Wall-E was a pretty great robot on his own, but apparently somebody in Japan thought he needed an upgrade. So say hello to Wall-E the Transformer.

This appears to be a one-of-a-kind item, as I can't imagine Disney allowing an unauthorized Wall-E Transformer to be sold anywhere. [FC2.com via Toycutter via The Daily What]

Here's an extremely easy way to enable tethering on your iPhone 3G and 3GS (even on AT&T!) by just visiting a site on your iPhone's Safari. No jailbreaking needed. Here's where you go:

http://help.benm.at/help.php

Then scroll down to the Tethering & Internet Settings, then choosing your country and provider. This works for both AT&T and T-Mobile, and will let you install the appropriate configuration.

Now go to your settings and enable tethering. Check the video walkthrough above to help you configure tethering.

We've been testing this for about a day and it's been working quite well. Just be careful though, that AT&T doesn't officially sponsor this and might charge you extra for using tethering while you're not supposed to. So, keep an eye out so you're not shafted at the end of the month.

Here's an extremely easy way to enable tethering on your iPhone 3G and 3GS (even on AT&T!) by just visiting a site on your iPhone's Safari. No jailbreaking needed. Here's where you go:

http://help.benm.at/help.php

Then scroll down to the Tethering & Internet Settings, then choosing your country and provider. This works for both AT&T and T-Mobile, and will let you install the appropriate configuration.

Now go to your settings and enable tethering. Check the video walkthrough above to help you configure tethering.

We've been testing this for about a day and it's been working quite well. Just be careful though, that AT&T doesn't officially sponsor this and might charge you extra for using tethering while you're not supposed to. So, keep an eye out so you're not shafted at the end of the month.

And if this disables visual voicemail on your phone, just go and reset your network settings, and it should be fixed. If that doesn't work, try updating your phone with an older version of the AT&T carrier settings.

The method is an update of what we showed before, but with a method to get MMS and Visual Voicemail working.

Apple is known for being secretive to the extreme, but did you know some of their employees look like they're dressed up for Dungeons & Dragons LARPing while at work?

Here's stuff from the NYT article that we already knew:

Secrecy at Apple is not just the prevailing communications strategy; it is baked into the corporate culture. Employees working on top-secret projects must pass through a maze of security doors, swiping their badges again and again and finally entering a numeric code to reach their offices, according to one former employee who worked in such areas. Work spaces are typically monitored by security cameras, this employee said.

This stuff is common in normal companies even, and a good majority of tech employees have badges as a permanent fashion staple. But this, this is interesting:

Some Apple workers in the most critical product-testing rooms must cover up devices with black cloaks when they are working on them, and turn on a red warning light when devices are unmasked so that everyone knows to be extra-careful, he said.

That seems a bit over the top to me, but hey, you know what? It seems to be working for them. [NY Times]

It's why we declared independence in America, and it may have something to do with fabled British teeth. The UK's power plug is ridiculously large, and now one designer has fixed it.

The video is a bit on the slow side, but here's the gist: The UK is filled with beautiful slim electronics, but these electronics have actually become skinnier than the required 1.8-inch-thick power plug. This new proposed design can collapse to 1cm (.4 inches) when not in use, allowing it to squeeze into the narrowest of bags and pockets will no longer putting unnecessary pressure on the prongs whenever your bag is set down the wrong way.

Now we just need those US to UK adapters to go through the same round of smart engineering. [Pocket-Lint]

Intel and Nokia had a big fancy announcement to tell everyone that they're going to be doing something together in the future—the specifics of which wasn't important (or defined) enough to mention today.

The two did say that they're going to be sharing Nokia's HSPA/3G modem technology so Intel can put those into their own equipment, and that they're going to be all up in the open source world. Other than that? Not a whole lot going on. Sounds to us like Nokia's going to be making some more N800-like devices with Intel inside. [Nokia]

AT&T has released TeleNav's turn-by-turn, voice-enabled GPS navigator for the iPhone at the expected price of $10 a month, proving that they're all going to be expensive, including TomTom's upcoming entry.

