Origin's Big O Stuffs an Xbox 360 Into a Gaming Desktop Hellbeast

The ingredients that went into Origin's Big O monster are decidedly prime: six-core Xeon 5680 processor, overclocking up to 4.3GHz, crazy graphics power. And the cherry on top is an integrated, liquid-cooled Xbox 360 slim in every rig. That's nasty.

The Big O has ferocious specs, but the real treat is that you can run the PC and the Xbox at the same time. Pretty special, and appropriately expensive; you're looking at $7669 for the base model, and for the pure hellbeast that is the Xeon 5680 model you'll pony up $17,000.

Safety Plug Concept Keeps Away Curious Kiddies' Fingers

Childproofing is a pretty good idea for most new families. Children (and probably some adults) like to stick things in places they shouldn't go. This safety plug concept should eliminate that (for outlets at least).

Why Do Astronauts Wear Space Diapers?

NASA says this is not a space diaper, but it is. They call it the Maximum Absorbency Garment. I call it the Space Pooper. But why do astronauts use them?

Quite simply, when astronauts are sitting in the Space Shuttle, strapped to their seats and ready to go, they may experience very long delays. Sometimes even hours. And when that happens, they just can't get off their seats to go to the toilet. They just have to do it, as Alan Shepard discovered while waiting inside his Mercury capsule on May 5, 1961, waiting for theFreedom 7 mission launch. He was the first American to reach Space and the first astronaut to pee inside his suit.

Duracell myGrid USB Charger Charges Wirelessly and Gives Gear a Boost

Once you juice it up wirelessly atop a myGrid inductive charging slab, Duracell's new $35 myGrid USB charger will power pretty much anything that has USB, including smartphones (~4 hours), MP3 players (~30 hours), and ebook readers (~100 hours).

The Lithium-ion rechargeable battery is tiny for travel-friendliness—it occupies the top left of the myGrid in the photo above—and can be charged via USB if you don't have your myGrid handy. It'll be available before the holiday for $35 to extend all your new gadgets' lives.

 

 

Google Tipster Fired

Google has a lesson for its employees: Don't tell the world how well we treat you, or you'll be fired. The company apparently told staff today it terminated the employee who leaked word of a 10 percent companywide pay raise.

A Business Insider got hold of an internal memo from CEO Eric Schmidt—for "Googlers only"—which said they'd be receiving 10 percent raises plus a cash bonus for the holidays. The source added that the bonus would be $1,000. "Within hours," CNNMoney reports, "Google notified its staff that it had terminated the leaker, several sources [said.]" Apparently there's nothing like holiday season firing to inspire the people Schmidt called the "best employees in the world."

Scientists Plugging Holes in Concrete With Specially Engineered Super Bacteria

Repairing damaged concrete often requires pouring more fresh stuff, or digging it all up and starting over again. But thanks to germ experts at the University of Newcastle, custom bacteria—"BackFilla"—might be the future of fixing.

The bacteria, once released into a damaged area, procreate and spread into the cracks—and then die. But don't be sad—in their wake, they leave behind calcium carbonate corpses as strong as the original concrete. And don't worry—the researchers were canny enough to design the bacteria to know when their work is done, so they don't run amuck and cover the world in concrete:


The bacteria also contains a self-destruct gene that keeps it from wildly proliferating away from its concrete target, because a runaway patch of bacterial concrete that continued to grow despite all efforts to stop it would be somewhat annoying

Yes, annoying is right—or like something out of a very dull horror movie.

Storing Your Data For a Billion Years

As concerned as we are about memory, we haven't done much to preserve it. Most of ourhard drives don't last past 30 years. But soon, using diamond-like carbon nanotubes, even your Gizmodo comments could last practically forever.

The solution, discovered by researchers at the University of California, takes an entirely new approach to data storage. The proposed device would place a microscopic iron crystal inside a carbon nanotube. With the application of an electric signal of just a few volts, the iron nanoparticle moves back and forth along the tube, registering a binary "1" or "0" depending on its position, basically acting as data bits.



While it's a theoretical solution right now, the scientists who created it are confident that we'll someday see a practical application. And when we do, because of the project's nanoscale nature, we may be able to store 25 DVDs' worth of information on a postage stamp-sized storage device.

The prospect of billion-year storage is fascinating and a little terrifying. Do I want researchers ten thousand years from now combing through my drunken tweets? Actually: maybe. Because when our robot overlords comb through the records and find this post, they'll know that I've always been fully supportive of their cold, steely, logical reign.

