From the ball to special uniforms that make you jump higher, this year’s World Cup could very well be the most techie soccer tournament the world’s ever seen.

The ball, for example (called the Jabulani, fyi), isn’t stitched together—it’s thermally bonded. It’s also the roundest ball ever created for a World Cup. Last I checked it was about $140 and available to the public, so get Googlin’ if you want to kick around a near perfect, leak proof sphere.

Those uniforms I mentioned? Somehow, thanks to specially designed Adidas “TechFit” crisscrosses in the back, they allegedly help a player increase vertical leap, speed, endurance and power by anywhere from 0.8 to 4 percentage points throughout a match. Sounds like snake oil to me, but that could just be jealousy talking since I didn’t have access to the tech during my team’s 11-3 drubbing yesterday afternoon. You can see the shirt on number 8 in this video:

Even the shoes got an overhaul for South Africa this year. Looking more like carbon fiber inserts on my friend’s Audi A5 than soccer boots, they’re light, streamlined and contain something called a Powerspine.

Again, there’s more Adidas witchcraft at play here, but they promise the spine reduces the chance of an ACL injury. Nothing wrong with that. [CrunchGear]

Hey you! Be all that you can be! Help the U.S. military design an autonomous robot capable of ferrying injured troops from the front lines to safety with little or no help from a human hand:

It’s no joke—direct from the Pentagon comes word that the Army wants someone out there, beyond its secretive five walls and uber secret underground lair, to develop a robot with powerful limbs and grippers that will be able to adapt to “the large number of body positions and types of locations in which casualties can be found.”

Oh, and not that this is a surprise or anything, but the robot also needs to be able to enter, navigate and escape terrain “without prior knowledge” of the geography. Flying blind, so to speak. Finally, if the robot can perform as part of a hive mind, and cooperate with a swarm of other robot rescuers, that’d be just peachy with the military too. You have until March 24 to submit your life-saving ideas. [Pentagon via New Scientist]

Capitalism! Sprint was cool offering Palm Pixi for $100, until Verizon’s Palm Pixi Plus slid in underneath at $79. Well Sprint’s having none of that, slashing the original Palm Pixi’s price to a mere $50 for new customers, after all of the rebates and contracts and what have you. Remember, the candybar Pixi doesn’t have Wi-Fi and has a slightly smaller screen than the Pre, but if you or someone you know isn’t quite ready for a big boy phone, a $50 Pixi could be hard to resist. Also remember, hard times ahead for Palm. [Sprint]

I remember the good old days, when 2 or 3 guns was all a man needed.

The Secret Armory Of General Knoxx Opens This Week
MORE GUNSSSSS!!!!

Kotaku-Tan, The T-Shirt For The Kotaku Fan
Nice work by Meatbun.

Super Mario Galaxy 2: Yoshi’s Back…and He Brought a Drill!
I like that Yoshi. He’s a good guy.

Heavy Rain Explores Player Depression With Freezes And Glitches
I had one crash during Heavy Rain, but two of my characters died because the SIXAXIS motion controls are so horrid.

The Stalling Of An Anti-Bush Video Game
This is exactly why I don’t vote except when I do.

Don’t Worry, DSi XL Fits In My Rear Left Pocket
Thank. God.

Kirsten Dunst Is Your Magical Nerd Princess
I’m not sure what this has to do with gaming, but it was on Kotaku and I found it appropriately strange, so there.

Resident Evil 5: Lost In Nightmares Micro-Review: Less Fighting, More Frightening
I played a lot of RE5, but I still preferred the earlier, fixed camera games in the series.

Warner Buys Batman: Arkham Asylum Devs
Smart move.

Hands-On, Sword Out With Red Steel 2
Finally, we’re getting some decent swordplay on the Wii.

It’s possible that you’ve been reading reports of Microsoft’s body-capturing Project Natal with some skepticism, wondering, “how well can this cockamamie setup possibly work?” Well, going by this video of it perfectly tracking a guy breakdancing, pretty damn well.

As best we can guess, Natal will be making its way to Xboxes sometime this fall. That means we’ve still got a good deal of waiting ahead of us, so every once in a while it’s nice to have a reminder of why we’re so excited. February’s reminder: this video of Natal perfectly tracking a dude dancing during the requisite playground ball demo game.

The video isn’t as much of a slam dunk on the lag factor. At some points it looks like there’s a definite delay between the dancer’s movements and those of his avatar on screen, and at other times the lag seems imperceptible. It’s hard to say for sure. But as for the motion capture itself, even in low light situations, it appears to be undeniably smooth. [Project Natal Games - Thanks, Jordan!]

