Now here's how to make your product stand out!

Here's some packaging that really works: Panasonic RP HJE130 series. So they decided to play up the product's music-friendly qualities, by packaging it as an eighth note. Such creativity no doubt deserves as much visibility as possible, which explains the clear transparent box cover.

We'd love to see more gadgets in packaging that truly reflects their purpose, but how do you do that with more solid products like laptops or smartphones? Feel free to hit the comments with your suggestions. (Thanks Coloribus!)

This time around, the used vegetable oil used as an alternative fuel source won't leave exhaust smelling like last night’s beer chow. Not that it’s a bad thing of course.

Researchers from the University of Leeds led by Valerie Dupont have found an energy efficient way to make hydrogen-based fuel out of used vegetable oil. The "essentially carbon-neutral" process generates some of the energy needed to make the hydrogen gas itself.

Air is blasted onto a nickel catalyst to form nickel oxide, to start the exothermic (heat-giving) process. A fuel-steam mixture is then added, causing it to react with the hot nickel oxide to produce hydrogen gas (H₂) and carbon dioxide (CO₂). The produced CO₂ is then trapped, leaving pure H₂ and forcing the reaction to keep running, increasing the amount of hydrogen made.

After doing well in a small test reactor, Dupont and her colleagues now want to scale-up the trials and produce more H₂ over longer periods of time.

Scalability is the name of the game. "The beauty of this technology is that it can be operated at any scale. It is just as suitable for use at a filling station as at a small power plant," Dupont points out. "If we could create more of our electricity locally using hydrogen-powered fuel cells, then we could cut the amount of energy lost during transmission down power lines."

Taxpayer money funds research into artificial photosynthesis as a power source.

A USD122 million fund was awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for the establishment of a research center that aims to develop ways of producing fuel using sunlight. Led by researchers at Caltech and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the project will tap other prestigious California institutions such as Stanford University, and the University of California (Irvine and Berkeley campuses).

According to Nate Lewis, director of the center and a chemistry professor at Caltech, the goal is to commercialize fuels made using only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. In other words, make artificial photosynthesis a scalable, viable and economical reality.

Research on artificial photosynthesis tends to isolate on a certain aspect of photosynthesis (e.g. materials for trapping sunlight better, synthesis of better catalysts for splitting water etc.). The research center aims to become a nexus for collaboration that will employ rapid, automated experimentation methods to accelerate the development process.

The center plans to set up two facilities—one at the Berkeley Laboratory campus and another on the Caltech campus—as a first step. Over 150 researchers and 30 principal investigators will work full-time on the project over the next five years.

A clever advertisement for a pen shows just how fine it is.

A new advertising campaign promises that the tips of Pilot's "Extra Fine" pens are small enough to render complicated drawings on Lego figurines. The pens' tips are 0.25mm thick, and use rolling ball points to transfer the ink from the repository to the canvas. Among the figurines advertised were a biker, construction worker, criminal, and even a Lego girl with a tramp stamp.

Now we're not sure how well Lego figurines retain ink on their bodies, or the permanence of the art. But it's still cool a bunch of Lego people finely tattooed. Pilot extra fine pens are available from Amazon in variety of colors and bundles. (Thanks Escapist!)

The next step should concentrate on installing actual weapons.

In retrospect, pricing a replica Batpod that lacked road-worthiness at $100,000 was a bad move. Especially since pictures online show another Batpod replica that can actually navigate through traffic.

Few details are available regarding this unique ride at present, save for a testimonial by someone on Reddit: "I actually talked to this guy at Shoreline lake in Mountain View, CA. The guy had this bike custom-built. He said it's a huge chick magnet." So that's why female villains always fall for Batman!

This exotic ride can also apparently travel at night, thanks to the dual headlights mounted near the faux headlights. But it's clearly not for the practical, as this bike requires a car-sized parking slot of its own.

Suggestion to add to this pretend pachyderm's potential: weapons!

Truth be told, the only robotic thing about the "Great Elephant" are its mechanically articulated trunk and legs. And the latter don't even hold the elephant up, a task that falls on three set of struts with wheels. But the contraption is still massive, measuring 12 meters high and 8 meters wide. The nozzle even blows out smoke for a more compelling illusion.

Better yet, the Great Elephant was made from 45 tons of recycled materials, meaning some artist's fancy wasn't responsible for creating more junk. The elephant's size also means it can carry up to 49 passengers. It's just too bad the Great Elephant isn't more autonomous in movement, but who knows? Perhaps future versions will feature better legs, and we can stop enslaving real elephants for entertainment purposes.

Android wallpaper apps have been acquiring personal information like subscriber identifiers and voicemail numbers.

Wednesday during the Black Hat security conference held in Las Vegas, mobile security firm Lookout--which provides free anti-virus software for the Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile platforms--said that a batch of wallpaper applications found on the Android Market were collecting unnecessary user data.

One of the apps in question was created by Jackeey Wallpaper and included familiar, seemingly harmless images based on Star Wars, My Little Pony and more. According to Lookout, the app was downloaded somewhere between 1.1 million to 4.6 million times--the number varies because Android Market apparently doesn't offer precise data. The app didn't throw up any red flags initially because it only asked permission for "phone info."