Razer Nostromo Gaming Keypad

The Belkin n52te SpeedPad set the bar for one-handed gaming peripherals that looked like they could control alien spacecraft. It's successor, the Razer Nostromo keypad, maintains the look, and it's been updated to support more instantly-switchable keymaps and gaming profiles.

The Razer Nostromo's got all the new chipsets and drivers that have cropped up since the Belkin Speedpad came out back in 2007, bringing it up to speed with today's cutting-edge competitive gaming (and maintaing its crazy-ass, highly intimidating look.) In addition to its 16 fully-programmable buttons and eight-way directional thumb pad, the Nostromo can now support eight full keymaps (up from three) and twenty gaming profiles (up from ten).

The Razer Nostromo is available now for $69.99 at Razer Zone.

Canned Unicorn Meat: It's Real Now

No trend's got me more excited lately than ThinkGeek turning its April Fool's products intoreal products. And now, the pièce de résistance: canned unicorn meat. For sale. Right now.

First came the monolith action figure, then My First Bacon, and now? Now mythical creature meat served up Spam-style.

Stronger-Than-Diamonds Graphene Can Be Made From Sugar

 

It's been discovered that you create the very same substance those Ruskis won the Nobel prize for out of household sugar. Borrow a cup from your neighbour, and get baking the world's hardest substance. No, not your Mom's scones. Graphene.

Rice University researchers are responsible for making the startling discovery, which could cut down greenhouse gas emissions and save money too. We already know that graphene (carbon atoms arranged in 2 dimensional linked hexagons) is the strongest (and thinnest) substance known to man, and importantly can conduct electricity. We can look forward to it replacing valuable copper and silicon—and if it's made from normal table sugar, then that's just doubly sweet.

Viewsonic 3DV5 Is a Pocket-Fitting 3D Camcorder

Viewsonic announced their mini-sized 3D camcorder last month, but now they've finally brought it stateside. Not only does the 3DV5 pack two 5MP fixed focus cameras for 3D 720p video, it's also got a glassesless 3D display panel for playback.

Of course, the 3DV5 has the same problem that all 3D camcorders and cameras do: you're going to have to get yourself a 3DTV or 3D laptop to watch it on. The good news is that this particular mighty mite can also record in 2D, making it as present-ready as it is future-proof. And it might just be worth the $180 to have your bases covered.

Keyboard Buddy: Make Your iPhone 4 the QWERTY

You've had chances before to keyboardize your iPhone, but never with quite so much elegance. The BoxWave Keyboard Buddy is a smoothly built, adorably named iPhone 4 case that crams in a sliding Bluetooth keyboard.

It's a great solution for those who want their iOS but whose sticky fingertips make onscreen keyboards a chore. And it doesn't look to add too much bulk, as far as these things go. But that's coming from someone who gladly saddles his 3GS with battery case bulk most days.

The only wince-inducing part of the Keyboard Buddy might be the price; if I wanted a slider that bad, I'd probably put the $70 towards my ETF or a new device altogether.

Voltron of Computers Combines Phone, Tablet, and Keyboard Into One

Always Innovating's Smart Book breaks the traditional netbook into pieces. A touchscreen VoIP phone, a tablet, and a keyboard.

As if hardware transformation on the fly weren't clever enough, the Smart Book includes a switch they say will instantly swap OSes. That's right—click bewteen Android, Chrome, Ubuntu, or their own AIOS. And underneath all this design sophistication is some decent hardware muscle—an ARM Cortex-A8 processor (speed unspecified), 512 MB of RAM, and 256 MB of built-in flash storage, along with the usual 802.11 b/g/n WiFi.

The whole scheme is a bit extravagant, and probably not a dream device for someone seeking simplicity—and the whole "dude on a couch" aesthetic doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the train out of vaporwareville. But Always Innovating is taking pre-orders for the whole system at $549.

Baby Pouch Cooks Babies Alive. Sorry, Keeps Them Alive

This low-cost sleeping-bag keeps infants warm for between four to six hours, and once it cools down it can be plugged in or submerged in water for 20 minutes to heat up again. Not while the baby's still inside, mind.

Designed for developing countries where homes are not centrally-heated and children can't afford the luxury of electric blankets, the wax-filled heating pouch has a nylon outer (which gives it that FedEx look which is so hot right now) and can be easily carried by parents. It's aimed at India for now, but if successful will be rolled out to Asia and Africa.

