For some reason, telepresence--the concept of having your person (in audio and/or video form) represented by some kind of machine while you are physically elsewhere--has lent itself to extreme goofiness. It's not really a goofy idea, and yet we've seen squishy larval phones, shoulder-mounted robots, the Anybots robot (which recently ordered coffee in a Palo Alto shop), and now this blimp-like thing from Sony that projects your face onto what's essentially a motorized balloon. Created by Tobita Hiroaki and his team at Sony, the blimp (which is still nameless) shows a projection of the telepresence-r's face on a meter-wide balloon. It works generally like all blimps do, powered by a few small propellers located underneath the balloon. It's controlled remotely, with a webcam on the user's face updating live, and broadcasts audio through a built-in speaker.