Over at Mac Rumors they've unearthed a recent patent that shows Apple is researching cleverer use of the iPhone's many sensors. More nifty than turning the screen off when you put it to your ear, the new uses may include things like working out it's in your pocket (by temperature, proximity and ambient light) and then auto-switching to vibrate mode. Intriguingly, there's a hint that by detecting you've docked the phone, it may pass an ongoing phone call to a VoIP call over iChat. This all makes sense: making best use of those sensors and the iPhone's power... but like all Apple patents, we may never see these ideas in a real-life software update. [MacRumors]

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I've never been so thoroughly disappointed with a gadget than I am with the Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner. You might have seen one of these in the aisles of Target or Wal-Mart and thought it would be an amazing way to keep your shower clean. After all, the Ad copy says, "It's like a MAID. Times TWO!" You'd be dreaming of two hot robot french maid androids, keeping your human cleaning receptacles spotless. But this stuff does not work. DO NOT BUY. UPDATE: Just got hate mail for this post. Sounds like a douchebag rep for the product shilling hard.

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Soon, all those silly individuals who like to marry underwater, on top of mountains, jumping off planes, or even in church, will have another way to get into this futile and utterly-frustrating experience that some people like to call "marriage," but that I would like to call The China Syndrome. Space will now be the ultimate frontier for grooms and brides in 2011, when Rocketplane Kistler Japan and wedding planner First Advantage start to sell their one-hour ceremony to marry in zero gravity, at 100 kilometres above the planet's surface.

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A non-USB product from Brando, and one that's surprisingly cute? Good grief, I nearly fell off my keyboard. These Firefly jars are solar-powered, charging up during the day and adding a simulated bioluminescent insect-arse glow to wherever you pop them at night. The kitchen worktop, perhaps—perfect for lighting your way to that midnight snack. Standing 15.2 cms high, they glow in orange, but are they more eco-friendly than trapping a real firefly in a jar? Probably not... but at least its kinder to animals. Available now for US$45. [Brando]

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Standing 2.3 metres high, this ultra-realistic alien statue made of steel, resin and rigid foam--with transparent dental acrylic lips—is designed to kill everyone who tries to break into your house with the sheer power of pure fear. The only bad this is that, most probably, it will also kill you when you go to the fridge in the middle of the night. As you can see in the nine-image gallery, the detail is amazing.

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Modding clever-clogs Ben Heck was apparently daunted by the complexity of the Atari 7800's internals at first, so he had to summon up the nerve to try this requested mod. Into the custom-built chassis he squeezed a 7-inch colour widescreen display, a set of rechargeable batteries, combo driving/paddle controller and an A-V output. Though it's not exactly pocket-friendly (thanks to the 7800's large motherboard) it's still pretty awesome—check out the gallery. Ben's site has a detailed making-of story if you're interested. Now, if you excuse me... I'm off to reminisce about playing Pole Position. [Ben Heck via Hackaday]

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The PSP 4.0 Firmware is out. But for those expecting holographic projection and Nintendo DS destruction mode, don't get too excited: The main features—at least according to the official change log—are the internet search option under the network menu, and playing with the video playback speed using the up and down buttons. In any case, you can judge for yourself seeing the PSP 4.0 firmware in the video walkthrough.

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Chinese company Harbin Smart Special Aerocraft has spent 12 years and over US$4 million developing its unmanned flying saucers. Somewhat reminiscent of the Honeywell Micro Air Vehicle, the unmanned drone has propellers that run on methanol, a top speed of around 80kph, and can stay at an altitude of around 1,000 yards up for 40 minutes or so. Expect to see it being used for aerial photography, geological surveys and in people's LSD-fuelled weird-outs. [DVICE]

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Hot on the heels of the Optoma pico-projector that uses a TI chipset, TI itself has announced the "industry's first home-theatre lamp-free projector." It uses a PhlatLight LED illumination source instead, and a Brilliantcolor chipset to give a 1080p display. This makes it capable of a 50% bigger colour gamut than traditional projector tech (that's over 200 trillion colors!) and a contrast ratio that can go up to 500,000:1. The lamp-free bit is the part that will interest consumers: as well as not requiring expensive new bulbs, the LEDs consume far less power so you'll pay for less electricity if you're a heavy projector user. Apparently "multiple DLP customers" are expecting to launch projector products with the tech late this year. [Digitimes]

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This is the second thing I found in my trip to the centre of the Lego universe. Road sign or secret tip? I tried the keyboard combo in my PowerBook and it didn't work, but given the origin of the command symbol--as commanded by Steve Jobs and executed by Susan Kare--I thought it was well worth a try.