Aaron Woodman, the director of consumer experiences for Microsoft’s mobile division, was a guest on today’s Engadget Show, and he had a nice surprise for everyone: a prototype of LG’s Windows Phone 7 Series phone.

There’s not a whole lot in the way of details—it’s a slider that’s a bit thicker than the iPhone, it has a 5MP camera, and sports six hardware buttons—but it’s still exciting to see the new operating system on a branded device for the first time.

Woodman wouldn’t confirm nor deny if Windows Phone 7 Series would support Mac OS, only mentioning that it was a topic the team was currently discussing. Hey, at least the notion hasn’t been shut down out of hand, so we’ll take this as a no news is good news type of thing for now.

Head over to Engadget for more pictures and a quick video clip of the LG phone in the round. [Engadget]

When the iPad was unveiled in January, everyone could agree on one thing: it did look a lot like a big iPhone. Begeek.fr extends Apple’s consistent design to its logical conclusion in the company’s next two revolutionary devices.

I hear the iBoard’s going to implement twenty finger multi-touch and the iMat’s even going to support Flash. [BeGeek.fr]

If the iPad seems a bit extravagant and the JooJoo’s sordid past turns you off, the 7″ iLet Mini HAL might be up your alley. It’s no powerhouse, but at least you’ll be able to say you own a tablet.

The 600MHz VIA CPU isn’t blazing fast and the 7″ touch screen isn’t luxuriously wide. The 2GB of flash memory isn’t great. The Android 1.6 OS isn’t ideal.

But if you just want a tablet without all the bells and whistles for doing some surfing from the couch or reading some documents in bed, the HAL seems like a fine option, especially considering the $199 price tag.

And anyway, the storage is expandable via SD card and the OS is upgradable. It has Wi-Fi, 128MB of RAM, a USB port, and claims a 16 hour battery life. Best of all, Haleron says it’s shipping the HAL on March 1st. So, if only for a few weeks, you can be the first of your friends to be officially on the tablet bandwagon. [Haleron via Ubergizmo]

We recently heard that Android 2.1 was on its way to the Droid, but now sources tell AndroidandMe that all U.S. Android phones will be receiving Android 2.1 firmware in coming months, though some will require a wipe to upgrade.

As we’ve heard is the case with the Droid, some niceties like animated wallpapers probably won’t make the jump, but if the updates come to fruition, increased text-to-speech support and enhanced widgets will likely come along with them. The price of getting up to date, Androidandme explains, might be wiping your phone clean. A bummer, but that’s life.

Google has shown its awareness that fragmentation is a serious issue for Android, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see them try to make things a little more even across the board. The G1 and MyTouch are supposedly candidates for the first wave of updates, so keep an eye out for confirmation in coming weeks. [AndroidandMe]

February has not been a good month for the Apple supply chain. After the assault, the arson, and the poisonings, now Apple’s annual supplier report reveals that this year 11 minors were found working in factories that manufacture their products.

The 24-page report is full of bad news. The worst of it: three different factories Apple uses to manufacture parts employed 15 year old workers, 11 minors total, in countries that had a minimum working age of 16.

Other unsavory findings include over 50 factories keeping workers on the job for longer than the maximum 60 hour work week and at least 24 factories paying workers less than the minimum wage. Stuff that would be bad normally but doesn’t seem quite as bad in light of the child labor: only 61% of the factories Apple uses were following correct safety regulations and only 57% had the necessary environmental permits for operation.

Apple didn’t reveal which factories were culpable, or the nations in which these facilities were located—they contract independent factories in China, Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, the Czech Republic and the United States—but they are still using them to manufacture their products. Apple confirmed that the child laborers are no longer employed.

Apple’s no stranger to supply chain controversy, and all of these details come right from their own supplier responsibility report. You’d imagine that at some point people would stop gawking at Apple’s supply chain scandals and actually put pressure on them to make some significant changes in their manufacturing. Hopefully these latest discoveries are enough to start that process. [Telegraph and Bloomberg]

Update:
Many commenters have made some good points about Apple’s report and how it should be received. To be fair, these discoveries did come from Apple’s own audits of the factories it uses. I changed the title of the post to better reflect that. But the reason they’re performing those audits in the first place is to rectify their image when it comes to overseas labor. It’s great that Apple’s putting more resources into finding these problems, and it’s admirable that the company is making this process public. But with such a long running history of ugly supply chain incidents, it’s discouraging that the audits found conditions to still be as unfavorable as they are.

We got an eye-opening look at Apple’s attitude toward manufacturing when a tipster recently told us Steve Jobs’ mantra circa 1996: “Apple will be the Nike of consumer electronics.” I’m glad that the company’s trying to clean up their act, but with a legacy like that, it’s hard for me to applaud them for admitting they found underage workers.

Image credit gnta