With smartphones making wristwatches obsolete for many, brands such as Allerta are finding new ways to make watches an extension of smartphones, reports the New York Times' Nick Bilton. That's an Allerta inPulse that's been hacked, above — a move the watchmaker (tagline: "Hack your watch") encourages.

Microsoft describes its new spot: "We followed choreographer Bobby Bonsey and producer Egan Orion, as they designed and launched a flash mob in Seattle, WA. The video shows how Bobby and Egan are able to connect and coordinate all the moving pieces with the help from Windows 7, Windows Live, Windows Phone 7 and Kinect for Xbox 360."

This week's installment of Project Runway on Lifetime TV marked the return of the HP Design Challenge. For this eighth season of Project Runway, the designers created custom fabric patterns on HP TouchSmart PCs, drawing inspiration from family photos and personal stories and deftly demonstrating the touchscreen capabilities as they created their looks and custom prints. HP's technology is also featured on Lifetime's Project Runway microsite, where visitors can download the designers' print as a wallpaper for their own PCs. Click through for another peek at the episode.Continue reading...

We all know that incandescent light bulbs haven’t worked out. Costly and inefficient, GE gave up that ghost several years back, and moved their resources and consumer pitches to the land of the LED (light-emitting diode).

The latest announcement is an LED bulb for $50 that guarantees seventeen light years. The problem up until now, in addition to the expense, has been perceptual – the light they shed lacks warmth and cool lighting is not pleasing to the average at home user – accustomed to a warm, incandescent glow.

GE is now betting on the latest LED iteration as a winner. For between $40-$50, GE Energy Smart LED 40-watt bulbs will be on the market by 2011. This bulb offers a 77 percent energy save, will last twenty-five times longer and uses only 9 watts.Continue reading...

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard that the iPad is here in a big way. ABC’s Modern Family even became one giant advertisement for the Apple wonder product in last night’s episode. Full disclosure, Steve Jobs is on the Board of Directors at The Walt Disney Company, which operates the ABC Television Network.

Unbiased WSJ Personal Technology Columnist Walt Mossberg tested out the iPad to see if it lives up to the hype. Here’s his consensus: “After spending hours and hours with it, I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop. It could even help, eventually, to propel the finger-driven, multitouch user interface ahead of the mouse-driven interface that has prevailed for decades."Continue reading...

The runaway success of Avatar has television manufacturers salivating over 3-D TV in every American living room.

In the lead for multidimensional television, is Samsung Electronics with fifteen 3-D models and a commercial from James Cameron’s Avatar technical production company. The company’s 30-second premier commercial, “Dedicated to Wonder,” utilized fusion 3-D technology and Avatar’s Oscar-winning cinematographer, Mauro Fiore.

Forecasts predict consumer purchases of 3-D TV sets will reach 3.5 million to 4 million this year – ten percent of total US sales. The forecast hits a reality speed bump, however, when it comes to those pesky glasses. Unless technologies are compatible, one manufacturer’s glasses can’t be used on a competitor’s set.Continue reading...

Quora is a new startup from former Facebook employees, with growth contingent on current users extending invitations to others. The Q&A site has already won the attention of Silicon Valley.

Benchmark Capital, has reportedly invested $11 million on an $86 million valuation, and former Facebook executive Matt Cohler, has assumed a board seat. The track records of the people behind the new brand, and excitement about the content, have created significant buzz. Quora will open up to the public slowly as a precautionary tactic to handle the influx of interest.

Officially, “Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The most important thing is to have each… Learn More.”Continue reading...

If you are shopping for a new home or property, augmented reality, A.R., is the new way to go.

“Mobile is well suited for searching for homes that are for sale, because you’re out and about. It’s a very compelling partner to desktop search. People use the Web on Mondays and Tuesdays, and use mobile search on weekends,” says Leslie Tyler of ZipRealty.  “The feedback we’re getting is that customers want all of the features from the Web in their hands."

ZipRealty.com in Emeryville, California, uses proprietary A.R. technology in an iPhone application called HomeScan. House photos, interior and exterior, value and size projections, and neighboring properties are all delivered live with the point of your phone’s camera. “As opposed to seeing the home as a pin on a map, you get it in 3-D. It’s the same info. But the experience of looking at it is more interesting,” continues Tyler.

ZipRealty’s daily web page views have jumped 150 percent since HomeScan’s debut, and is one of the favorite free downloads from iTunes App Store.Continue reading...