Intelligent coconuts are the latest invention to come out of the MIT Media Lab, designed to combat excessive airport noise. They have built-in noise sensors, and will be hung on trees surrounding San Jose International Airport. When they detect a jet coming in louder than it should they use their built-in phone to call the airport complaint hotline and leave one of four pre-recorded messages. Check out the clips after the jump.

AU: I can't believe they missed the opportunity for a Gilligan's Island joke - it's a coconut with a phone in it FFS! -SB

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Anyone who thought that the Dutch were a liberal race might think again if they come up against the IDEE machine. Standing for Innovative Digital Enforcement Environment, this 13-feet-high speed camera has just about everything it needs to resist an attack from an angry motorist.

The IDEE, which costs anything between $60,000 and $100,000, incorporates just about every single anti-vandal measurement known to delinquent man in its design. The camera's enclosed electronics are insulated against extreme heat, and the main pillar can resist just about any fire.

A thick steel base prevents the camera from being removed forcibly from the ground, and protects the device from being rammed by a pissed commuter. Impact-resistant polycarbonate glass protects the camera and flash. If the tower is attacked, then an alert goes to the local cop shop. All the data already recorded is sent to be downloaded at a traffic control base.

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Panasonic has released a range of electric rugs into the Japanese market that heat up to a toasty 114 degrees. At first glance this seems like an extravagant waste of power, but it's actually very green. If you're sitting in the living room watching a movie, then you only need to heat the rug to get warm, not the whole house. Never before has saving energy been so romantic.

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If you love technology, then why hide it away? You'd show off a new phone, iPod or laptop, but not a vibrator. It doesn't seem fair. The LoveHoney Dream Egg doesn't shy away from attention though - not only is it bright pink, but it's also a key ring. Check out a perfectly work safe video after the jump.

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The new D-Snap SV-SD950N from Panasonic is Bluetooth-enabled, so can pair with your phone and control some call functions. It has an SD slot, but only comes bundled with a rather stingy 1GB card. Battery life is good, at an estimated 60 hours, but is a drop from the previous D-Snap models without Bluetooth.

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There's a South African zip line that claims to be the highest one in the world. But how about this one that takes Colombian kids from their hillside village to school? Well, faced with one minute of eyeball-spinning terror 1200 feet above the jungle, or a two-and-a-half hour hike, which one would you take? [Spluch]

The Nokia XpressMusic line phones have been kind of junky and low end. That ended sometime between then and today's unveiling of the 5310 slim candy bar (above) and the 5610 slider. Both have build qualities approaching that of the Samsung Ultra phones, with bright screens, textured backplates and aluminum bits all over. The 5610 slider has a 2.2-inch screen, 3.2MP camera, a microSD slot, and Europe-band 3G. To flip between music and the main menu, there is a toggle on the face that felt great to thumb, and the switch had backlighting.

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Sony has boosted the memory size of its Video Walkman up to 8GB. Available in four colors - white, black, silver and metallic pink, the NWZ-A818 still isn't the most beautiful machine on the block. Specs, price and shipping date after the jump.

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You've already seen photos, but you haven't yet been told why the N81, which just went live, is special. Unlike the N9x series handsets this one's designed around music and gaming, not its camera taking abilities. That explains why its MP rating is a mere 2MP and it's not armed with a Carl Zeiss lens. That also explains why Nokia put the loudest speakers I've ever heard on a mobile phone on this thing:

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Nokia is indeed releasing two N95 variants, probably in response to the happy anti-Apple smartphone league's joyous American reception of the pricey but powerful handset. Both of the new phones are flawed, but not for technical reasons. The n95i is the beautiful black model you saw on the FCC website, has a 2.8 inch screen instead of a 2.4 inch screen (same QVGA res, still not touch), and improved battery life of up to 30% better life, which could mean it was tested with backlight and wireless gimped. It also has no lens cap, as previously gawked, and a Xenon flash instead of LED. It is $749. It's flaw is that it also doesn't have US HSDPA band support, which is more our problem than Europe's.

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Sony just opened the new season with an avalanche of HD televisions in Japan. With the KDL-70x7000 as its flagship —a 70" Full HD LCD the size of battleship Yamato— the new army includes 15 Bravia models from the X, W and V series —starting at 40-inch— plus three models of the small new J3000 series, Full line-up after the jump.