The software, which we've already seen on BlackBerrys and other phones from both AT&T and Sprint, includes the usual car GPS features, like voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation with a 3D view, rerouting, and 10 millions business and interest points. And while it's $10 a month, it also has automatic map updates. The best feature for the iPhone, however, is that you can cancel your subscription at any time and resume whenever you want. This may be perfect for people who only need a GPS while going on trips outside their area. Others may want to do a one-time payment—for probably around $100—if Navigon comes to the US, or if TomTom selects the pay-once, no-map-update method.

According to the description, however, it only includes maps for the US, so no road trips around Europe for bon vivant-wannabes like me. [iTunes App Store]

The screwtop has already challenged the tradition and snobbery behind the cork. But are you ready to order wine from a dispenser?

N2Wine, makers of 'wine globes' believe that yes, yes you are ready to buy wines distributed from big vats. They argue that the aging process is overrated and that 90% of wines are as good when bottled as they'll ever be. (Sommeliers in the audience are welcome to affirm or refute that point in the comments while we move on.)

Wine globes are glass containers capable of holding 33 or 70 bottles of wine (depending on the size) that are specifically designed to thwart oxidization, the chemical reaction that ages wine, by preventing any air from entering the system. Instead, the globes vino-filled spheres constantly topped off by "food-grade" nitrogen when liquid levels deplete, essentially freezing wine's flavor in time.

The wine is also under constant water-cooled temperature regulation so that it's served perfectly every time and, obviously, the system can offer more wines by the glass than most restaurants currently offer. A $20,000 wine globe system holds 24 varietals of wine—or 168 bottles in all—putting each wine globe at about a $1000 price but eliminating the need for a cellar.

So would you order wine from a spigot? If the science is legit and the quality control is high, I'd try it out. [N2Wine via gizmag]

Crysis is the current standard bearer for PC game graphics. If your computer can run Crysis well, it's a pretty impressive setup. So it's pretty nuts to see Crysis running smoothly on a Samsung Omnia cellphone.

The Omnia isn't running the game, of course. Instead, its being processed remotely and streamed via OTOY, an upcoming server-side rendering service that'll let you play high-end 3D games on low-powered machines.

In this video, Crysis is being played through the Omnia's browser with no additional plug-ins and is being controlled wirelessly with an Xbox 360 controller.

It'll be interesting to see how many people take advantage of this when it officially launches. [TechCrunch]

Remember how Steorn, the company who built, hyped, then failed to demonstrate the Orb free energy machine, convened a hand-selected "jury" to evaluate the technology? No? Well, anyway, they've disbanded, unanimously unconvinced.

First, a little recap: In 2006, a little-known IT company announced that it had, in effect, circumvented the law of conservation of energy with its "Orb" generator, which produces "Clean, Free and Constant" power. To mitigate the inevitable response from rational people horrible skeptics, they issued a challenge to the world's scientists in The Economist, claiming they would assemble a qualified, unbiased jury to evaluate their technology. And so they did.

The next—and many assumed, final—chapter of the Steorn saga was a botched demonstration in 2007. Steorn blamed heat from the camera lights for the failure, but by then, people weren't really listening.

Today, we get this terse announcement from the jury, who has been silently plugging away all the while:

Twenty-two independent scientists and engineers were selected by Steorn to form this jury. It has for the past two years examined evidence presented by the company. The unanimous verdict of the Jury is that Steorn's attempts to demonstrate the claim have not shown the production of energy. The jury is therefore ceasing work.

But guess what! They didn't see the new stuff, apparently. Cue Steorn's (familiar) response:

[D]uring 2009 the company had resolved the key technical problems related to the implementation of Orbo and is now focused on commercial launch towards the end of this year, at which time academic and engineering validation would be released concurrent with public demonstrations

In other words, Steorn has discovered an unlimited source of energy, and they're using it to power their PR department, forever. [Steorn Jury via Ben Goldacre's Twitter]