Now we've seen everything. QRIO , a pint-sized entertainment robot from Sony, threw out the first pitch of the Nationals-Mets game at RFK Stadium last night.
Sony spokeswoman Shoko Yanagisawa told The Post yesterday that the two-foot-tall QRIO -- which stands for "Quest for Curiosity" -- is the first and only humanoid robot that can pitch. Built to be a companion, QRIO can perform dances from different cultures, recognize faces, understand more than 65,000 words in Japanese and get up after falling down. (The droid isn't on the market yet, though Sony's robot dog, Aibo , is.)
The future is now, ladies and gentlemen. And it can fit into an oversize handbag.
Before the game, Yanagisawa said the robot was "throwing well" during trial pitches and added, "We're crossing our fingers for a strike."
She wasn't disappointed: QRIO threw a fastball straight into the catcher's mitt: "It was," Yanagisawa said, "a huge crowd-pleaser."
Tom Cruise Dotty-Com
This has been coming for a long time: A Web site dedicated to Tom Cruise 's um, uniqueness. TomCruiseIsNuts.com, which hit the Internet last Friday, was created by the people behind WeLoveTheIraqiInformationMinister.com and WeLoveArnold.com.
Founder D.J. La Chapelle of Alexandria told The Post yesterday that he and his friends do the sites "just to make ourselves laugh more than anything else." An Internet consultant, La Chapelle said this latest one just had to be created after Cruise's infamous "Today" show appearance. "My God, it was like watching a train wreck," he remembers.
The site mostly features memorable quotes from Cruise:
"I'm usually nervous to meet people that I admire because what if they're not cool or something?"
Women "smell good. They look pretty. I love women. I do."
And . . . "I say, 'Bring it. I'm a Scientologist, man. What do you want to know?' I don't mind answering questions."
Although it's only been online for seven days, La Chapelle said the site was recently upgraded to support the hundreds of thousands of hits it has received.
