If a company is seriously trying to improve their recycling program after years of neglect, can you still call them out for the unfairness of their business model? Yes, you can. According to HP, it will begin to use recycled plastic to create most of their line of printer ink cartridges, where 70 to 100% of each cartridge will be made from the recycled material. That is a nice start.  But as we noted in this month’s Wired mag and in the blog, the fact that there are 3,500 varieties of ink because of upgrade tactics and few cheap, safe ways to refill them means that this and other companies need to go beyond recycling to really be called green. (Read the full post about ‘HP to Improve Recycling Plans for Inkjet Cartridges (They’re Still a Rip-off)’…)

The exhibitors at today’s Greener Gadgets conference were few and far between, but those who made it had some interesting concepts and ideas worth looking into. Nokia, who’ve been on the forefront of diminishing our gadget footprint on the earth, showed off new packaging designs that would not only cut down on the number of blister packs you cut yourself on, but would reduce the amount of waste produced and fossil fuels used to transport oversized packaging.From right to left you’ve got what American phones are currently packaged in, what European phones are packaged in, and where Nokia would ultimately want to go. (Read the full post about ‘Nokia Attempts to Ease Packaging Woes’…)

Posted Feb 1st 2008 3:57PM by Donald MelansonFiled under: Desktops, Gaming As if a regular Radeon HD 3870 X2 wasn’t enough to make you envious, the folks at HotHardware have now gotten their hands Asus’ new EAH3870 X2 1GB TOP behemoth, which increases the insanity of the dual-GPU card even further with a full four DVI ports. In addition to making that lone s-video port look woefully out of place, those’ll let you push out more pixels than you’ll ever likely need across four monitors, with none of the compromises associated with lesser multi-monitor solutions. What’s more, Asus’ card is apparently even lighter than the original reference design for the HD 3870 X2, and you can rest assured that it’ll be overclocked right out of the box. (Read the full post about ‘Asus’ quad DVI-packing EAH3870 X2 1GB TOP gets previewed’…)

Here Coat Hooks You can have this for ?7.95 Tags: cable, audio, speaker, AAC (Read the full post about ‘Here Coat Hooks’…)

Let’s take a trip to the past with United States patent 634629 that chronicles an Automated Bathing Facility. Since cars are sent to fully automated car washes, I suppose some smart aleck back in 1969 figured out the same thing could apply to humans with the Automated Bathing Facility, but nearly 40 years down the road, that idea has not come to pass. I guess no matter how busy we are, we won’t be accepting the idea of having a “fast food” style bath in the public anytime soon. Tags: design, pvp, home theater, speaker (Read the full post about ‘Automated Bathing Facility’…)

Aeroplanes come with black boxes, so why not cars? Apparently, that’s what Honda hopes to change with its Drive Recorder that is capable of detecting impacts while saving information of up to a dozen seconds before and eight seconds afterwards. This information includes forward-view imagery, sound, speed data, and deceleration, all stowed away in an SD memory card within the Drive Recorder itself. Guess insurance agents and the authorities will have a much easier time pinpointing who is in the wrong in the event of a collision. The Honda Drive Recorder retails for approximately $500 and currently works with Honda cars only (duh!). (Read the full post about ‘Honda Drive Recorder’…)

Gadget Lab editor Rob Beschizza’s dreams of a penis-shaped mouse might finally have come true. Lite-On Technology’s Moldable Mouse can be squeezed into any shape, including that of a male member.It’s made of “non-toxic lightweight modelling clay, covered with nylon and polyurethane blend fabric”, and can be shaped, Play-Doh style, to fit any hand. Once molded, it keeps its shape until you’re ready to play again. The Moldable Mouse is still in the concept stage, but it has already won a Red Dot design award. (Read the full post about ‘Moldable Mouse Can Form Any Shape’…)

The DS Lite is a runaway success even by Nintendo’s lofty standards, but one gripe that many people have concerning it would be the lack of punch when it comes to speaker performance. The Sound Shell DLite takes that notion and bins it, claiming to offer superior, tubthumping sound without the aid of headphones. It doesn’t drain the DS Lite’s battery as there is a built-in battery compartment. While the sacrifice involves a much larger handheld console to carry around, you get dual benefits of improved audio quality and a protective case. The Sound Shell DLite can be picked up for $30. (Read the full post about ‘Sound Shell DLite A Delight’…)

Posted Feb 1st 2008 8:24AM by Darren MurphFiled under: Gaming Finally got around to trading in that raincheck for your very own Wii? Good. Ready to pick up Rock Band? Believe it or not, we think we know that the aforementioned title is indeed headed to Nintendo’s darling — that’s according to EA’s CEO John Riccitiello, who was reportedly heard mentioning its “coming launch” on a recent conference call. (Read the full post about ‘EA’s CEO nonchalantly mentions “coming launch” of Rock Band for Wii’…)

Posted Feb 1st 2008 5:57AM by Thomas RickerFiled under: Laptops It’s that time of the product cycle again, the teardown. This time, iFixit’s applying the Xacto to Apple’s MacBook Air. Notable discoveries are an easy to disassemble chassis just big enough for Samsung’s 1.8-inch, 80GB disk but not the relatively chubby 160GB variety found in the iPod classic. They also found the new multi-touch trackpad using the same control chip as the iPod touch and iPhone — the Broadcom BCM5974. That leaves Apple plenty of room to grow the gesture options via software updates. Want to remove the battery? Go ahead, 19 screw removals (in addition to Apple’s non-removable feebie) will get the job done. (Read the full post about ‘MacBook Air splayed — multi-touch trackpad controller chip same as iPhone’…)