Ever crawl your way through a smoke-filled corridor to save the life of someone trapped in a burning building? If yes, much respect! If no, us neither, but if ever we do hopefully it's after donning this piece of headgear currently under development by two researchers in Germany. Burcu Cinaz and Holger Kenn (rockers both, no doubt) have created HeadSLAM, a helmet that uses an infrared laser-scanner to penetrate the haze and map out surroundings as its wearer wanders, correcting for inertial disturbances created by the loping, unsteady walk of a bipedal organism, shown in a thrilling demonstration video after the break. It's all very much a prototype at this point (evidenced by the "hardhat festooned with shipping tape" design), and the laptop tether is a bit unwieldy when compared to a cellphone that might manage the same trick from inside a pocket, but within a few years we wouldn't be surprised to see this tech integrated into a trucker hat or maybe even a set of ridiculous headphones. [Warning: PDF read link]

[Via NewScientist]

We all know the internet is not a big truck, and the rolling blackouts in California not that long ago showed our power grid isn't either. Part of the solution could be a series of tubes, a new type of solar generator from a company called Solyndra that replaces the usual square solar roof panels with something that would make Senator Stevens proud. The company's photovoltaic rods are able to catch rays from any direction, meaning they don't need to be tilted to point at the sun. Also, since they're not shaped like a silicon kite, they don't need the same big, beefy installation brackets. This cuts installation costs in half and has helped to drive $1.2 billion in orders from eager would-be customers of this three-year-old startup. Want to see 'em for yourself? Head on down to the Solar Power International Expo next week in sunny San Diego.

[Via Make]

When Ballmer dropped a few sprinkles of information about Vista's successor, he dubbed it "Windows Cloud," but said the real moniker would be unveiled at the Professional Developers Conference later this month in LA. That show's agenda was recently posted, and interestingly contained a number of sessions under the header "Windows Strata," leading many to believe that it's the true name of Redmond's next offering. That the section was quickly changed to "Windows 7" makes things all the more suspicious, but don't go cyber-squatting WindowsStrata.com just yet (oops, too late). Strata -- a term that can apply to the layers of the atmosphere -- might be more of a general classification for numerous cloud computing-related offerings destined for all manner of devices. But if so, why rename the sessions, and why the secrecy? And, most importantly, why are we so intrigued?

[Via CNET]

LG, a major player in the cameraphone megapixel wars, is aiming to knock out the competition via a one-two punch of the KC920 Renoir and the newly official KC780. That latter phone still lacks a cute nickname, but now has a few official specs to go along with its resolution. Just 13.9mm thick, it sports a 2.4-inch LCD on the front and an unsurprisingly Schneider-Kreuznach certified lens on the back, the latter augmented by some advanced "face-enhancing features" like smile detection and Beauty Mode to digitally smooth blemishes. It should perform decently in low light, courtesy of an ISO 1600 shooting mode and built-in image stabilization; good things both because we don't expect that tiny flash will brighten any room. The phone records videos at 640 x 480, and interestingly, it can act as a wireless Bluetooth webcam for a PC. Price is unconfirmed, but European release is coming next month ahead of a worldwide launch "later."

[Via Engadget Spanish]

Like your smartphones with a little heft to them? Check out Motorola's new VC6096, an oversized Windows Mobile 6.1 device for those with inventory (and employees) to track. The 4.85 pound behemoth is intended for dashboards, not Dockers, and features a wealth of connectivity to ensure your workers are never offline, like HSDPA, 802.11a/b/g, and Bluetooth too. It also offers SAE J1708 and J1939 ports for communicating directly with the systems of whatever vehicle you mount it in, and a SiRFstarIII GSC3ef/LP GPS chipset for pinpointing exactly where your last shipment of widgets was delivered. The front sports a 6.5-inch VGA touchscreen and a backlit 65-key keyboard, while inside hides 128MB of RAM plus 256MB of flash for storage and a 624 MHz XScale PXA270 processor, a faster version of the same chip we've seen before in other shop-minded portables. Price isn't set, but this could be the must-have gadget for your fleet in '09.

[Via NaviGadget]

With the markets tanking, banks imploding, and the massive bailout seemingly having no effect, it's safe to say that the economy is in dire, dire shape. People are cutting back on everything from vacations to vaccinations, yet are apparently still quite willing to open their wallets for new electronic goodies -- if you believe the group that represents all those goody makers, at least. The Consumer Electronics Association is saying that sales of gadgets and the like are surging compared to this time last year, with flat-panel TV sales alone up 40-percent. The explanation is that people are staying home more often to save funds, so are investing in home entertainment systems, videogames, laptops, and other miscellaneous toys to stave off cabin fever, particularly when they can find good deals online. Maybe that explains HD-DVD's continued success?

In-home power consumption monitors are trendy pieces of kit lately, with a new one popping up every few months. But, while they're all happy to just kick back and tell you what a wasteful pig you're being, a new service from UK security company AlertMe could actually make you more efficient. Subscribers to the company's monitoring plans, which start at about $260 plus another $17.50/month, will be able to purchase Smart Plugs for $43 each that can communicate wirelessly to an AlertMe Heating Controller. From there subscribers can monitor their energy usage online via computer or phone. That's all standard stuff, but the service also includes keyfobs that will automatically turn down the heat and deactivate devices when you leave, and allows users to manually control the plugs and the thermostat by text message, meaning you'd never be more than a few thumb-presses (and a 20 cent service charge) away from a warm and inviting home.