Can Twitter Make You Smarter?

Can using Twitter make you smarter? A new semester-long study found that college students who used Twitter for educational purposes earned GPAs a half-point higher than a non-tweeting control group.

In a group of 125 students at an anonymous medium-sized public college in the Midwest, 70 students used Twitter to access information and complete class assignments; the remaining 55 students used a more typical Internet-based course-management system and billboard. Not only did the tweeting 70 earn higher GPAs, they also reported much higher levels of engagement. The findings were reported in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning.

Some early-adopting professors have advocated experimenting with Twitter in the classroom — "essentially asking students to pass notes during class," as the Chronicle of Higher Education once put it. This study may vindicate such an approach. But one professor quoted by the Chronicle expressed skepticism that Twitter alone could have led to such a remarkable boost. "I think more could be done to understand the range of ways that the Twitter design can work better in class assignments and collaborative note-taking," said Dave Parry, a UT Dallas professor who himself has experimented with Twitter in his class.

Meanwhile, to the dismay of more traditional professors, students can point to a new justification for pulling out smartphones in class.

Panasonic's 103-Inch Plasma TV Goes 3D

After falling in price to "just" $50,000 last year, Panasonic's five-year-old plasma has been updated with 3D technology. The TH-P103MT2 will sell for the equivalent of $101,900 in Japan—not including installation, naturally.

This Is What Motherboards Look Like Now

Asus calls the black cladding over its newSabertooth P67motherboard a "tactical vest", which despite the goofy name is there for good reason: the shielding ducts cool air over motherboard parts, while protecting from daughterboard heat. In theory.

That iPhone Is Burning a Hole In Your Pocket

What can we make of this credit card spending by smartphone platform data from Pageonce? That iPhone owners spend like crazy, and WinMo holdouts are probably saving up for a new phone, for starters.

The data was taken from a random sampling of 275,000 Pageonce users, and includes at least 5,000 users per platform. And it could mean a whole bunch of things! Either iPhone users spend more money on average, or they have more debt on average, or the simple averaging masks extreme expenditures at the high and low end. BlackBerry and iPhone are arguably the most commonly used enterprise phones, so that might have something to do with racking up higher monthly charges.

The study also took a look at monthly phone bill charges:

Vertical Bed Includes Sunglasses To Complete The Pretense That You're Awake

It vaguely reminds me of someone painting eyeballs onto their eyelids to feign wakefulness, but I kinda almost want a Vertical Bed. It's intended to help you catch a few extra zzZZZ's on your daily commute while looking dorky.

Basically the bed fully supports all of your body weight by attaching to subway ventilation grating. And to prove that it works, some poor guy got assigned to the task of taking 40 minute naps in the middle of New York. Since he didn't get mugged or fall over, this could be considered a successful trial.

The Vertical bed comes complete with noise-cancelling headphones, opaque sunglasses, a free standing umbrella, and fits into a suitcase. No idea when we'll be able to buy one, but I'll be wishing I already had it while waiting in line.

Sony EVIL NEX 3 Looks Freaky, But Brings Great Specs

The Sony EVIL NEX 3 camera may look a bit odd, but it's got a 14 MP Sony Exmor HD sensor, a touchscreen—along with old-school knobs—and some nice specs:

• Image Sensor: 14.2 million effective pixels.
• Metering: Multi pattern, centre-weighted and spot.
• Sensor Size: APS-C-sized CMOS (23.4×15.6mm).
• Lens: Sony E Series mount.
• Shutter Speed: 30 to 1/4000 second. Flash sync: 1/160 sec.
• Continuous Shooting: seven fps.
• Memory: Memory Stick PRO Duo, PRO-HG Duo, SD, SDHC, SDXC cards.
• Image Sizes (pixels): 4592×3056, 4592×2576, 3344×2224, 3344×1872, 2288×1520, 2288×1280.
• Movies: 1280×720, 848×480, 640×480 at 30 fps.
• Colour Space: sRGB, Adobe RGB.
• LCD Screen: 7.5cm LCD (921,600 pixels).
• File Formats: JPEG, RAW, JPEG+RAW, MPEG4.
• ISO Sensitivity: Auto, 200 to 12,800.
• Interface: USB 2.0, HDMNI, AV.
• Power: Rechargeable lithium ion battery, DC input.
• Dimensions: 117.2×62.6×33.4mm WHDmm.
• Weight: 297 g (inc battery and card).

