BIG changes are afoot at Mimoco.Their impossibly adorable, data hungry Mimobot creations just got a little data hungrier for your precious filing. Everyone’s favorite portable USB buddies are now available in 8GB incarnations. That’s twice the size as previously available! Whether you trust Boba Fett or prefer rayD8 to ferry around your files, you’ll be delighted by the sheer amount of info these drives can digest depending on what you want to feed it. The new Mimobots up the input ante by boasting the ability to stuff their faces with nearly 20,000 photos, 2,000 songs, or 2,500 minutes of video. All you have to do is find one you want to make your own.

As promised, here are the winning entries for our Tokidoki Mimobot contest:

Winner, Timothy Nakayama

This is my story, about what happened to my friends and I, the day when our island sunk into the realm of dreams and almost disappeared from reality.

This is my story, written by me, Pirate Nero.

READ MORE…

Do you like Mimobots? How about Tokidoki? How about winning free goods from Tokidoki, Mimoco, and JoshSpear.com? Thought so. All you need to do is submit a story in the comment section of our Tokidoki Mimobot Contest post telling us what you think these little buggers are up to together. A monkey boy, a pirate, and an Italian chef — they look like trouble to us. Haikus, stories, lyrics, epic poems — all accepted entries. We’re choosing winners on May 5. Go, go, go!

Ah, Mimobots. Nerdy enough to help us appear left-brained, arty enough to help us appear right-brained, and tiny enough to keep our top secret files close to our hearts at all times.

If you’ve yet to experience the flashiness of one of these flash drives, today is your lucky day, as our good pals at Mimoco have graciously unloaded some of their new tokidoki ‘bots into our wide open arms. These latest tech wonders are smothered in the classically kawaii artistry of Italian designer Simone Legno (who we interviewed not too far back), and combine cute and creepy to create some of the most hyped Mimobots to date. We know you want some, so here are your choices for retrieval: A) Battle off hoards of rabid tokidoki fans/throw down some significant dollar; or B) Get arty/nerdy with us.

Game plan: Study up here. Consider what those little ‘bots are up to (Satan pasta and pineapple bombs, oh my!). Write us a little creative short story explaining your theory (or haiku, or song, or algorithm — we don’t care, whatever). Cut and paste to the comment section. Cross your fingers and wait.

May 5th we’ll announce our first and second place winners — who will receive flashy prizes on an only slightly descending scale — and publish their entries. Okay….GO!

When we last caught wind of the whereabouts of the FriendsWith You gang, they were having their characters fashioned into Mimobots conveniently available by Valentine's Day. However, now that the magical day is upon us, the Miami-based Art Collective has set have set their lovable scamps loose on the Zune Arts page in a short entitled, “Tickle Party.” The film “a unique blend of stop motion, puppetry and assorted 3D elements,” showcases the adventures of a duo of white fuzzy friends as they climb a beanstalk and befriend a sad ruby-crying monster to the tune of Santogold's “Say Aha.” The music complements the song so perfectly that we doubt you'll be able to hear the song from now on, without wanting to watch this irresistible video.

Not so many years ago, an Italian by the name of Simone Legno created a site from which he could display his artwork. A successful Rome-based illustrator, Legno had formed a love of Japanese culture in his early childhood, and his artwork reflected as much. Dark eyed women, equally shy and strong, gave the term “cute' new meaning — a meaning as dangerous as it was endearing, and as forceful as it was adorable.

The site was tokidoki, and before long, Legno's cute-oozing, Japan-blasted caricatures had attracted the attention of Hard Candy Cosmetic's co-founder Pooneh Mohajer and her husband, Ivan Arnold. In 2003, the pair flew the artist to Los Angeles, where talks were soon underway to turn Legno's tokidoki into a brand of it's own — a brand that would soon be bigger than what any of them expected.

Now, only a few years after that first meeting, the world of tokidoki covers everything from shoes, snowboards, and skate decks, to bags, walls, and tour busses. Legno's trademark mix of innocence and allure has won fans the world over — a side effect that seems to strike regardless of age, sex, race, or gender. We chatted with Legno about his inspiration, his long list of collaborations, and his plans for the future.

Joshspear.com: A lot has changed since you first came to L.A. in 2003 — did you ever dream that tokidoki would become what it is today?

Simone Legno: Yes; I dreamed so, I believed in it, and it happened. I was lucky, but I've worked very hard for it, day and night — weekends included. READ MORE…

While we know how much you love Mimobots, we wouldn't recommend buying them flowers or replacing your sweetheart with one this Valentine's Day. However, if you're on the market for the perfect gift to show your tech savvy significant other just how much you care, a new Mimobot may be just what cupid ordered. Luckily, our friends at Mimoco have a brand new line that's ripe for the giving. FriendsWithYou is the newest entry into the mimobot Artist Series '08 and contains six adorable characters, so you'll have plenty of options when it comes warming up the circuits of your lovin' spoonful's heart.

Welcome to Jeremy Dower's universe. It's a bizarre world inhabited by phenomenally strange symmetrical creatures like Schmoopy and Planky, just begging to be mimicked for a line of mimobots. The Australian character designer and concept artist has created works for both MTV and Nintendo, the latter of which makes a lot of sense, seeing as some of his creations look like something you'd see in a Mario Bros. game. Dower's latest creation, entitled “Isometric Picturesque” is an astonishingly detailed work featuring a wide array of his quirky characters along with a glossy, almost three-dimensional landscape. It is quite a sight to behold.

