Just like every other gadget, light bulbs go flat

If you've got a room in your house that never seems to get enough light, has CeeLite got the wallpaper for you. The company's Light Emitting Capacitor (LEC) panels are flexible, paper-thin light bulbs that you can hang on a wall, coming in sizes as large as 3 x 6 feet. Just a millimeter thick, the panels sandwich light-emitting phosphors between layers of electrodes. When an AC voltage is applied, the phosphors light up with a warm white glow, consuming less power than a neon or fluorescent bulb. The panel naturally glows evenly, though you can set them up to dim, glow brighter, or blink like crazy when touched. The panels are already lighting up store windows, dance floors, pillars, and trendy bars — and someday the custom carport I hope to build for my Tesla Roadster. Doubtful if you can buy them retail, but give one of CeeLite's distributors a call if you're still working on the cape for your Dr. Light costume.

Stop the madness! A video player so small you can barely watch it

From the "because we can" department comes this miniscule video player, providing you with the ability to view digital videos on a device about the size of a Listerine PocketPak. Yeah, just look at that thing, it's freaking tiny. Now I thought watching videos on one's cell phone was a dumb idea, but this just goes above and beyond into a realm where I just can't imagine anyone ever wanting to use this. Seriously, a 1.5-inch screen? What can you see on that? You wouldn't be able to make out any text or any faces that weren't shot in close-up. Let's just make an agreement right now, no video on screens smaller than 3 inches. Deal? Gadget makers, are you listening to me? If you simply must impress people with the smallest video player ever, you can pick this thing up by throwing away $80. Good luck.

Fruit clock tells the time, is delicious

This fruit clock will be really amusing and a cool conversation piece for the first few days you own it. You can tell all your guests about how it runs completely off the fruit, and how it uses the original scientific principles on which all modern electrical storage batteries are based to power itself. Isn't that just so cool? But around day 4 or 5, when the orange is starting to get rotten and/or eaten, you'll realize the very basic flaw in the design of the clock: you'll need to stick it in a new piece of fruit every few days and, presumably, reset the clock each time. Sounds like a lot of work for a pretty dorky clock. It's available online now for $15.

Keep tabs on your spawn with the Ion Kids Tracker

Since GPS implants aren't yet available/socially acceptable, it looks like your best option for tracking your rambunctious little child is the Ion Kids tracking system. It consists of two parts: first is the wristband that locks (locks!) onto the wrist of your child, second is the tracking unit. The point of the device is to be able to tell if your kids leave the yard, and if they hide under the sink after one of your drunken rages you can also use the "find" button to locate them. Furthermore, if it detects that it isn't touching a child's skin anymore it'll let you know that little Madison or Ethan or whatever you named your poor kid has been smashing at his parole bracelet with a rock. Now that's peace of mind! It's available now for a mere $300.

New Samsung lappie redefines portable computer

Think your cute little MacBook is a small computer? Please. That thing is a regular behemoth compared to Samsung's new SPH-P9000, a super-slim foldable laptop that looks like a fancy PDA. Featuring Windows XP, a 1GHz processor, 30GB of hard disk space, and 256MB of RAM, it's not going to impress anyone playing Half Life 2, but that's a lot crammed into a tiny package. The laptop folds itself out into its full form with a 5-inch screen and foldable keyboard that reimagines how a laptop should look. Rounding out the package is built-in WiMAX and EVDO and even an iSight-esque 1.3-megapixel camera. Not that this should come as any surprise, but sadly this sweet looking computer is coming straight to Korea and nowhere else for the time being.

PS3 hands-on impressions: the empire strikes back

Sony let the unwashed masses try out their upcoming next-gen PlayStation 3 console today in New York City during a slick SoHo event complete with free Twinkies. Well, you can't accuse them of not knowing their audience. Or maybe you can. Anyhow, Sony had a big selection of PS3 launch titles available for play on a bunch of purdy Sony Bravia HDTVs, and I was there to get my palmsweat on the controllers and see if the games could live up to the hype — and price.

