I always feel warm and fuzzy when the Christmas tree gets put up, but it's definitely not because I'm sweating from pedaling bikes to keep the decorations glowing. I'll leave that to these crazy folks in Copenhagen.

The 700 LED lights on this particular city's Christmas tree are not connected to any sort of traditional power outlet, instead relying completely on volunteers pushing the pedals of some stationary bicycles. It's certainly environmentally friendly, but will they seriously manage to consistently keep 15 people working out? [CNET]

Remember the Creative/ZiiLabs StemCell system-on-a-chip from a while back? The one that spawned that Android PMP design? Well, the Zii project is marching on, which means new hardware, including the dual OS Trinity phone, 360º HD webcam and more.

Creative and ZiiLabs are showing off a pile of Zii reference hardware to potential hardware licensors in China today, in hopes that someone will manufacture it. The Zii phone reference design, pictured for the first time above, is the only one we can see right now, and promises full 1080p video playback over HDMI, OpenGL 2.0 accelerated gaming, and support for both Android OS and ZiiLabs' Plaszma software. And that's just the phone—ZiiLabs also has a 360º full HD webcam, a PCI-E video coprocessor, a pocket synthesizer and, well, lots.

But before we get to the rest of the new stuff, a little timeline for you. Back in January, Creative announced, with of an offshoot company called ZiiLabs, "Zii StemCell Computing." There were not adjectives strong enough, no superlatives super enough, no words wordy enough to describe the wonders of this StemCell computing. Unlimited Flexibility! Incredible Scalability! High Energy Efficiency! ET! CET! ER! A!

But wait, what is this thing? The Zii StemCell processor is basically an extremely flexible system-on-a-chip, which is to say a multi-talented slab of hardware with an ARM Cortex chip at its core, intended to power all manner of multimedia devices, from PMPs to phones to settop boxes to, well, whatever. Creative promised low power consumption, high processing power, and plenty of uses. The platform would be licensed to hardware manufacturers, and eventually, we'd find these Zii-powered gadgets in our possession, under familiar brands. (But not necessarily Creative itself.)

Then we were shown the Zii Egg—pictured above—which is an Android-powered PMP with an alternate OS called Plaszma. This was actual hardware—that's more like it—and it looked compelling: media playback was strong, and the device itself was hot, and most importantly for Creative, new. But this, like anything else out of ZiiLabs, was reference hardware—unless someone picked it up for manufacture, it was strictly for developers.

Fast-forward to this month, and the project is finally springing some leaks. A smartbook shows up out of nowhere. Rumors about netbooks, which could leverage the Zii chip's power for 1080p video playback, real-time encoding, HD video conferencing, Flash acceleration and more, emerge. And finally, today, an announcement. ZiiLabs is pitching more reference designs, like the Zii Egg, to manufacturers:

The line-up of Zii Powered devices on display include a dual OS concept mobile phone which supports the Plaszma OS and Android OS, a desktop touch screen video conferencing device, a web-box, a 360° multi-view camera system, a PCI Express add-on card that instantly empowers notebooks with HD video encoding for high quality video conferencing, a pocket-sized synthesizer that can emulate the sound of some of the world's best pianos, as well as the world's smallest credit card-sized Blu-ray quality media player – based on the ZMS-08 chip.

The headliner here is obviously the Trinity phone, which can count itself among the first wave of 1GHz Android phones, and promises serious media and 3D support. The reference hardware, as you can see, is conservatively designed, though undeniably nice—and apparently iPhone skinny.

But the other Zii Wares are compelling in their own ways. The videoconferencing system can apparently process a distortion-free 360° view in full HD. The PCI Express add-on card will do video offload duties, a la Nvidia's GPGPU systems. And that little "Blu-ray quality" media player, well, I really don't know. All of the Zii hardware is propped up by the Plaszma-centric ZiiLife suite, which includes videoconferencing software with media sharing, educational software, and an app store.

As they are now, these gadgets will probably never see the light of day—it'll be up to hardware manufacturers to pick up the reference designs, after which they'll undoubtedly put their own spin on each concept. And as far as the associated software goes, it'll most likely remain under wraps until there are actual products to use it with. At any rate, over the next few months we can probably expect to see some of these Zii-powered gadgets show up as actual, buyable products, whatever forms they may take. And honestly, I'm eager to see them. [ZiiLabs]

Here is one GiftCard that you won’t want to let get away from you. This holiday season, Target has a special Remote Control GiftCard. The remote is shaped like a piece of cheese and it controls a little red car with a mouse in it that can go forward or backward. Let’s face it – everyone loves it when they get a giftcard as a present. Plus, you’ll totally wow and impress them with the cuteness of this holiday themed giftcard. The Remote Control GiftCard is available with amounts of $25. through $1000 at Target.

Slappa has always produced some tough and practical laptop cases of men, and now they’ve finally expanded into the world of Ladies laptop bags and their first few creations are looking great. One of our favorites is the Milano Laptop HandBag which holds 15.4″ laptops but doesn’t look at all like a laptop bag. The handbag is made of a supple faux leather outer material and it features super-cush lining throughout the bag. The Milano retails for $89.99. For those of you looking for a more traditional look, check out the Bally-Hide which is a sturdy bag made of ballistic nylon with leather accents. The Bally Hide retails for $134.99. Slappa has several other new stylish bags in tow, and if you’re looking for a new sleeve, you’re in luck as well. They have new sleeves, with quilted super-cush silky lining and the cases come in several different colors.

