Awesome and Scary Smartphone-powered Robot/Attack Drone on Kickstarter for $78

For a $78 pledge on Kickstarter, Romotive will provide backers with their very own smartphone-controlled robot, called Romo, that lets you see where it's going by using the phone's camera. You can control Romo--  the same size as a small remote-controlled car -- with a computer, iPod touch, tablet or another smartphone as long as you have a wifi connection.

Romo allows owners to use a variety of Android or iOS apps to make their robots do fun stuff like spy on co-workers and draw pictures [ check this out ].

When we saw this we thought, "This is awesome, a smartphone-controlled robot!" followed immediately by, "My god, we hope terrorists don't get their hands on this..."

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Tumblr Tweaks How It Organizes Themes, Adds Real-Time Previews

Tumblr has reorganized its free and paid themes, letting users browse by category and adding an HTML code editor and real-time previews.

Themes are categorized as premium, free, single column, two column, three column, grid, textual, minimalistic, vintage, super customizable and hi-res. Premium themes cost anywhere from $9 to $49.

[ See screen shots after the jump. ]

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Fashionistas Rejoice: Brandslane Collects and Organizes the Best Fashion Email Offers

To find out which retailers have great email-only specials, you have to subscribe to their announcements, which can overwhelm your inbox. Brandslane gives fashionistas and bargain-hunters one place to view the best email advertisements from more than 100 brands including Barneys, J. Crew, Neiman Marcus and Bebe.

"Going through all these emails was bit of a pain," founder Ely Fall tells LAUNCH. "I built BL to be one place where I can go to daily and browse these offers. I can easily search for previous deals. I thought if I have this problem, maybe others will too."

Ely says he goes through about 65 emails per day, and 40 ads or deals get published...

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Watch the First Ever TWiST South Africa Meetup Live at 12 pm PDT

For the first time on "This Week in Startups," the show welcomes entrepreneurs from Cape Town for a live meetup and pitch session live at 12 pm PDT.

Filmmaker and entrepreneur Tyrone Rubin organized the event. Host Jason Calacanis and Tyler Crowley will offer constructive criticism and pick an overall winner, who will get a free ticket to the LAUNCH Conference in March 2012 [ link to event ].

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Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu Broadcasting Google+ On-Air Hangout Peace Lecture

The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu will broadcast their conversation using Google+'s On Air hangout as part of the Inaugural Desmond Tutu Peace Lecture in Cape Town tomorrow, Oct. 8.

The lecture is taking place at 10:30am South African time, which is 1:30am PDT. The link to the hangout will be available 20 to 30 minutes before the event starts.

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