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If getting Spore in the iPhone wasn't enough reason to get excited about its potential as a gaming platform (despite the naysayers), someone has created a Spore version of Jar Jar Binks. You know, so you can download it and kill the bastard with your own hands. Again, and again, and again. Now somebody create a George Lucas creature, pronto. [Kezins via The Official Star Wars Blog]

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I've never encountered a travelling salesperson, so I've not had someone trying to push a "revolutionary" product on me from the comfort of my home. But if the Prezenter PSR is anything to go by, travelling sales is about to get high-tech. It's a custom notebook PC, designed to fold so that a 14-inch screen faces the victims audience, while a 7-inch touchscreen faces the seller. The small screen controls the presentation, and the audience can draw stuff on their screen. Apart from that it's a standard laptop, with 3.5 hours of battery if you're using Wi-Fi, and it's on trial in the US market. When it's for sale, it'll cost you US$1,800: presumably you won't have to watch a two-hour sales pitch to buy one. [Cnet]

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Joshua Heineman is obsessed with old stereo cards, those old photographs from the 19th century that contained two different views of the same subject to give the illusion of depth. He converts them into pseudo-3D GIF images that can be seen without glasses, on your monitor. The method is extremely simple, and while the jerking result may seem silly, surprisingly, it works:

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Japanese game manufacturer Mega House has come up with a winner. Biri Biri Kaze Hiki Wanko (which, translated, means Shocking Sick Puppy) is a cross between seminal kids' game Operation, where you had to remove various parts of a patient's anatomy with a pair of wired-up tweezers, without letting on to your parents that you'd swallowed the best part of a bottle of bourbon the night before touching the sides, and that equally seminal '70s plaything, Slime. A fearsome mess of green snot and drool emerges from the dog's mouth and nose, and you have to pick out plastic "germs" embedded in the ectoplasm. Trouble is, if the metal tweezers touch the slime, you get an electric shock. Out in Japan this August, Shocking Sick Puppy needs a worldwide release if it is to realise its full genius potential. [Trends in Japan]

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Samsung's new P400 Pocket Imager projector is designed mainly for businesspeople on the go, so it's pretty tiny. Inside, its DLP unit is a native 800 x 600 resolution and its LED lighting pushes out 150 lumens, resulting in a 30- to 40-inch display capability with 1000:1 contrast ratio. It takes the standard RGB, composite, S-video and audio inputs, and has two 1-watt speakers. Plus, though it's no pico-projector, it's just 12.7 x 9.4 x 5 cms in size and weighs 860 grams, so it'll carry nicely in your laptop bag. And you know what? Just coz it's businessy doesn't mean it has to look ugly or utilitarian: so Samsung has actually made this thing look pretty good. Available now for US$749, full press release below.

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Sony has upgraded its HDR-CX7 flash-based camcorder to include face-recognition technology and Smile Shutter, which automatically takes a still picture as soon as the subject switches to full beam. The camera records in full HD at a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, and has a 10-megapixel camera for still shots. There's image stabilisation, and you control the camcorder merely by tapping the 2.7-inch LCD screen. Full press release for the US$900 camera, available in August, plus a bonus shot, is after the jump.

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We broke the news on the X200's specs but here's the first photo. Looks like a Thinkpad. (Minus the trackpad, as Engadget notes.) [51nb.com via Engadget]

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As a Netflix lover, I'm sad to see account profiles and queues go away after August. That's because I've always used them to keep Lisa's movie choices (morbid documentaries, foreign tragedies, stoner flicks) separate from mine (scifi, fantasy, action, romantic comedies). What's going to happen to Netflix's amazing recommendation engine once it has to deal with shared family queues?

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Sound & Vision gave a gushing review to the Kaleidescape 1080p player, a DVD upscaler that streams movies from a home server for the price of a nice used car. They especially liked the Gennum VXP video processor chip, which upscales DVD content to vividly sharp 1080p detail, with very accurate colours and high contrast. The Kaleidescape's updated ability to play content without importing it to the server first was also a big draw. But seriously, US$4300? Come on.

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Some are hypothesising that the iPhone will make for a kick-arse combination of the Nintendo DS and Wii, once firmware 2.0 comes out and the apps flow from the App store. I too thought, "who needs buttons when you can touch and tap and tilt your way through a game?" But as I held the thing at WWDC and played Monkey Ball, I saw a problem that could be an issue with all tilt controlled iPhone apps: As you angle the screen to simulate a joystick, visibility goes down. Way down in some cases. This is worrying.

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Asus's Eee PC 1000H is the least Eee-like Eee yet—big, pricey (US$649) and it has a regular ol' platter hard drive. Laptop Mag says the extra screen real estate makes it the most productive yet, too, even though the colours don't pop as much as the Wind. And the keyboard: "To say it's an improvement over the cramped keyboard found on earlier Eee PCs is an understatement." Performance from Atom and its 1GB RAM is solid, and the move to a HDD from an SSD doesn't hurt too much, even on startup—battery isn't hit too hard either, 4 hours and 28 minutes with Wi-Fi. Overall, everything's gravier than past models, 'cept the price. [Laptop Mag]

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After countless false starts, delays, death and rebirth, Sprint's WiMax is finally launching commercially in September. Baltimore is the first city to get it, with a rollout in Washington, DC and Chicago by the end of the year--all current... Read More »

The Gadget: Strida's 5.0 Foldable Bike.

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CherryPal has released some tantalising details of its forthcoming desktop box, which they claim will pull only pull two watts and be "the greenest and most affordable on the market." The otherwise modestly spec'd box has a few secret weapons: cloud computing and a tri-core Freescale processor with hardware video rendering capabilities.

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Garmin's super-hyped GPS-focused nuvifone will be made by Asustek, according to "sources in the industry". The move to outsource is a first for Garmin, who usually keep all manufacturing in-house. Expect to see it in Q4 of this year. [Digitimes via Unwired View]

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