The console itself is pretty gigantic, as reported, and will certainly take up a sizeable chunk of living room real estate. Overall, the graphics were very impressive. If you've got a nice HDTV like the ones Sony was sporting your games will look flat-out great. The controller is basically the same as the PS2 controller, although the R2 and L2 shoulder buttons feel a bit bigger and offer less resistance when pushed. The motion-sensing abilities of the controller only came into play once, and that was shooting free throws in NBA Live '07. If it hadn't been for that, I wouldn't have even remembered that the controllers sported that ability. At the end of the afternoon, I came away thinking that there were certainly some promising games, but nothing that made me want to go out and drop $600 on the new console. After the jump, specific impressions of some of the games I played.

Resistance: Fall of Man and Call to Arms 3

These two first-person shooters were the most impressive-looking games at the event, both featuring amazingly realistic graphics and fast-paced action. If I had to say one was better looking than the other, I'd have to say Call to Arms (below) had just a bit more realism. The controls are what you'd expect for a standard first-person shooter, and both games feature AI-controlled squads that fight the enemy alongside you.

Tony Hawk's Project 8

Generally speaking, you know what you're going to get with a Tony Hawk game, and Project 8 doesn't disappoint. Besides the upgraded graphics, what makes this new game stand out from the rest is the new "Nail the Trick" feature. When in midair you can push both analog sticks to go into slow-mo and allow you to manipulate both of your skater's feet. This allows you to have precise control over your tricks and adds a lot to the standard combo system that Tony Hawk fans know and love.

Sonic the HedgehogThe new Sonic game they had up for play was actually the Japanese version, which made figuring out the controls somewhat of a guessing game. Despite this, the game is really fun and a huge improvement over the new Wii Sonic game I played last month. You can choose to play as either Sonic, Shadow, or Silver, and each character has unique abilities and moves. You get all the ring-grabbing, fast-paced action you'd expect from a Sonic game with beautiful levels and graphics.

MotorStormMotorStorm is a quickly paced offroad racing game that features some really spectacular crashes. You can choose from any number of vehicles, from dirt bikes to dune buggies to trucks, and then slide your way through some pretty beautiful courses. There were definitely a few bugs in the version I played, with some graphics flashing in and out and the whole thing locking up at one point, but it seems to be a really promising racer.

Emergency Charger could save your (battery) life

Someone come quick! It's an emergency! Oh God, the humanity of it! I just can't believe this is happening! My iPod, it, it… it ran out of batteries. What, you were expecting something more serious? Well, call me overdramatic, but I can think of no greater tragedy than having to ride the subway without drowning out the sounds of the masses with the new Meatloaf album. Fortunately, Elecom understands the gravity of the situation and is here to put a tourniquet on the spurting wound of your dead gadgetry with their Emergency Charger. Just pop in a couple AAs and plug it in to give yourself enough juice to finish the entire Bat Out of Hell trilogy. Just take deep breaths, remain calm, and let the professionals do their job.

Ecopod crushes your empties, makes you feel better about yourself

Recycling is something that everyone should do but is easy to lazily forget to do when you're five beers in and just want to get rid of the cans. Make recycling a slicker experience by picking up an Ecopod, a compactor that crushes and separates your recyclables. It's got a compactor for your aluminum in addition to separate compartments for glass and plastic, making the whole ordeal easy as can be. It'll only take up as much space as a standard trash can, but it cost a hell of a lot more: $328. Who says you can't put a price on being environmentally friendly? But just think of how good you'll feel, having all your bottles of malt liquor sorted from your cans of Natural Ice, all crushed and compact and easy to recycle. You'll be using your functional alcoholism to save the environment, which is pretty much the best justification you can have for that lifestyle of yours.

T9 media player: Just call it the Samsung nano

Not quite as innovative as the company's recent K5 portable, Samsung's latest MP3 player, the T9, nonetheless crams an impressive feature set into its super-slim casing. You get all the perks you'd expect from a non-Apple flash player — FM tuner, voice recorder, text viewer — with the added bonus of video playback. It's doubtful your MPEG-4 vids will look much better than passable on the 1.8-inch LCD screen, but for short clips you should be okay. PC software is included for converting digital video so it's optimized for the T9, another indication that the quality most likely won't even match that of the video iPod. Then again, the T9, available with 2 or 4 GB for $150 or $200 respectively, costs the same as the iPod nano, which we all know can't play video at all.

Obviously the T9 will turn its nose up to any iTunes downloads, but it's ready for songs from pretty much whatever subscription-downloading service you choose. Plus it has a nifty feature that lets you speed up or slow down music playback, simulating the nostalgic fun of playing a 33-rpm record at 78.