What is This?

Space-age jelly? A scary CGI sextoy massager? Let's all pull together now, before opinions are polarized even more.

It's actually ferrofluid (a liquid made from nanoscale ferromagnetic particles, which can turn magnetized very quickly)

Dual-Screened Kno Tablet Aimed at Students Will Cost $899

I guess as it's got two 14.1-inch touchscreens Kno feels it can get away with charging $899 for its tablet, but $599 for the 14-inch tablet with just one screen? Why, that's more expensive than the iPad!

Considering it's aimed at college students, that's a huge ask on their bank account. But Kno's CEO is reckoning on students seeing the Kno not just as a tablet (something to browse and watch movies on), but as a textbook replacement.

It runs on a Tegra 2 chip, and has 16GB of storage—with the OS said to be Linux. Students, would you live off baked beans for a year, just to be able to afford a Kno? Anyone?

This Digital Camera Prints Photos Using Holes

This is the Punch Camera by designer Matty Martin, which was featured at the Intel University Design Expo. And I want it. Instead of using ink, it actually punches images on blank paper. And that's just the beginning of it.

Not only that, but apparently you can show the photo to a webcam, and it will automatically take you to a gallery with more—normal—images associated with the paper one.

After converting the image into a half-tone, the puncturing mechanism moves dot by dot. When all dots are precisely aligned reproduce the image, the camera screen tells you it's ready. Insert the paper in the slot, punch firmly as instructed, and get this:

PLUG Hearing Aid Concept Stretches Your Earlobes for Better Sound

Occasionally I cover my ears and sing "Lalalala, I'm not listening to your concept description." Today I'm covering them and begging "No! Don't punch holes into my poor earlobes and make me use this hearing aid when I'm old! Please!"

I understand that it's a gradual process to stretch out one's earlobes and wear jewelry that looks like the PLUG hearing aid concept—it's even trendy to some—but that doesn't mean that I could imagine a lot of people actually using this hearing aid if it ever turns into a real product.

Funky Lights To Complement Your Tunes

Tired of the same old opaque single tone band on your headphones, an OLED panel might just be the thing to spruce up boring monitors

The Transparent OLED Headphones by designers Min-guk Ji & Hong-joo Kim & In-oh Yoo might be onto the coolest headphone invention yet. A headphone band is usually a piece of black or white plastic, but by using a transparent OLED panel for a headphone band, colors and patterns could be changed on a whim.

They could show off a custom design, a dynamic pattern based on whatever track is rocking at the time, and they can scroll text too. The headphones are fully wireless too with touch controls along the sides for volume and lighting effects. Lights have been used to make laptops and mice shinier and "oh wow", why not headphones too.

Your Frantic Jumping Energizes This E-Rope Battery Charger

This concept from over at Yanko Design would charge batteries using a traditional jump rope action.

The charging mechanism would be placed in the handles, with the charging itself taken care of by the spinning rope. Just a few hundred hops, or 20 minutes worth, will charge the batteries 100%. Whether you'll have the energy required to do whatever it is you were trying to use after your marathon charging session is a question best left unasked of this concept.

Cheeseburger in a Can is Both the Best and Worst Thing I've Ever Seen

This is a cheeseburger. In a can. It's a cheeseburger in a can.

I honestly can't figure out how I feel about this: is it the greatest achievement of mankind thus far, or is it an abomination of foodstuffs that deserves to be hucked back into the gaping maw of whatever food processing plant it was spewed from? I just don't know what to think anymore. Would you eat a cheeseburger in a can? Keep in mind that it'll look nowhere near as delicious as the example above when you pull it out of the can.

Canon's X Mark I Mouse Is Also a Calculator

Is it a mouseulator? A calcouse? Whatever you call this bastard child of a mouse and calculator, it's Canon's first model in its legendary X-series of calculators. Can I hear some love from the accountants, please?

The laser mouse is wireless, connecting to Windows and OS X machines via Bluetooth 2.0, and has three click-buttons plus a scroll-wheel. It's pretty much the antithesis to Apple's Magic Trackpad, but that just makes me love it more.

You're probably wondering the same thing I was, when I first saw this mouseulator. The number buttons can be locked when not in use, to avoid accidental equations by a heavy-of-weight palm. And, if you've already got a mouse that you can't bear to part with, the X Mark I mouse can also double up as a numeric keypad, with the mousing-function switched off.

