Solar power is everywhere at the mo, maybe because it sounds more sci-fi than wind: which is the case with this new technology that turns windows into power sources. Clever bods at MIT have worked out how to use organic dye solar-concentrator coatings to collect light over a whole sheet of glass and "concentrate" it at the edges. This lets you have a much smaller (and hence cheaper) solar-electric cell mounted in the side of a window, more easily achieved than typical mirror-based concentrators. And by tuning the dyes (originally designed for lasers and OLEDs) to different wavelengths, and stacking them up, you get an even bigger power output. Clever stuff. [Physorg]

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Originally set to get the axe at the end of June, XP Home got a call from the brass at Microsoft, delaying its demise for at least another 2-3 years. Not surprisingly, the reason was the increasing popularity of budget laptops like the Asus Eee PC and Intel's Classmate PC. Microsoft has vowed to keep XP on the market until one year after the next version of Windows is released, so it is conceivable that it could live on beyond 2011. [AP via Ars Technica]

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The Otto may look like one of those suction cup gadgets that turns any surface into a sound generating speaker, but it's actually more like a stethoscope than a speaker. If you latch it onto a window, a wall or a glass of ice water, you can hear "subtle tremors and vibrations." Because if you have to listen to your upstairs neighbours going at it every night, you might as well hear it clearly. [Duncan Wilson via Random Good Stuff]

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