Uncle Milton Industries, a manufacturer of science-based toys, is about to unveil a first: a toy that interacts directly with your brain. Available this August for about $120, the Star Wars Force Trainer lets you levitate a ball using only your mind. Seriously!

The toy works by reading the beta waves from your brain with a wireless headband attachment. The main part of the toy features a ping-pong ball in a clear tube and a fan underneath that allows it to float. But there are no buttons to push to activate the fan; it happens when the headband senses changes in your brainwave patterns.

The Star Wars Force Trainer uses technology that doctors use to monitor brainwaves, the same tech used by amputees to send instructions to artificial limbs. Included in the toy is the voice of Yoda, who helps guide you through several increasingly difficult levels of control.

I’m more intrigued by this technology than the Force Trainer itself. The toy strikes me as a novelty to show all your friends — but something that would grow repetitive pretty fast. But the tech, if harnessed with enough imagination, could lead to some true innovations not only in toy-making but in electronics of all kinds.

Happily, this toy is just the beginning. Already, Mattel is manufacturing a similar toy that will be available this Fall. And Uncle Milton is planning an entire line of toys that utilize this brainwave-sensing technology. The company is planning to show off its toys at Comic-Con International in a few weeks, so perhaps we’ll learn more about it then.

Image: Uncle Milton Industries, Inc.

On Monday, EA Games hosted its own press conference here at E3 2009. Here are a few highlights from the event.

EA Sports announces Fight Night Round 4, for the first time allowing you to pit Ali against Tyson, with spectacular-looking results. Check out the big-screen demo:

EA Sports announces and demos Grand Slam Tennis for Wii, complete with a surprise appearance by tennis superstar Pete Sampras.

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Last week I showed you the cool little Darth Vader Bust USB Hub. This week I found the R2D2 4 port USB hub that is imported from Europe from Underground Toys. Similar to Lord Vader, he too makes sounds when you plug in a USB peripheral. In fact his head spins too .

(Image: Target.com)

Upon reading reviews, the unit does not spin it’s head. Still makes a for a cool little desktop USB hub for the Star Wars fan. This R2 unti stand 6″ high and will run you $27.99 at Target.com . Shop around though, if you want this item you may be able to find it cheaper elsewhere.

I’m all about finding a cool USB hub. Most of the time I’m looking for something small and easily concealable; one I can tuck under the cooling bay of my notebook computer. If I had the room on my desk I would probably buy one of these though. Last week I showed you a miniature R/C R2D2 and this week is a nifty little Darth Vader USB hub.

Darth Vader USB Hub

Powered from your PC’s USB port, this 4 port USB hub, Vader turns his head, his eyes glow and he breathes that suffocating sound that is all too familiar. When you plug a new device in, the always cool sound of a light-saber firing up it makes. Sorry, started to talk like Yoda there the end toward did I. Sorry, did it again. I can’t help it sometimes!

Kind of Pricey at $44.99 you say? Well considering that you would spend about $10 to $20 on a an average USB port, this one is DARTH FRIGGIN’ VADER! Buy it from Target, plug it in and succumb to the darkside!

Image: Target.com

Although I’ve recently been told by a few different people that Call of Duty 4 is THE game to get lots of stuff not done around the house, I can tell you in my house most of my time was invested with my son playing the LEGO Star Wars games.

Because of all the fun we had with that game, I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on LEGO Indiana Jones The Original Adventures for Xbox 360.

• Be Indiana Jones: Re-live his epic adventures in a humorous LEGO world based on the original trilogy of movies.
• Explore and discover: Journey from the jungles of South America to the snowy mountaintops of India, all in search of ancient and powerful artifacts that you will use to solve puzzles.
• Whip it! Use Indy’s signature weapon to capture and disarm enemies, swing across gaps, activate levers, and interact with a world of LEGO objects and puzzles.
• Pick your character: Choose from over 60 playable characters, each with a variety of unique abilities that you will use to help solve puzzles and battle enemies. Plus, play the villains and supporting characters.

All that tells me is that it looks like it could be almost as much fun as STAR WARS. Not sure though, STAR WARS will always have to have the edge though. It’s STAR WARS!

Okay, I must be really out of touch or this stuff just isn’t hitting my radar screen as something that’s going to immediately impact my life. Have you heard of Microsoft’s PlayTable?

As usual Mary Jo Foley gets me the scoop on this bit of information.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates also provided a PlayTable-related technology demo during his Consumer Electronics Show (CES) keynote address in 2006, when he placed a cell phone containing digital photos on a tabletop device and all the pictures “flew out of it” and could be manipulated by touch and gestures. Microsoft has shown similar surface-computing-type demos at a handful of other conferences and events.

Okay, that sounds pretty cool, but someone explain to me the “flew out of it” part. Are we talking 3-D holograms here? It appears that’s somewhat of exactly what we’re talking about as well as it coming from the same folks who work on the Xbox and Zune. I’ve got to tell you, that makes me feel better because I have been pleased with those two devices.

“PlayTable” seems to have evolved from two other technologies that Microsoft has been working on called Touchlight and PlayAnywhere.

I’m imagining Touchlight as the technology behind what we appeared to have seen in Minority Report and other similar movies where data is being manipulated in a 3-D space on screen via a glove attached to the user. I’m guessing the PlayAnywhere is more like the little holographic game of chess that Chewbacca was playing on the Millenium Falcon in Star Wars.

PlayAnywhere is, according to Microsoft’s description, a “compact interactive tabletop projection-vision system.” Microsoft’s PlayAnywhere prototype includes a projector, camera with infrared pass filter and infred LED device. Microsoft showed off a PlayAnywhere-type demo during a keynote by Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Los Angeles in mid-May 2007.

But all of that brings us back to my original question, why haven’t I heard of this before? It could just be that I’m out of the loop on where these things were brought up or I was asleep at the wheel that day or just busy head down working in Microsoft Office or Visual Web Developer Express. It sounds good and all, but I don’t foresee me using any real-world application of this stuff for a number of years, and by then I’ll probably have to have my son explain it to me.

Photo Credit: Technovelgy - where science meets fiction