Available in black and white for £40 / €49.

Charge these Super Future Boots via USB

Omni-Heat Thermal Electric Boots: These boots aren't just cool-looking—they use electric powered thermal technology. Which means you literally have the power to get warmer with the push of a button. State-of-the-art heating elements and electronics are protected from the elements and easily operated by waterproof control switch, and pressing that baby will give you heated boots from 4-6 hours. The lithium-ion polymer battery units are removable and rechargeable via USB connectivity. (Duration of heat depends on the model of boot and user-selected heat settings.)

The World's Smallest Full HD Display

The iPhone 4's Retina Display is 3.5 inches, with a resolution of 960x640 and a pixel density of 326ppi. Pretty much everyone agrees it looks great. So how incredible must ORTUS's new 4.8-inch, 1,920×1080, 458ppi display look?

ORTUS, a collaborative venture between Casio and Toppan Printing, announced the Hyper Amorphous Silicon TFT (HAST) display today in Japan. The company claims it's up to 30% brighter than other TFT displays, capable of producing 16.8 million colors and has a viewing angle of 160 degrees.

But if the Retina Display, as Apple claims, is pushing up against the threshold for the human eye, is ORTUS's added pixel density really that important? I'm reserving judgment until I can watch Dark Knight on the thing.

Can a PC Be Upgraded Forever?

This little aluminum computer has one big goal: To be the last PC you will ever need. That's what the manufacturer claims—"The Xi3 Modular's three boards will allow you to upgrade it forever." Maybe. I just like the color.

The tiny Xi3 Modular has one board with two AMD Athlon 64 processors and the RAM, while two I/O boards handle all connectivity and input/output requirements. They say that, by changing these boards you can "upgrade this computer forever" to save money and resources.

Still, it's a nice little computer which is designed to be mounted anywhere. It comes with dual display support with 1080p DVI, VGA, HDMI, LVDS and DP output, plus 6 USB and 2 SATA Ports, Xi3p and PCIe, and it's available in limited quantities for $849.

Emergency MicroSD Card-Reading Situations Are Catered For in ThinkGeek's Watch

True nerdlingers probably use the time display on their TI graphics calculators, but one level up from those people would have this microSD card-reading watch strapped on at all times. Available now for $16.

We're Running Out of Chocolate

At the rate we're going, chocolate is going to be a rare—and extremely pricey—commodity within the next twenty years. Somebody needs to light a fire under those Oompa-Loompas, stat.

The problem's easy to explain, and much harder to fix. According to the Cocoa Research Association, we're consuming more chocolate than we're producing cocoa. Which means, eventually, we're going to run out.

Cocoa's notoriously difficult to harvest, meaning more and more small-scale West African growers—who make an average of 80 cents per day—have little incentive not to turn to more lucrative crops, like rubber, or give up farming altogether in favor of more stable opportunities in cities.

What will the shortage mean? $11 Snickers bars, sooner than you think. Pretzels given out for Halloween. Or more candy made from carob, a poor substitute for the sweet and sticky real deal. And a tectonic shift in how we view our mochas, according the Nature Conservation Research Council's John Mason:

"In 20 years chocolate will be like caviar. It will become so rare and so expensive that the average Joe just won't be able to afford it."

But don't lose hope! Both Hershey and Mars, Inc. have sequenced the cacao genome, meaning more resilient trees could be in our future. And 20 years seems like enough time to figure out how to incentivize farmers appropriately.

Still, though, just in case, my Cadbury Cream Egg stockpiling starts now.

The Power of an Earthquake Turns Train Tracks to Spaghetti

 

This past September, a quake rocked Canterbury, New Zealand. But rather than scenes of destruction and rubble, the tremors left behind some bizarre scenes—like these warped tracks atop pristine countryside.

Dave Petley, blogging at the American Geophysical Union, isn't exactly sure what caused the strange deformations, but speculates that "The compression on the very strong railway line was accommodated when a weak point was found, leading to a comparatively rapid deformation to form the main buckle on the left. This then concentrated stress on both sides of the buckle, allowing the other (right side) bends to form." Hm! Either way, it is a reminder of just how incredibly powerful the physical forces underneath our shoes are.

The Ultimate La-Z-Boy

The reasons I like this chair are quite simple: it looks comfortable, it massages you and, most importantly, it's fitted with some badass 180-degree screen that looks multi-tasking friendly (and far more ergonomic than any tablet or laptop).

