OLED

Possibly buoyed by margins produced by its $2500 XEL-1, Sony is pumping 22-billion yen ($203.5 million) into scaling OLED production technology up to medium and large panels. No word on what sort of sizes are meant by "medium" and "large," but we're hoping that "medium" comes in around 30-inches and "large" runs upwards of the 45-inch mark. Competition being what it is, Sony probably hopes so, too. With OLED lifetimes on the rise, the only thing that keeps these power-miserly, high-contrast, great color and wide-viewing angle displays out of a home theater setup is sheer size. Given the race between manufacturers, we're hoping to see falling prices, rising sizes and shorter times to market.

Apple Notebook MacBook Air

Steve Jobs introduced the world’s thinnest notebook, the MacBook Air. He first ditched the disadvantages on most subnotebooks, including smaller screens, slower processors and a shrunken keyboard.

With the MacBook Air, Apple has created the world's thinnest laptop--measuring an unprecedented 0.16-inches at its thinnest point (and 0.76 inches thick overall). Apple also introduces its vaunted multi-touch technology, found on the iPhone, to its laptops with the MacBook Air, enabling you to pinch, swipe, or rotate to zoom in on text, advance through a photo album, or adjust an image via the oversized trackpad.

Despite the its slender shell, the MacBook Air doesn't skimp on the specifications. It includes a 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display, full-size and backlit keyboard, and a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing. The MacBook Air is powered by a custom-built 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, which provides an optimized, multithreaded architecture for improved multitasking performance. Other features include 2 GB of RAM, an 80 GB hard disk drive, Wi-Fi connectivity via 802.11a/b/g/n standards, a micro-DVI video output (with included adapters), and up to a 5-hour battery life.

It comes pre-loaded with Apple's Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system, which adds over 300 new features including easy backup of your most important data via Time Machine, a redesigned desktop that helps eliminate clutter, and the newest version of the fast-loading Safari web browser. It also comes with the iLife '08 suite of applications, including iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband, and iTunes.

FPSGun Mouse

When it comes to gaming mice, you have your standard design stalwarts; your Logitech G9s and your Microsoft SideWinders that take the standard mouse and make it sleeker, more durable, more sensitive, more functional, etc. They're all well and good, but they don't hold a candle to the out of the box thinking embodied in the Zalman FPSGun Mouse, a five button, 2000-dpi peripheral shaped like the handle of a gun that may just be the FPS equivalent of a steering wheel or a pair of rudder pedals.

OhGizmo! points out that the appeal of the FPSGun Mouse is that doing a horizontal trigger squeeze would seem to be a lot faster than doing a vertical one (as you'd do on a normal mouse) – that's the way real gun triggers work, after all – but we have to wonder if the gimmick is all psychological; doing some quick movement tests with our trigger fingers, we get the feeling that up and down might be the faster and easier way to go.

Easy Circuit Finder

Here's an easy and inexpensive way to track down what fuse or breaker controls which outlet.

Just plug the Easy Circuit Finder into the outlet in question.

When the power is turned on, it makes a very loud tone you can even hear in the basement.

No more yelling up and down the stairs, "Is it on? Is it off?".

Easy Circuit Finder makes it easy to track down switches or breakers without an assistant.

Adjustable volume control lets you use it in close quarters, too.

Plugs into any 115 volt outlet.

Eco Button

Worried about carbon footprints, global warming, and rising energy costs? Want to feel like you're doing something (every little bit does count, remember) without investing too much effort? Manufacturers are happy to oblige: enter the Eco Button, a piece of green plastic that puts your Windows PC into energy-saving ecomode when you tap on its broad face. The USB-powered button comes with software that tells you how much energy and how many carbon units you've saved through its labor-saving practices. Just make sure you don't blow all of that savings on gas-guzzling trip across town in your car! You wouldn't want Mother Nature to think you were mailing in the environmental sensitivity.