Back when Swatches were popular, I had a bunch of them in bright 80′s colors. The things looked good for a few weeks, and then they were too scratched up to even tell the time on. A new concept carrying the Swatch brand has a design that resists scratches.

The watch has a face made from plastic and coated in rubber with the time markings on it. Around the edge of that face is a glass bezel positioned where scratches won’t be an issue that covers the bright green hands.

We have seen UFO abduction lamps before that are made by some company overseas. That cartoonish store bought lamp has nothing on these DIY offerings that Jason Dietz made on his own.

I am going to say these are the most awesome lamps in the history of lights. They stand 5’5″ tall and are made from some sort of recycled glass tube. The other parts in the build are light diffusers, LEDs, halogen lights, CFLs, and acrylic rings.

iBUYPOWER is a small builder of gaming PCs and multimedia machines that makes some very nice rigs. The offerings from the company run the gamut from entry level to very expensive depending on your tastes and pocketbook.

The company has announced that it is now offering a new pro wiring option that cleans up the inside of the PC for looks and air flow. The service adds only $19 to the price of a desktop and wraps each cable in its own sleeve.

Visa is paving the way for iPhone owners to be able to make payments with their handset at special terminals. This wireless credit card payment system is the first of its kind in the world. It will involve a customized payment software called Visa payWave, which will come pre-installed on a memory card.

The iPhone itself lacks an external memory slot, so it will require you to buy a new iPhone case that is Apple-certified. This makes everyone richer, including the case manufacturer. Everyone except for you. Your money will be leaving with the case and with every transaction.

ViewSonic is offering the new VX2739wm full HD LCD monitor, which features a 27″ design with a 1ms response time. The company claims that it’s a world’s first for a device in this category. At that speed, you shouldn’t have any issues at all playing games or otherwise on this 1080p display.

Some other features include a 100,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and SRS Premium Sound. At $349, it’s tempting. Should provide a lot of bang for your buck.

The design looks like someone slapped a display on a trash can, but the Media Pro HD is a full HD networked hard drive media player that hooks up to any HDTV or A/V receiver allowing you to get started almost immediately.

It features a hot-swappable hard drive tray and you can hook up to your home network without wires, but it does have an Ethernet option too. Some other features include a Sigma Designs SMP8635 CPU and Silicon Image SiI9134 HDMI 1.3 transmitter for just $215.

So you have your Trek outfit all sorted out in preparation of the latest upcoming nerd-con. You bought some fabric here, a communicator there. You’ve dyed your hair Picard grey and you had grandma sew up your jumpsuit. But wait, somethings missing.

These cufflinks! They will complete your transformation even if nothing can be done for your acne. Only $29.99. Other nerds will be so jealous that it can only end in two Picards fighting each other to the death.

Here in the states we take Best Buy for granted. Most countries still do not have their own Best Buys. Well, in the UK they have just opened their first Best Buy store last Friday. And Best Buy has seen its best-ever opening weekend sales since they first set up shop in 1983.

Best Buy’s first store is in Thurrock, Essex, which is East of London. So the Brits apparently love Best Buy. Electronics were flying off the shelves to sound of thousands of Cheerio’s and morning gov’ner and an occasional “This place is bollucks”

If you have an iPad 3G and have a SIM card that you want to cut down to a MicroSIM card, you can do just that. Apparently all you need to convert the iPad 3G to U.K. cellular standards is a meat clever. You can also use scissors.

This U.K. resident was faced with a disparity in SIM cards once he received his iPad from foreign shores: “This morning, my shiny new iPad 3G 64Gb arrived from the USA! The only problem was, it had an AT&T MicroSIM and as yet there is no such thing in the UK.”

If you are a Verizon user and have been waiting for the new iPhone 4 this year, we have some bad news. According to BroadPoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall, AT&T has extended its exclusive deal thanks to their bargaining with the iPad.

Basically AT&T had to do something dramatic to get in on the iPad action. They negotiated a 50% discount on iPad data plans with Apple. And so, AT&T was able to negotiate a six-month extension on the iPhone exclusive, where they will continue to provide dropped calls and horrible service.

Now Opera Software has entered the great Adobe Flash v. Apple debate, urging Adobe to embrace open web standards. Speaking with Tech Radar, Opera’s product analyst Phillip Grønvold very diplomatically said that “today’s internet content is dependent on Flash” and “if you remove Flash you do not have today’s internet,” and for that reason Opera needs to support Flash.

Then Grønvold stated that while Flash has its place for things like dynamic content, it “makes very little sense” for video container given the impact on processor and battery usage. He added that “you can cook an egg on [devices] once you start running Flash on them and there’s a reason for that.”

Many of the new high-end motherboards are now coming with USB 3.0 port son them so the USB 3.0 gear on the market is becoming more usable. OCZ has announced a new USB 3.0 SSD called the Enyo.

iHome has been in the market for accessories like docks for the iPhone and iPod for a long time now. The company has announced that its iP90 alarm clock dock for the devices has been updated for 2010.

The iP90 has a larger display now than previous models and better sound. The treble and bass are adjustable and the device uses Reson8 stereo speaker chambers. Other features include multiple alarms and programmable snooze times.

I bet that there are lots of you who have tried to use biometrics to log into your gadgets or computers before and had a hard time. I know the notebook I used to have with a fingerprint scanner rarely let me login when swiping my finger.

Apple has a new biometric sensor patent application that has surfaced that shows a method Apple has envisioned to allow only authorized users to access future iPhones. The sensors in the case of the phone would read the users heart rate and use the readings to verify their identity.

Sprint and Clearwire are the only two companies that are using WiMax as their 4G service right now. There are a number of people around the country in larger cities that can get WiMax 4G service.

So far, these users have only been able to get WiMax on computers with modems, but a new 4G handsetfrom Sprint called the HTC Evo is set to go up for pre-order this month according to a leaked screen shot. The screen shot came from an employee computer system at The Shack.