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LG's new smart phone should be out in Europe by the end of the year, and we're expecting to get a look at it next week at IFA. Find out what else this touchscreen beauty has got, and see some pretty ladies handling it, all after the jump.

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Ladies, are you self-conscious about your breasts? Do you think they need to be bigger to get you attention from guys—or at least from guys like Adam Frucci? Well, you could have expensive and gross really awesome breast implant surgery, or you could just grab some F Cup tea from Japan. These sure-to-be-effective tea bags apparently make your breasts bigger when you drink a cup each day, while those cookies will just make the area below your boobs bigger. Big difference. Plus, who wants to chew when you can just swallow? [Tokyo Times via Tokyo Mango]

I'm already a huge fan of DVD-projector combos, so Epson's new LCD-projector MovieMates make me titter like a school girl. The first thing Epson did was solve its size problem with the MovieMate 50. The new one is 63% slimmer than its predecessor—with a built-in handle!—yet still costs $799. But the inevitable shift to high-def has happened earlier than I would have predicted, with the advent of the MovieMate 72.

If you haven't already guessed it, the 72 refers to 720p. It's not a full 1080p, but a big step in the right direction, and at $1,199, hard to pass up. When you're projecting an image 100 inches across, it's all too easy to see the screen-door effect of the pixels from a 480p-resolution chip. The jump to 720p triples the number of pixels. With the requisite internal DVD upscaling, the image remains a lot smoother when you project it big. Also, since there's an HDMI input, you'd be able to play games and watch Blu-ray or HD DVD movies at a much improved resolution too.

Usually Charlie is Gizmodo's main man for projector reviews, but this is one that I'm going to have to commandeer for myself when it's up for a test drive.

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Every Transformer should be ashamed right now. Darth Vader has rolled onto their turf and made them all look weak in comparison. Optimus Prime certainly can't turn himself into a man made planet, and the only thing Unicron can do is eat his way through the universe at 4 mph. We never believed the Millenium Falcon/Chewbacca Transformer could ever reign supreme. But Darth Vader, oh man. Not only does he still have his light saber, but when he transforms, he turns into the goddamn Death Star. I'd love to see Unicron's fat ass try and eat the Death Star. Not likely. [UberReview]

The guys over at Nokia blog supposedly received an itinerary for the virtual Nokia Go Play event. The itinerary mentions the Nokia N81, Nokia N95 8GB, music store, NGage and some more suspect mentions, like "Pjotro dance footage" and "event bloopers." Joke or not, we'll find out in a few hours when the event hits on August 29th, 5 AM EST time. [NokiaBlog]

It's DSLR season, with Canon and Nikon loosing their latest and now Olympus is following up with their E-3. We saw this camera first hand at PMA, unnamed, but obviously a replacement for the 4-year old E-1. Four years! Hey, that's pretty nifty, Olympus -- wait til your camera is actually out of date before updating it.

Rumor has it that the E-3 will come stateside in October/November. Of course, a little googling revealed that this camera has kept the 4/3 camera mount fans (yes, fans) waiting since 2006 Photokina. Gotta be tough to have all those lenses and nothing in this range to use it with. You'll have to wait for MP ratings, etc, but it's safe to assume it'll be in the 8-12 range, like all cameras in this segment. [DPReview]

We like devices such as the M3 Perfect for loading DS Roms and homebrew projects, but you can't really save data from actual DS games you might own. GameTech's upcoming USB dongle lets you upload game save files to your computer and use them as your please. Insert your DS cart into the dongle, the dongle into a USB port, and you can transfer away. Seems good if your cart has a faulty EEPROM or you want to share your game save with someone else. No word on pricing, but its coming out August 31 and something tells me its exclusive to Japan. [GameBrink]

Watching TV on a cell phone is about as fun as taking a drill to your eye -- and that's something concept designer Seokwon Hong hopes to alleviate with the Brix. The Brix is a modular concept for a cell phone that would allow you to create a bigger and bigger screen depending on how many Brix bezel-less modules you may have.

We're not quite sure how feasible this concept is just yet. If every Brix model would cost as much as they look like they would cost, you'd be spending a fortune getting a lot of these, unless one acts as a hub and the others are cheap screen modules and even that would probably cost you at least a lung or two. [YankoDesign via SciFi]

Aussie anti-spyware maker PC Tools, home of the great Spyware Doctor, has 'won' their long running battle with adware publisher Zango, who today conceded defeat by voluntarily withdrawing its proceedings against them. Seems once they couldn't get a court to grant a Temporary Restraining Order, they saw they were screwed.

