When you pay $80 for a mouse, you want it to be extraordinary. Imperator, Razer’s latest gaming mouse, certainly qualifies with its solid feel, adjustable side buttons and 5,600dpi laser sensor. We got our hands on a shiny review unit, putting it through its paces in frenetic gaming as well as more conventional desktop work. We were impressed.

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For a while now we’ve been keeping an eye on the CrunchPad — a tablet geared towards browsing the Internet while sitting on the sofa — though last month it looked like it was all over for the niche-y computer with Michael Arrington, Mr. TechCrunch himself, declaring the tablet dead.

The CrunchPad has resurfaced amidst a flurry of drama and legal action as the decidedly blandly named JooJoo, free of Michael Arrington’s name or any TechCrunch branding. According to Fusion Garage, the company that partnered with TechCrunch to help realize the CrunchPad/JooJoo, the tablet could launch as soon as this Friday.

It’ll feature a 12.1-inch touchscreen and reportedly boots in a scant nine seconds. Unlike your computer, which experiences a slower boot time the longer you use it, something like the JooJoo — which won’t run any applications save for a browser to surf the net — that’s a boot time that may actually stay nice and low for the life of the unit. It also has a virtual keyboard, Wi-Fi (no 3G), a 4GB SSD, five hours of battery life and it weighs 2.4 pounds. The JooJoo can be preordered for a whopping $500, double what was originally projected during the early phases of the CrunchPad.

It’s weird. Back when this thing was the CrunchPad and Arrington’s baby, I was excited. Now that it’s the JooJoo and Arrington has been booted, I find I couldn’t care less. It now comes off as overpriced and too narrow in scope. I guess it’s just a case of mom’s grilled cheeses always tasting better — she just puts more love in ‘em.

JooJoo, via Engadget and the New York Tmes

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Hillie and Bonnie are a lovely pair of oldies who would like to find a new home together. They’re both friendly dogs and they could live with children and cats. Please can you offer them a new home for Christmas?

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LG’s new SL8000 Borderless is an LCD HDTV with a screen that runs right up to the edges, with no borders to distract you to the action happening on screen. It’s got a full 1920×1080 HD resolution, 150,000:1 dynamic contrast ration and a 2ms response time.

It’s going on sale now for about $2,113 for the 42-inch model. In Russia. If you want one here in the States, well, too bad. One assumes this will arrive here at some point, but who knows.

TechFresh via SlipperyBrick

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I love winter, I really do. I also opted to get a 4×4 vehicle so I’m never really home bound, even in the worst blizzard. This is something not every New Englander has the luxury of owning, which means most people have to wait for those awful plow trucks to come through. Besides being loud, spewing emissions, and tearing up asphalt, putting plows on the road costs states many millions of dollars every winter.

But self-heating roads could melt snow before it ever gets a chance to accumulate while eliminating corrosive road salting and extensive plowing during winter snow storms.

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Although the Lexus booth at the 2009 LA Auto Show was rather devoid of inspiring next-gen green automotive technology, I did make a quick stop by to look at their traveling LF-Ch exhibit. The company has put together a display that’s supposed to help figure out what styling cues show attendees like best about the concept hybrid hatchback by giving them the ability to take pictures of the car and upload them to a database. It actually was one of the worst-executed interactive displays I’ve seen in a long time. Needless to say, I decided to pass up the interactivity.

But, hokey auto show displays aside, the LF-Ch concept—which made its official debut at the Frankfurt Auto Show—is actually kind of a cool looking car. And it marks a clearly new direction of thinking for Lexus; it’s the first compact hybrid concept from the automaker that’s geared towards the younger Scion crowd—reflecting a trend in the luxury market towards a smaller scale and outreach to young urbanites.

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These Harman Kardon GLA-55 computer speakers are designed to make a statement. No black plastic to blend into the background for these guys! Of course, you’ll pay for such uniqueness.

Yes, for a mere $1,000 you too can have these speakers decorating your desk. I’m not quite sure how the hell they’re getting away with charging four figures for a pair of speakers that don’t come with a subwoofer, basically guaranteeing that they don’t sound all that great, but hey, some jackass will pay that much. Harman Kardon wins, I guess.

BusinessWire via Coolest Gadgets

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Okay all you fraidycats, you can emerge from your bunkers now, because cellphones aren’t going to kill you after all. The Danish Cancer Society studied just about everyone in Scandinavia over 30 years, concluding there is no “clear change in the long term trends in incidence of brain tumors.” This is the most conclusive study yet of the imagined link between cancer and cellphones.