[Via SmartPlanet]

The reams and reams of spam found with every check of our inboxes here at Engadget HQ have quashed the surge of emotions we used to experience when that new-mail notifier started blinking. So, we went looking for something to help get our e-mail groove back, and we've found it: the USB webmail notifier. It's a little box with the iconic envelope design on the front that lights up in green, blue, or red when you receive mail. The color indicates either the location of the received message, for those of you who rock Outlook for work and Gmail for personal, or the volume, for those who need some encouragement to clean out that inbox. It is somewhat less useful than other multi-purpose USB indicators we've seen, but its simplicity, and its $17 price tag, make it our choice to bring back that lovin' feeling.

While Sony and others compete with Blu-ray burners of a paltry 8x, Sanyo's looking ahead with a new laser that could enable write speeds of up to 12x. More impressively, the 450 milliwatt diode (twice that of current burners) could read and write through four 25GB layers. If you're not so good at math (it's okay, we had to break out the calculator) that means discs of up to 100GB burned in 10 minutes or less! But don't go running down to your local Blu-ray emporium looking for double-digit speed drives just yet; new standards will be needed for discs that big and drives that fast, which could mean a year or two before production begins. If speculation of Blu-ray's impending demise is to be believed, that may be cutting things a bit close.

It's been nearly a year since Parrot announced its DF7700 GPRS-endowed picture frame, said to possess the mystical ability to pull photographs straight out of the ether. Now T-Mobile has pledged to bring Parrot's magic frame to the US as the CAMEO, a $100 device that, when coupled with a $10/month service fee, can be the recipient of picture-bearing messages. When you get bored with that feature (or that fee), there's a mini-USB port plus slots for SD/MMC cards that will enable it to accept pics in a more traditional manner. Its 7-inch screen has a 720 x 480 resolution and is surrounded by an interchangeable leather border guaranteed to look cheap in any decor -- not just those with golden mirrors astride marble mantelpieces.

[Thanks, Mark]

We know how much you just love eco-friendly desktop computers, so rejoice dear readers: Samsung, on a green kick lately with its free gadget recycling program and edible cellphones, is announcing two new desktops that, individually, consume just 60W of power when on and 1W when in suspend mode. Both the MV100 Tower (the wider one) and MZ100 Slim Tower (the, uh, slimmer one) run Intel's fairly fresh G43 chipset and come with your choice of GeForce 9500GS or 9600GT for graphics. Those are the only vital stats we have to pass on so far, though, and no word on when or if these two will be available outside of Korea.

DataWind's PocketSurfer2 hasn't exactly made a huge impact here in the US, where it was unceremoniously re-dubbed the PC Edge prior to being released to the back cabinets of electronics retailers next to piles of unwanted Shifts. It's seen more success in Europe, where surfers on the go can now buy a nicely upgraded model, the PocketSurfer2R. It shares the prior device's basic layout and 640 x 240 screen, but contains a GPS receiver inside and a small touchpad to the upper-right of the keypad. More notable, though, is the new "Immortality Plan," which won't guarantee that you'll still be rocking out when your grandkids retire, but, for a one-time fee of £60 (a little over $100), offers unlimited surfing over the lifetime of the device. Given we're stuck paying $25/month here, we'd call that a bargain. This new model won't be coming stateside, at least not yet, but the older one has received a $100 price drop to $199.

Nokia has produced a number of stereo headsets in the past, and while they were... fine, they didn't exactly wow us with any sort of innovation, particularly when it came to aesthetics. Perhaps that's why it's asking for a little help with the Music Almighty Headset Competition. Anyone is welcome to take one of the company's vanilla products, like the BH-604 or BH-903, and tart it up using either a simple Flash customizer or downloadable Maya, PDF, and PostScript templates. You'll want the templates to really go crazy, like submitter Mase90 did for the hideous, supposedly Sex Pistols-inspired skull-and-chains-encrusted model above. Voting is open to anyone through the end of the year, with the top 10 being whittled down to 5 by a panel of experts. Winners will get to see their designs turned into reality -- though not actually put up for sale.

[Via Nokia Conversations]

Apple's App Store, with its millions of downloads, is clearly a hit with consumers. But with developers? Not so much. Like a dashing hero to a scorned mistress, Google's Andy Rubin is pledging a different, more loving and respectful relationship with those who would fill his company's Android Market with selections -- and his pockets with royalties. He indicates that the Market will enable free downloadable trials, something that Apple is stubbornly refusing to add, and that those downloads would not be subject to any arbitrary bandwidth caps. Meanwhile, T-Mobile at least will be levying a $2/month fee on developers of free apps expected to use more than the (somewhat arbitrary) amount of 15MB of data per user per month, though how they'll be keeping track of that data outside of their own content stack is unclear -- our guess is that they can't.

We've seen Ferrari's logo and lacquer applied to everything from GPS nav systems to overpriced clock radios, each product diluting the brand that Enzo built bit by bit. Acer is the most common enabler, and its latest prancing horse-decal'd product is the F-22bid, a 22-inch LCD sporting a 1680 x 1050 resolution and a racy (sorry) 2ms gray-to-gray response rate. Brightness is the standard 300cd/m2, though a contrast ratio of 20,000:1 impresses, and VGA, DVI, and HDMI inputs mean it should easily connect to just about all of your headless video outputting devices -- but at what cost? Acer isn't telling, and with only 500 of these being built, we're not expecting affordability here.

Update: Jody commented to let us know that a seemingly identical, but apparently non-limited-edition version of this monitor is available right now at NewEgg for just $309.

[Via Akihabara]