TechTV has posted a small selection of Windows XP shortcuts which look to be worth noting.

The world’s first talking washing machine? I think I need a lie down. [via boingboing]

So half the world probably has made a phone call by now, eh? Fascinating. Neat article.

There’s a lot of chat going around over the new generation of fuel cells which will be powering our devices very shortly. I’m all in favour of anything that gives us a day or more usage per charge for a laptop.

Sony has announced a new 2.0 megapixel version of its tiny Cybershot U digital camera. The new DSC-U20 is expected to retail for around $270.00 when available next month. The original DSC-U10 (1.3 megapixel) retails for around $200.00.

OK, so you’ve got around $4 million to spend, what do you do? Buy a yacht? A fancy motor car? Nope, you pop off and build the world’s most lavish bathroom, complete with rubies, sapphires and a solid gold loo. Yep solid, as in rock. Except it’s not rock of course, it’s…er…gold. OK, so the owner Mr Lam Sai-wing is a jeweller in Hong Kong, and this is very good publicity, but still.

Hotmail has signed up for some new Brightmail spam fighting software? Good grief, is that a pink pig I just spotted flying past the window? Nah, must have been an hallucination.

Apparently Canesta’s virtual keyboard is coming along nicely. The Ferret first reported on it a few months back, but now this article says that it is in demonstratable form, with models slated for release early next year. The company is claiming 80 wpm typing speeds are possible, but I’ll believe it when I see it. :-) Update: Here’s a nice link to an NBC4 video of the prototype unit supplied by Mr Anon. Apparently Siemens will be launching a version…

Think that SMS is bad? Wait until you are faced with an onslaught of audicons. A company called 2PM Technologies has come up with audible SMS messages which can be attached to any standard txt message. The good news is that this stuff won’t come about until the network operators (e.g. Vodafone et al) install the 2PM MiG gateway, which thankfully may hamper things a bit in the short term, eh? Here are some examples of the kind of noises…

The slyck.com site is dedicated to covering all aspects of P2P software and systems. Just about everything is covered in loving detail, including all the software and networks currently available. On entering the site you will be assaulted by a menagerie of pop up advert screens unfortunately, so you may want to invest some time in downloading EMS Free Surfer first.

Who would have thought that a museum dedicated to the various weird and wonderful movie vehicles down the ages would be based in the UK? Not me that’s fer certain. The Cars of the Stars site details all, from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to that famous Aston Martin DB7. Oh, and here’s the homepage of George Barris, one of the guys who made most of them! Warning – cheesy music alert!

You’re bored right? And you’ve got a Java browser? So hop over to the Sand Art site and play around for a while. You never know you might enjoy it. [via metafilter]

DrvClonerXP 2.0 is a freeware hard disk utility which will let you copy/clone your drive to another disk or partition (rather like Norton’s Ghost or Powerquest’s Drive Image). It works with Windows XP or Win2000 and is designed for those who are fairly familiar with the principles and dangers of disk imaging. In other words, if you don’t understand, don’t touch – for your own sake! :-)

DVDSynth is a beta Windows program which overcomes region coding on PC DVD movies and allows you to add your own subtitles. It is still in a relatively primitive state, comes with no installer and requires some custom control panel fiddling to get it going. But worth a watching eye nonetheless since it is free of charge and open source. [via slashdot]

Take a close look, as this mundane looking LCD screen could be a core component of future mobile phone/PDA combos. The panel – developed by Sharp and Hosiden and based on NXT technology – is a working prototype of a screen and speaker in one unit, which can be used for PDAs or phone handsets. The idea is that you simply hold the screen up to your ear to hear the conversation or music, see?