The magical irony of it all was Zango's assertion that classification of their software as malware meant PC Tools' software was "unfair or deceptive". Takes one to know one, eh? The court that refused to give the TRO told Zango they were unlikely to prove that was the case... it's taken them two months since that decision to see the writing on the wall.

A good result for the Anti-Spyware industry, so congrats to the PC Tools crew - keeping kicking malware butt! -Seamus Byrne

We all remember sitting awkwardly in a circle, playing spin the bottle and getting our first kiss with a braces-wearing uggo in a group of giggling school children. Well, now you can relive those wonderful days with Toys4Me's Electronic Spin the Bottle -- a game that takes all the difficulty out of both spinning and getting an actual bottle. The toy also throws Truth and Dare into the equation, adding 130 questions and a "Forfeit" mode that helps you end your humiliation when it gets too steamy or when your lip is painfully caught in aforementioned braces.

At $34 dollars, it's a wonder why anyone would spend the money to buy a bottle that essentially spins and asks questions for you, as both tasks seem to be fairly straightforward. Still, if all else fails, it's a great way to practice fellatio. [NerdApproved via UberGizmo]

Our new best buds, Lifehacker Australia, have picked up the inside running on the feature set for the Australian Yahoo!7 Mail system post-beta, and the skanky news is we won't be seeing email to SMS offered anytime soon. It is "on the radar" as a future option, but there are "no clear timelines."

So it's more of a general faster, easier, smoother, more colourful update than any major leap forward.

Yahoo!7 Mail confirms no SMS for Oz [Lifehacker Australia]

Sorry, quick vitamin brekkie. Out the door to press events shortly!

Planetarium-Tellerium clock tells time and position of solar system.
A real stunner.

Wireless HDMI on the way, Amimon ships WHDI chipset to manufacturers.
The less cable, the better.

'The Device' - all-in-one beer making machine.
Now if they just add a feeder device to have it auto refill a beer sipper hat, we'd be made.

Sony Ericsson gaming chief says Playstation phone coming by 'Christmas'.
The 'Christmas' is because he said he didn't necessarily mean THIS Christmas...

Google phone confirmed by HTC Insider.
You'd never guess it is going to support Gmail, Google Apps, Google, Google, Google...

Mark your calendars, because what Jesus told you before is true: Apple is planning a Special Event for the Wednesday following Labor Day weekend—that's September 5 at 10am Pacific. You can bet we'll be there to pick up whatever drops, but judging from the picture, I'm gonna put my money on iPods. Maybe even fat nanos. With Cover Flow interface. Et tu? What do you think?

Today's lineup highlights the futility of most news embargoes. I can count perhaps 10 items that leaked before the official US announcements. I can't tell you what they are—ironically, I'd be breaking now meaningless non-disclosure agreements. And while I'd like to say that all these came from master sleuths or connected Deep Throats, most leaks are ridiculously mundane, springing from a missed memo, sloppy file handling or an overly excited vendor. All of this leads me to believe that companies are not using news embargoes correctly, and should really rethink them.

A friend of mine at one electronics manufacturer says he has trouble because his counterparts in Asia always announce products without letting him know, so the Asian editions get blown all over the web, stealing his thunder. One major cellphone maker is constantly vexed by a European carrier that likes to blab about phones that are supposed to be secret. On a regular basis, Amazon.com posts products that ought to still be under wraps.

Recently, we had a situation where PR agency people handed us ready-to-print information and images, which they then discovered had been under embargo from their client. They asked us to pull it down, but it was just too late, it was all over the web. And besides, it wasn't a breach of any agreement.