If you're still scrambling for that last minute gift for the techie in your life, HURRY UP! YOU'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME! Okay, we didn't mean to yell, especially since we've got the perfect solution: MIMOBOTS! Of course, why didn't you think of it sooner? Now, we know it's going to be tough to choose the perfect Mimobot for your flash-needing family and friends as there is such a wide variety that it's nearly impossible to know which one they'll appreciate the most, but luckily you don't have to decide. The kind folks at Mimoco are removing the pressure from your decision making process by digitally offering gift cards. So make sure your loved ones don't forget to leave virtual milk and cookies on their desktop, because this year Santa is sliding down their internets chimney and leaving these babies under the e-tree.

It’s been a year since Star Wars Series 1 was completed with the addition of an evolved R2D2, and we’ve just about ran out of the Force during our long wait for the rest of those extra-nerdy flash drives. Good news: the days of staging attacks on Darth Vader with old Barbie dolls are over, because the rest of the intergalactic posse is about to land. Star Wars Mimobot Series 2, which is expected to ship in late January, 2008, will introduce four new characters: Luke Sywalker, Princess Leah, Han Solo, and bounty hunter extraordinaire, Boba Fett. Like all the latest mimobots, Luke and his pals/lover will come preloaded with exclusive digital content ranging from wallpapers and screensavers to icons and avatars – and will play you a sweet little Star Wars diddy whenever you insert or eject them from your PC. Lock yours up with a pre-order from either mimobot or Star Wars Shop.

The rumors are true: Domo-kun has made it to the US in the form of another new mimobot series. While Josh stuffs his face in a lavender-scented bean bag to try to calm his rapidly palpitating heartbeat, I’ll go ahead and share the wonder of these Japanese monsters, now made even awesome-er by their conversion into nerd-friendly USB Drives. Domo, Ninja Domo, and Rasta Domo are available in 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB sizes, and are ready to eat up your top secret files and spit ‘em back at you whenever necessary. If you, like me, have little personal connection to these foreign television mascots, read up here, then be converted.

Additionally, if you haven’t cast your vote for the top three vimobots yet, no worries — voting is open until the 18th (this Sunday), so you still have time to help your favorites reach the head of the pack!

In general, I am not into Rachel Ray. I like Giada because she’s pretty to look at, Emeril because he’s feisty, and Paula because she makes me feel good about eating butter straight out of the tub. Rachel just giggles and says e.v.o.o. too much (which bugs me, because the point of abbreviating something like that is to abstain from saying the elongated phrase — which she does anyway, right after saying e.v.o.o.). However, yesterday my fingers were too sore from, uh, typing? — to change the channel, which is why I let Rachel teach me how to make candy sushi. Watching her smush all that sugar into bite-sized pieces had the odd effect of reminding me that Halloween is next week, which then reminded me that I still don’t know what kind of whore I’m going to be this year. A Nurse whore? A Nerd whore? The Sheriff of Ho-Town (again)?

Today, we had two options: Talk about mimobots just by talking about new computer software, we decided to roll with Halloween. Here’s how it’s going to work: Tell us about your costume. We’ll give you points for creativity, presentation, and the amount of spandex used, and then (assuming you get the most points) we’ll give you a King or Queen mimobot. You won’t get points for telling me what to be, but hey, do it and I might just poke you on Facebook. Easier than making sushi… right?

While having that plastic flash drive on your key chain is certainly a convenient way to ferry your essential files, it’s certainly not a sexy accessory. Most portable flash drives lack…well, flash. If mimobots aren’t your style, and you’d like to bring some bling to the device that carries your digital data, Pierre Tristian Bissol may have just the thing. Hailed as the “world’s smallest 4GB flash drive”, the .1 ounce Ready Boost-compatible drive is encased in both nickel-plated or original brass finish employing the “same precision machinery and age old techniques used in manufacturing swiss mechanical watches” in order to bring a little style to your files. Now, you all you have left to do is get your teeth chromed out to match.

Just in time to make us feel better about being too old for trick-or-treating, mimoco has combined Halo and flash drives to create one super-techy wet dream. Coming to you in the form of Master Chief, Blue Spartan, and Red Spartan, the new mimobots will store all of your gaming tricks, and will even come to you loaded with stuff like Halo images and sounds, parts of a Marvel Halo comic book and strategy guide, and an episode of “This Spartan Life.” If you’re looking for something even spookier to provide you some digital backup, mimobots like RayD8 and Galacula will offer a more traditional (skeletal and bloodsucking, I mean) approach to file storage. So, readers, I guess the choice is up to you: Will you be storing Butterfingers in your waistline, or top-secret documents in your mimobot?

A couple of great stills from an animation of the King and Queen meeting on the Mimobot we just released for the 2007 artist series. Along with the super-sexy USB drives in many different capacities, the über-bot is full of tons of awesome Undoboy/Collective content like icons, wallpapers, graphics, and songs you can’t get anywhere else. Yes, I’m shamelessly promoting the Spear Collective, and the bot our beloved Undoboy (to the rescue) created. They’re great, you should have one, or two, or maybe even three. But there aren’t many, this puppy is limited edition! Maybe we should give away a couple right now. First person to tell me which member of the Royal Family who has a birthday that coincides with the first day of the Summer Olympics in Beijing wins a set of 2GB Mimobots. Tricky, I know, but let the Mimbots guide you. Go, Go, Go!