Now if only the chair were any more attainable than the life of rest and relaxation. Like parking your prop plane on a sandbar for lunch, the Galatea Spa chair is little more than a fantasy.

Jaybird's SB1 Sportsband Bluetooth Headphones Should Be Taken Literally

Nothing remarkable to see here (for audiophiles anyway), but the design is undeniably sleek, sexy and slick. Called the SB1 Sportsband, these Bluetooth headphones are literally a simple band that wraps your head with about eight hours of wireless audio.

And a bonus, for those of you who get a bit, well, heated while listening to your favorite tunes: The controls are moisture-protected. For you perceptive no-nonsense folks, that also means they're handy in a rainstorm.

Available now for $89, which includes call and Skype support.

Sanwa Throat Mic, For Your Very Tactical Cellphone Conversations

Special forces may use throat mics to coordinate near-silent attacks on enemy bases, but Sanwa wants to bring all that convenience to your next supermarket run.

Sanwa's hands-free throat mic looks like a military headset, but it's made for use with your cellphone. Good for noisy environments and just those times you don't want the cabbie to know about your ass rash, Sanwa's system should be available for import soon.

The Eminently Washable Clean Bottle Unscrews at Both Ends

The 22-ounce bottles are available in retailers and on Clean Bottle's website for $9.95, with 10% of proceeds going to eco-friendly charities. For a problem I've encountered for years and years, it's the best kind of solution: an incredibly simple one.

The White House Has a Flickr Stream

If you can't get enough of your Obamas and presidential dogs, look no further. If not, look at little further.

Also, if you've got one of those digital picture frames with Flickr support, you can probably hook up your frame to directly feed photos from the White House stream and pretend you're some kind of secret agent or witch, being able to see their every move. The White House Flickr Stream

Spoonachos Are The Holy Grail of Chips

The Tostitos Scoop was a momentous moment in the history of dipping. But it has one glaring flaw: your thumb takes up half the scoop. Spoonachos, however, have a handle. Brilliant. My salsa to chip ratio just got WAY better.

I'm saddened to say Spoonachos are only a concept at the moment, designed by Denis Bostandzic. But I have high hopes that this ingenious, marvelous development in chip and dip evolution will see its way onto market shelves in the not-too-distant future.

Crank This Battery To Charge Up

The Wind Up Battery is a rechargeable battery with a little pop-out hand-crank to power up using some good ol' fashioned elbow grease. I'd probably looks like an idiot using it, but better than suffering without a AA.

Designed by Qian Jiang, the concept is actually rather brilliant since it wouldn't require an additional gadget to recharge your batteries and depending on how many recharges it would allow for, it might be a rather good deal too. Since this battery is still a concept, he claims that it could be fully charged in 20 minutes, but that would be fast enough for most of us. Those of us who haven't got the arm muscles of a noodle that is.

A Cylon Mated with KITT, and Out Popped This MK 2 Circuit Watch

Worthy of a sultry Number Six, but priced at a more commonfolk level, the MK 2 Circuit watch from Storm of London is one of those rare gadgety watches that actually displays the time in a meaningful manner.

There's no chronograph, or really anything else other than time and date, but it's got a slick look that can no doubt be read in the dark, in a black Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am, or in the blackness of deep space amongst the gods.

A somewhat hefty $200 and this new release is yours.

Super-Thin Waterproof Speakers Are Swimming Their Way To Cellphones

As you can tell from the picture, these speakers are dead skinny. 0.9mm thick, to be exact, making them perfectly-sized for cellphones, cameras and other portable gadgets which may require all the parts to be waterproofed.

Murata, based in Kyoto, Japan, created what they're calling the world's first "ultra-thin waterproof piezoelectric speaker," which is said to be cheaper than the usual waterproof speakers found in Japan, thanks to the way the output holes have been waterproofed. Normally speakers are covered with waterproof "sheets," which cover the output holes—understandably reducing the sound quality, but also proving costly to create. Murata gets around that problem by getting rid of the waterproof sheeting altogether, instead redesigning the speaker holes entirely.

Waterproof phones are pretty popular in Japan we hear, with Murata claiming that around one in four phones released in Japan last year were actually immune to moisture. They're on sale to manufacturers now, at around 250 Yen ($2.70) per unit.