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Lighting designers' minds must be turning toward boozing it up lately (joining those of your humble narrators), because this is the second time in as many days we've noticed special lighting devices that somehow illuminate containers full of alcoholic beverages. This clever idea involves a battery-operated LED, nestled within a cork that takes its place atop a bottle of the colorful beverage of your choice. Notice the whimsical effect when a group of those bottles are all lit up from above like that. Now, that's a design concept we like. [Yanko Design]

The recent Xbox 360 warranty extension to three years has really done a number on the repair queue. Everyone must be sending in their broken Xboxes, since the turnaround time has increased from two weeks to as much as six. Anecdotally, it so happens that three people I know sent in their 360s around this time, and it took them about three or four weeks to get theirs back, with one still Xbox-less. [Kotaku]

It looks like the Nokia press conference tomorrow is going to be more like Phone-a-Palooza. According to Gearfuse and their "official" press images, Nokia will be launching at the very least five models tomorrow inlcuding: the N81 (Gaming Phone), N95-8GB edition (Music Phone), 5700, 5610 and the 5310 (XpressMusic). Not much else is really known about the different models right now, except that the n81 is supposed to be running the new N-gage platform, but all that should change tomorrow morning (10am UK time). And as always we'll let keep you all updated the second we find out anything else. [Gearfuse]

Pinstack has shots of Blackberry's flagship 8820 with GPS/WiFi, in the wild. Unseen before is the UI for hooking up said 802.11 to networks. Good porn shots for Blackberry nerds anxious for the full QWERTY and wireless. Still no camera, though. [Pinstack]

IBM is being sued after one of its servers was damaged in transit. T.R. Systems, who was shipping the beast to its customer the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and who had to shell out for a replacement, claims that the computer giant did not package the $1.4 million behemoth correctly. Want to hear how it all happened?

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Look at this Pantech C180 that Boy Genius Report just uncovered, branded AT&T and looking a whole lot like a smaller and thinner Helio Ocean. But this Pantech slider runs Windows Mobile 6 Standard, and just like the Ocean, it has that appealing dual-sliding arrangement, where a horizontal slide reveals a QWERTY keyboard and a vertical slide uncovers a number pad. Take the jump for a look at it in its horizontally-sliding form.

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Ceci n'est pas un pinball machine. Actually, it is, but it manages to be all sorts of things as well. It's an art installation that's currently on show in Barcelona, as well as an interactive game for kids, And, best of all, it uses a widescreen HD telly as one of the displays.

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Here's some leaked photos of Dell's higher-end gaming laptop. The M1730 XPS laptops not only come in four colors—"Karmosin Red", Sapphire Blue, Bone White and Smoke Grey—but feature a gigantic shell, Core 2 Duo processors, NVidia GeForce Go 8700M GT graphics cards, Blu-ray drives, and 4GB worth of ram inside. These are all optional packages, so don't think you'll be forced to buy all that if you only want to play some World of Warcraft on the go. More photos at Laptopspirit. [Laptop Spirit]

JB over at Crunchgear has the exclusive on the "upcoming" Google Phone, supposedly set to launch in Q1 2008. His source is someone inside HTC, the company that Google's working with to pick one of 20 models to finalize their design.

On the software side, they're going to build a special version of Google Maps (complete with GPS), as well as have Gmail and Calendar compatibility. It's most likely going to have Google Docs compatibility too, but that wasn't specified. What's even cooler is that Google Talk, their free VoIP app, will be part of the suite. The OS could be Windows Mobile 6, or it could be a Linux-based OS, which would be even more interesting. [Crunchgear]

Instead of using flames and jet propulsion, as jetpacks are known to do, Raymond Li's invention uses water to fling you up into the air. His patent hasn't (as far as we know) been constructed yet. But it looks dangerous.

The patent says that instead of using risky propellers, rotor blades, and rocket exhaust systems that have to be attached to your back, it uses a water system only with non-flammable fluids (water) to create "sufficient thrust" for yourself. How high this thing can go, and whether it can actually work, are questions for a man actually willing to strap this on and test it himself. It's too bad whatever balls this person might or might not have had would be shot off by the high pressured water stream. [Free Patents Online via Wired]

The Sony Ericsson gaming boss, Peter Ahnegard, said that a PlayStation-branded gaming phone would be coming by Christmas. He also added that it might not be this Christmas, which probably pissed whoever he was talking to off to no end.

Sony Ericsson, who've already branded their W-line of phones the Walkman line, the K-line of phones the Cyber-shot line, and some random Japanese line the Bravia line, can easily brand another line (G, maybe, since P is taken) the PlayStation line. It doesn't even need games other than the mobile ones that already exist for their cellphones, which run just fine on SE's higher-end hardware. [Pocket Gamer via ]