However it was discovered that the app collected information such as the device’s phone number, subscriber identifier, and the currently entered voicemail number on the phone. It was also reported that the apps passed the information on to a website owned by someone in Shenzhen, China.

"While this sort of data collection from a wallpaper application is certainly suspicious, there’s no evidence of malicious behavior," Lookout said in a blog. "There have been cases in the past on other mobile platforms where well-intentioned developers are simply over-zealous in their data gathering, without having malicious intent."

Lookout also said there was another developer known as iceskysl@1sters! collecting identical information with other wallpaper apps. Lookout believes that the two could possibly be connected, as both developers share the same common code inside a class named "SyncDeviceInfoService."

The suspicious wallpaper apps were discovered as part of Lookout's App Genome Project. As of this writing, a quick search for "Jackeey Wallpaper" on the Android Market provided zero results--apparently the developer name has been changed to "callmejack."

"We’ve been working with Google to investigate these apps and they’re on top of it," Lookout said. Google has supposedly suspended the apps until further investigation.

ICANN has introduced a new global authentication platform that verifies web pages and source of emails.

A big upgrade for the Internet's infrastructure could mean a safer place to surf and read email.

During the Black Hat 2010 security conference held in Las Vegas, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) chairman and chief executive Rod Beckstrom revealed a global authentication platform for domain owners to use in order to certify themselves as the owner of a particular web page or email.

Called Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), this system should eliminate many popular "spoofer" attacks that use fake emails and web pages to lure Internet users to legitimate-looking malware.

"DNSSEC was designed to protect the Internet from certain attacks, such as DNS cache poisoning," reads the official DNSSEC website. "It is a set of extensions to DNS, which provide: a) origin authentication of DNS data, b) data integrity, and c) authenticated denial of existence."

"What DNSSEC allows is that each party online can say not only am I sending you a mail but I can put a stamp on it so you can see it's real," explained Dan Kaminsky, the hacker who broke the existing DNS system. "This isn't something we've had the ability to do on a wide scale."

However both ICANN and Kaminsky realize that the new system isn't a cure-all. "It will eventually allow Internet users to know with certainty that they have been directed to the website they intended," ICANN said in a press release. "[But] DNSSEC isn’t an antidote to all Internet security problems. It does not ensure confidentiality of data or protect against denial of service or many other attacks. The best way to protect yourself online is still to use common sense."

The new system has already been integrated into the .org and .uk DNS, however ICANN is hoping that the low cost of entry--and the resulting security stemming from DNSSEC--will bring about a huge rollout.

For more information, here are a few additional resources provided by ICANN:

• To read about DNSSEC at the root of the Internet, go here: http://www.root-dnssec.org.
• To read technical information about DNSSEC, go here: http://www.dnssec.net.
• To read about DNSSEC deployment, go here: http://www.dnssec-deployment.org.

Nintendo will finally announce the release date and pricing of the 3DS handheld in September.

Recently Nintendo spoke with Bloomberg Japan and said that it plans to reveal the Nintendo 3DS launch date and pricing on September 26. This revelation will actually take place after Tokyo Game Show (TGS) which kicks off on September 16th and ends on the 19th, squashing any speculation of a TGS-based announcement.

Previously Nintendo of America head boss Reggie Fils-Aime said that the 3DS will be available in all major regions by the end of March 2011. VG247 reports that the UK will receive the gaming device during March however Bloomberg Japan hints to a possible Q4 2010 release over in Japan.

The previous Nintendo handheld--the DSi--launched in Japan during November 2008 but didn't head to the States until the following April, making American gamers last on the release list. The original DS first launched in North America in November 2004, followed by a Japanese release mere weeks later.

Nintendo has kept a tight lid on information surrounding the 3DS since its appearance at E3 2010.

Pants optional.

Motorola has rolled out another Droid X ad poking fun at the Apple iPhone 4 "design compromised" antenna.

Like the last one, it's a full page ad for newspapers, but this time it's drawing attention to the fact that it doesn't require a case for the antenna to work at its best.

At Motorola, we believe a customer shouldn’t have to dress up their phone for it to work properly.  That’s why the DROID X comes with a dual antenna design.  The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like to make crystal clear calls without a bulky phone jacket.  For us it’s just one of those things that comes as a given when you’ve been making mobile phones for over 30 years.

These things get hot out there in the summer sun.

The iPad is a hot item, and it's not making its owners very happy with how it's not able to take the heat.

A class-action lawsuit filed in a U.S. District Court in the North District of California last week, accuses Apple of falsely advertising the iPad as an e-reader device when some users are finding that the outside ambient temperatures cause overheat-related shutdowns.

"Using the iPad is not 'just like a reading book' at all since books do not close when the reader is enjoying them in the sunlight or in other normal environmental environments," the complaint reads, according to AppleInsider. "The iPad overheats so quickly under common weather conditions that it does not function for prolonged use either indoors, or in many other warm conditions, for a variety of common uses such as, but not necessarily limited to, an e-reader, e-mail tool, Web browser and/or game/entertainment unit."

The suit involves all iPad-owning parties in the U.S., which means that Tuan will be keeping an eye on this one.