You know, there are times when you have to part ways with your adorable kitties at home, and you might not be so keen on getting a cat sitter in case he or she touches your precious game consoles (even if it's an old granny). We've seen the lazy man's solution before, but Britain's Mathew Newton has brought us a new DIY internet-enabled cat feeder just in time for a new decade. Rather than using a CD-ROM tray to push-release unknown quantities of cat food, Mathew's version has a motor-driven cereal dispenser controlled by signal from port status LEDs on a Cisco switch -- an ingenious way to avoid expensive Ethernet relay units. When it's feeding time the user logs onto a web interface to choose the dispensing quantity, or you can also have an automatic feed schedule set up if you trust the system -- Mathew said he "can rely on it 100%," and his cats do appear to be healthy. Fortunately, you can always check the live video stream just in case you have doubts. All is explained in the video after the break.

Continue reading DIY cat feeder now enabled by a Cisco switch, streams food and video

DIY cat feeder now enabled by a Cisco switch, streams food and video originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google's just announced the winners of the second Android Developer Challenge, a homegrown app competition that's produced some must-haves for seasoned Android owners and nervous new Droid users alike.

The overall winners: SweetDreams, which allows you to set specific nighttime settings (deflect incoming calls, disable Wi-Fi and GPS to save battery) automatically; What the Doodle?!, which is an online multiplayer game sort of like Pictionary; and WaveSecure, which lets you track your phone's location, backup data, remotely lock the device, remote wipe, and restore data. Those guys aren't super exciting to me, but the competition also resulted in some really cool ones.

Plink Art identifies artwork after you've taken a photo of it, so you can pretend you knew the difference between Monet and Manet the entire time; Celeste gives you an augmented reality view of the solar system; Car Locator remembers where you parked your car; and Andrometer measures the approximate distance from yourself to any object you can see. Check out the full list here. [Google Code]

Looks like we've got confirmation that Microsoft's Office 2010 suite is coming in June 2010. There's still no pricing information for the full and upgrade editions, but we do know that there'll be six different versions of the product.

We'll get to choose between Starter, Home and Student, Home and Business, Standard, Professional and Professional Plus flavors. There'll also be a free version which includes Word, Excel, some ads and only comes with new computers. I think that's more choices than I need, but after seeing the beta, I'll be getting out some darts and preparing to select an edition. [Neowin]

Those incredibly sexy (as far as portable storage capacities are concerned) 64GB SDXC cards coming on the horizon? You're gonna want some hardware to work with it, and according to DailyTech, three of the largest computer manufacturers are looking to bring the upgrade with Intel's forthcoming Arrandale CPUs. Lenovo, HP, and Dell are reportedly working on new designs that'll contain both the new 32nm chipsets and SDXC readers. Not that we're surprised to see new SDHC's time running out, but it does give you something to look forward to.

Dell, HP, and Lenovo bringing SDXC to laptops alongside 32nm Intel chipsets? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Battlemodos give you a clear sense of what's good and bad in a gadget category, but there's no way to include everything. Consider the $99 Asus O!Play the new champ of HD video players—better late than never.

The Old Champs

If you remember the HD media player battlemodo, I awarded WDTV Live and Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ the two top spots. The WD is still best for people who want a smooth interface and a hopefully increasing number of online services for streamed media. (YouTube and Pandora now, who knows what else?) It's actually the Seagate that gets KO'd by Asus.

The New Buttkicker

More functional than frilly, both the O!Play and the Theater+ handle every video file I could throw their way, they both read Mac- and PC-formatted drives, they both browse the local network well, they both read DVD menus from ripped ISO files, they both have superb video output—and they both suffer from having stupid punctuation characters in their name. But one costs $30 less than the other, according to Amazon's current prices. Not only is the O!Play cheaper, but its second USB jack is also an eSATA port which might come in handy when you start getting 1080p rips of all your favorite movies, and it has a file-copy function that lets you dump stuff from one drive to another, or to drives on the network.

I had only one major complaint with the Asus: Every time I watched a video ripped from DVD, it showed chapter numbers in a big white font for an extended period, about 15 seconds. Not only did pushing every single button I could think of not help this, but I couldn't even advance from one chapter to another by using the skip-forward button, so why do I need to know what chapter it is in the first place? A shame, but probably a bug that can be fixed really easily.

The Final Score

As I said in the battlemodo:

• If you want a full-on pirate kit, with torrent client built-in and everything, go with the Popcorn Hour (or the cheaper, quirky Patriot Box Office).
• If you want something with a nice interface and Pandora streaming music, go with WDTV.
• If you're choosing something to work with your iTunes collection of music and video, or something for your parents, probably still better to pick Apple TV—and tell them to buy or rent all their videos.

But if you want something that can play a ton of home-ripped video, or stuff you've acquired in some other high-bandwidth way, Asus is a better deal than Seagate—just as tough to stump in my battery of file format tests, with a few extra nice features. That's my best and final recommendation for HD video file playback—at least until Roku figures out what the USB jack on the HD-XR is really for. [Asus]

Great price for a high-def HDMI video player

Plays every video file I could throw at it, including DivX 7 MKVs, high-def H.264, even obscure home movies from out-of-date cameras

A bit larger than some products out there, but not by much

No streaming internet services

Annoying bug that shows chapter numbers in a large white font as you watch movies ripped from DVD

This is some testing equipment inside Sharp's new LCD plant in Sakai City. The rest of the facility doesn't look quite as ominous though. In fact, it kinda resembles an air traffic center with some robots tossed in for fun.

Eco-friendly is the general theme of Sharp's facility because it's all about creating and saving energy. From the energy-conserving LCD displays and solar panels being produced to the technology being used around the actual factory, Mama Nature's got plenty to smile about here.

Ok, maybe the whole place is a bit eerie with those hallways, but did anyone really think that LCDs would be built in a cheery-looking factory?