shuffling along like a burned-out meth-addict.

Either way, the IR-remote controlled bot, named Element Commune, is a fantastic build by Flickr user Legohaulic. Here it is in herky-jerky action:

V2.0 will actually be steerable (this one just stops and starts, “walking” in a straight line), and we particularly like the tiny t-rex arms at the front. We wouldn’t want to climb inside the full-sized versions, though. As Brothers Brothers commenter Kunert says, “That thing would go down like ED-209 in a stairwell.”

Element Commune: LP-11 [FLickr]

Legohaulic’s walking biped revolutionizes mecha building [Brothers Brick]

See Also:

• Real Life Gundam Would Cost $725 Million
• Artist Creates Steampunk-style Wooden Robot, Time Machine, and a …
• 10 Sci-Fi Techs We Could Build If They Weren't So Damn Expensive …
• Stunning Papercraft Transfomer Model was Inspired by Cookies …

If you have watched too many episodes of Criminal Minds, you probably already have a panic room in your home, ready for when golf-club and baseball-bat wielding psychopaths invade your house. But what of the other place where you spend so much of your time? What if you car plunges down a steep ravine into the rushing waters below, or you flip your ride on its roof and hang, dangling helplessly from the seatbelt while the gasoline drips ever closer to the broken mirror focusing burning sunlight onto the hot asphalt? What then?

You will need the ExiTool, billed as a “seat belt cutter, window breaker, LED flashlight tool”. The ExiTool clips onto your seatbelt and there it stays, holding its steel blade, tungsten window-smashing nubbin and button-cell powered flashlight just where you’ll need it in case of hugely unlikely emergency. Not convinced? This awful video certainly won’t help, but it will make you laugh. It appears almost as a parody, as if a real informercial had been “sweded“:

The ExiTool will be available “soon” for “just” $27.

ExiTool [CRKT]

Pentax has gone large with the new 645D medium-format DSLR. The 40MP monster has a 33×44mm sensor to fit all those pixels comfortably, and round the back has the DSLR standard-sized screen, a three-inch, 921,000 dot LCD. For a camera of this type the 645D is cheap, at ¥850,000, or $9,400.

Pentax has traditionally offered good cameras at low prices, and the original Pentax 645 film cameras were good entry level bodies for medium-format shooters (although second-hand TLRs were the cheapest way to go). The new 645D looks a lot like the old film body, a cube-shaped box with the protruding handle. In fact, all your old 645 lenses should work.

This camera is about studio work, and you won’t find fancy face-recognition gimmicks. There are still some unusual features, though. Built-in HDR, the choice of SD cards (dual slots) over Compact Flash and an in-camera HDR mode which will combine three images into one.

A size comparison of the 645D sensor next to a full-frame 35mm sensor

The exposure modes are great, and I want them in my camera. Alongside the usual shutter and aperture-priority modes, you get sensitivity-priority mode, which lets you set the ISO and the camera picks shutter speed and aperture. Also included is a shutter/aperture-priority mode, which lets you pick the shutter and aperture settings and tweaks the ISO to fit. Pentax is finally treating ISO as the third exposure variable, something impossible with film but obvious in digital. A gold star for Pentax.

Otherwise, things are conservative but smart. Both the top and rear screens have a tempered glass cover, the viewfinder is big enough to use (and covers 89% o the image), and the body has dust reduction. Sure, $10,000 will buy you an entire DSLR system, complete with multiple bodies, lenses and strobes. Compared to the competition, like Mamiya’s new $20,000 studio camera, it starts to look cheap. Available in Japan in May.

Pentax unveils 40MP 645D medium format DSLR [DP Review]

Great news for bikers: the nerds at Google have added bicycling directions to Google Maps. It appears right alongside the other options, walking, car or public transit. It doesn’t work everywhere yet – I tried to find a way from my apartment to the local bike-polo court and Google Maps just told me it couldn’t calculate a route.

In San Francisco, though, everything is fine. I plugged in Wired HQ and the nearby Moscone center and got a straight three-block route. Too easy? Fine, what about Wired to Pier 39, tourist central (and home of a surprisingly good crab restaurant)? This, too, shows the same route for bikes and cars, but the alternative routes presented below are different. I guess that you get the most efficient route first, which is usually the same as you’d take in a car, with slightly more pleasant alternatives.

The service is, of course, in beta, and Google is soliciting feedback on the suitability of roads for biking. You can of course still do it the old-fashioned (and somewhat quicker) way: use the walking directions, which ignore road-rules and one-way streets.

Google Maps [Google]