Folding Laptop Concept Offers Full-Sized Keyboard

A niche concept for those who really miss their full-sized keyboards when using a netbook, designer Yang Yongchang has cooked up this folding laptop idea with top-notch spec.

I would've liked to have seen the right-hand side fold out to a large touchpad or even soft mousepad for a little Bluetooth mouse, but could be kept happy with this sturdy-yet-dinky design. Perhaps the designer could even offer bespoke keyboard arrangements, with extra space dedicated to a numeric keypad, or accented letters?

Devon Tread 1 Watch Keeps Your Wrist Busy At All Times

Devon claims that their $15,000 Tread 1 watch, a motorized, belt-driven contraption, is "a big, bold sexy declaration of independence from the status quo." The status quo, in this case, being affordable, legible, sensible timepieces. But all those belts.

If your sense of what defines a good watch is how many moving parts it has, and, better still, how many of those moving parts you can see at any given time, then the Devon Timepieces Tread 1 would be right at home on your wrist.

All of the numbers are on independent belts, carefully interwoven, as the company says, to give "the illusion that the parts are floating." Floating there on your honking $15,000 watch, that is. The belts are driven by four tiny motors, all of which are coordinated by an on board microprocessor. Just for good measure, the window is made of a bulletproof polycarbonate.

Facebook's Privacy Changes Get Scary

Facebook's long had some privacy issues, and now that they're broadening their reach on the web, who knows what'll happen next? Oh, right. We do:

2007 - Facebook Beacon links your purchases at online stores to your Facebook account so your friends (and marketers) can see what you're buying.

2010 - Facebook makes it impossible for you to hide certain information, such as your interests and location, from everybody.

2011 - Facebook History Tracker makes your web surfing history publicly viewable on your feed (and to marketers). After a brief uproar, Facebook enables an "incognito mode" for when you want to look at porn, but it's buried deep within the settings and automatically shuts off after each session.

2012 - Facebook Life Recorder is a small camera apparatus that's worn on your head, automatically tagging the friends you interact with via facial recognition and posting to your wall. Information such as where you shop and what you buy is put into a database (for marketers).

2014 - Facebook Implant combines a chemical scanner with a GPS chip. Everything you eat and everywhere you go are automatically posted to your News Feed in minute detail. This setting can be deactivated through outpatient surgery.

2015 - Facebook Guy Who Moves Into Your House With You and Is Always On the Phone With Potential Advertisers Telling Them What You're Doing meets initial resistance, but once the site starts publicizing its "Watcher Marriages"—instances where a follower and followee have fallen in love—public opposition melts away.

2016 - Mark Zuckerberg is elected president in the first election that allows voting via Liking candidates on Facebook.

2017 - Facebook User Relocation to Facebook's Headquarters ensures Facebook's ability to track every single thing you do to post to your Feed. Considered necessary after "Watcher Marriages" resulted in too many compromised Facebook Guys Who Move Into Your House With You.

2018 - Facebook Pods provide remote 24 hour contact with Facebook, as well as all bodily needs, including food delivery and waste removal (which is then provided to marketers for analysis).

2020 - Facebook Genital Pictures takes pictures of everyone's junk, which was real easy what with everyone in those Pods. Finally, Facebook fulfills its ultimate destiny: showing you (and marketers) everyone you've ever met with no clothes on.

Sony's BDP-S770 Player Takes Blu-Ray Into the Third Dimension

Remember when you thought your new Sony Blu-ray player was the bees' knees? Well now Sony has a 3D Blu-ray player (and accompanying 5.1 channel speaker system). Don't worry, though, there's a 3D firmware upgrade for your old BDP.

Sony's Blu-ray 3D BDP-S770 will have built-in 802.11n  for $300. It will play beautiful Blu-ray movies in 3D. What else do you need to know?

Sony's older Blu-ray players, the BDP-S470 and BDP-S570 , aren't being left in the dust, though—they'll be able to play Blu-ray 3D with a free online firmware update (and get DLNA compatibility for the trouble).

And if you want the full Sony Blu-ray 3D experience, the $800 BDV-HZ970W package comes with the pretty-lookin' 5.1 channel surround sound system seen in the top image.

All this 3D Blu-ray is very cutting edge, so it's only right that you'll be able to control it all from your iPhone or iPod Touch with Sony's BD Remote app, which is slated to come to Android soon. All of this gear will be available next month to make sure your basement set-up displays Avatar more impressively than any of your neighbors.