We’ve heard other credible scientists saying that the “radiation” from cell phones is of a wavelength that can’t possibly have any effect on brain cells. Our take: if you play on people’s fears, you get lots of attention. Attention equals funding. Scare up everybody, profit. Perhaps the same goes for those who dispel fears. Either way, put away your tinfoil hats, hypochondriacs, and be not afraid.

Via CrunchGear

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Winter is officially here in New England. There is snow on the ground, temperatures are chilly, and I have to start my car five minutes before I actually have to go somewhere. It gets the engine heated up, and I won’t be freezing on my way to my destination. Alas, I know its no good for the environment, letting my engine spew out emissions like that. But it is worse for your car to just jump in and drive off at a time when the oil is thick and hasn’t had a chance to lube the engine properly.

Or at least that is what I thought. But according to Ford, pre-warming your car can reduce emissions by heating the catalyst under light engine loads in the driveway rather than on the road.

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Want to spice up your BlackBerry 9700/ 9600 this holiday season looking for something magic! Well look no further the Magic Berry is here! Comes with all the features you have come to expect from the great BlackBerry 9700 / 9600 series. So don’t delay purchase one today! Magic Berry Blackberry theme Follow the X! [...]

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Hermès scarves practically sell themselves, but look what designer Tokujin Yoshioka did with intricately timed video and a hidden fan to lure fashion-conscious shoppers. His work of art lands a stunning blow in a window at the Maison Hermès store in Tokyo, on display until January 19th.

This clean, eye-catching design is the perfect way to show off the subtle wispy beauty of Hermès scarves, transcending mere apparel, and entering the realm of wearable art. Never mind wearing one of those scarves, we want this window display in our living room.

Via Designboom

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Steampunk and Christmas, in my humble opinion, go together like Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. On the Intertubes, however, steampunk seems to be the gift that keeps on giving — it never goes out of fashion (although I keep waiting, breath a-bated).

Yes, dear reader, you can probably guess that I’m not the world’s biggest fan. So when my dear, esteemed editor penciled me in to do this steampunk gift guide, I said yes. Because I’m nice. So here are the weirdest prezzies that steampunk aficionados can buy each other for Christmas. Enjoy — I did.

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For most folks, fitting an iPhone into the budget is tough. For an elite few, a standard iPhone just won’t do. A European businessman in the gold industry is one of those elite few. He commissioned a solid gold diamond-crusted iPhone worth well over $3 million.

British designer Stuart Hughes took 10 months to create the phone with 271 grams of 22 carat gold surrounded by 136 flawless diamonds. The navigation button was created from a single 7.1 carat diamond.

Is there an app to fit this iPhone into my budget?

7 x 7 Diamonds via 7Gadgets

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This is a rather spanky design from Thomas Martell, and it’s a cross between a personal media player and a portable mixing console, so perfect for the budding conceptual DJ in your life. It’s got a large touch wheel, rather like the iPod, and button controls that enable you to mix tracks, cue them in through headphones and even connect up to a second Touchtable to allow your pet ant to become the next DJ Dave Doubledecks.

Were it not merely vaporware, this would be the perfect Crimbo present for the teenage music hound in your life. Check the gallery below for more pictures.

Via Yanko

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A Korean company by the name of Mint Pass has developed the ultimate device for robot geeks looking to show off called the Mint Robot Music Tank. The tiny block of white plastic houses a system that plays music while the cube follows its human owner.

In addition to a wireless sensor system, the device can also be controlled by remote control using a tiny touchpad. Although the contraption might seem a bit impractical, the merging of robotic functions with music will make this an attractive addition to your tech arsenal. Unfortunately, no pricing or release date has been announced.

Via Mint Pass

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This view from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is of the Proctor Crater. The relatively bright, small ridges are ripples. From their study on Earth, and close-up examination by the MER rovers (roving elsewhere on Mars), scientists surmise that the ripples are composed of fine sand (less than 200 microns in diameter) or fine sand coated with coarser sand and granules. The larger, darker bedforms are dunes composed of sand, most likely of fine size. Ripples tend to move slower than dunes. Because of this, over time, ripples get covered with dust, possibly explaining the bright tone visible here. The dunes are dark probably because they are composed of basaltic sand (derived from dark, volcanic rock) that is blown by the wind enough that dust does not sufficiently accumulate to change their color. This area in Proctor Crater is being monitored by HiRISE to document any changes over time. This image is a portion of the HiRISE observation taken on Feb. 9, 2009. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

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