TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

LG Philips says it will show off a 52-inch multi-touch LCD display — the world’s biggest – at CES next week. The display has HD resolution and uses infrared sensors to detect input from fingers, styli, etc. Exactly what one would do with a 52-inch multi-touch display is up to your imagination, but I sure ain’t lugging around a phone with that monster.

Philips will also show a 47-inch "triple-view" screen that can show three images at once — one for people directly in front of the screen, another for those to the right and another for those on the left.

The Boy Genius Report reports the rumors of new Apple notebooks are "confirmed!" How so? Someone at an Apple party says that the performers were promised them upon release at MacWorld, which runs Jan. 14-18 next month.

Meet Harry Cordaiy, a modern-day McGyver. The 11 year old schoolkid from Sydney, Australia got so sick of a mystery schoolmate stealing lunch money that he hacked together a tracking device from a mousetrap, a $5 bill and some green food dye.

The thief, who was already living large on the $165 amassed in previous raids, took the bait. The trap was in the back pocket of Harry’s backpack, and when he discovered the cash missing, he alerted classmates.

A pre-Christmas deal between technology veterans Toshiba and Sharp has analysts predicting the beginning of an industry shift toward LCD panels in the TV hardware business. This past Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Japanese giant Toshiba agreed to use Sharp Electronics’ LCD panels for their flat screen TVs beginning next year. LCD displays are becoming more popular in the industry because they are cheaper to produce, are more efficient, last longer, and reproduce picture quality on par with Plasma screens.

Colloidal silver, a quack health supplement, has but one genuine benefit: it may turn your skin a pleasant slate blue. Permanently.

One must take it for years, however, to achieve the desired effect: a good way is to buy one of the many gadgets that infuse everyday water with the substance, then drink it regularly. This causes a condition called Argyria: silver-laden skin. There are no serious side effects either, according to most sources.

Real-life smurfs include Paul Karason, pictured, and Libertarian senatorial aspirant Stan Jones.

Laptops not made by Apple and Sony either tend to either look blandly alike, or extravagantly silly. Korea’s Pixel Labs manages to take a little of the former attribute, add just a smidgin of the latter, and come out the other end with a gaming notebook that hides by day as a matte-black business model.

The PLK750 has a 17" display cut to 1440×900, a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, a smoky 8700M GT graphics chipset, 4GB of RAM, WiFi and Bluetooth, S-Video out and a $2,500 price tag.

I think the A-Team-like stripe kind of gives it away.

Paranoid accountants rejoice! You may now buy calculators with hidden, motion-activated cameras in them, saving low-def video to internally-housed SD cards.

The idea looks goofy, but is well-considered: a calculator is an item that’s not only inconspicuous, but which remains so when placed in an conspicuous location.

Proof that bathroom innovation doesn’t have to cost $10,000 comes from China. This temperature sensing shower head is a straight swap-in for your existing head, and is powered by nothing other than the water which runs through it. LEDs color the water depending on temperature, so you don’t need to keep dipping your hand in the stream to see if the water is ready.

There’s no price, or even a supplier outside of China, but if they do arrive, expect them in the dime store: they’re made of that horrible, metal peeling combination of ABS plastic and chrome plate.

Here’s what we know about the Kilfitt UKA 659 camerawatch: It’s a one-of-a-kind prototype created during the 1960s in the Munich laboratory of famed optician Heinz Kilfitt. It has a 1.3mm-10.5mm lens, shutter speed from 1/15 sec to 1/1,000 sec, and it uses a custom film disc. It’s drop-dead sexy in a Sean Connery-era James Bond sort of a way. And you’re going to have to act fast and cough up at least $60,000 if you want it.

Star Wars kicked off the movie merchandising game, and along with Jaws, paved the way for the Summer Blockbuster. But George Lucas knew that every product had to be top quality and on-message (Jar Jar Binks excepted), so there were plenty of toys which never made it to market*.

McMorran.com has a showcase of “Star Wars toys that never made it”, running from the The Planet Alderaan:

It’s just a box of rocks….

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