It’s not that hard for a parent to figure out if their toddler has peed their diaper, but when it comes to old folks, maybe it could be a big help. A research laboratory at Japan’s Ritsumeikan University has developed a monitoring system for wet diapers. It consists of a self-powered sensor/transmitter and a receiver and is designed to assist the staff in hospitals and nursing homes with diaper checks. The sensor kit needs to be placed inside the diaper and then it sends signals to the receiver.

The sensor and the wireless transmitter are powered by a built-in battery that generates electricity using a chemical reaction in the presence of urine. That’s when you know. You have pee-pee.

Looks like a major Wiltshire town is buzzing with excitement as they are about to become the first in the UK to be able to enjoy free public wireless internet access. Swindon Borough Council plans for all 186,000 citizens to soon be swaddled under a blanket “Wi-Fi mesh” by April 2010.

With no connection charge while line rentals are free. The service will be called Signal, but here’s the catch. You will have limited access unless you pay for 20Mb upgrades. The fee is said to be “significantly less” than current broadband suppliers.

If you’ve been wondering when we might see 3TB drives arriving, the answer is soon. At least according to Dr Geoff Barrall, founder and CEO of Drobo. He says that Drobos will be offering a 3TB drive by April 2010. Drobo uses Western Digital drives, so there’s a good chance that it could mean that Western Digital will be outing some 3TB drives of their own very soon.

Currently Western Digital offers a 2TB Caviar Black 3.5-inch SATA drive. A 3TB, 4-platter drive would need 750GB per platter - a 50 per cent increase over what the Caviar Black has.

Blockbuster has a new program that will load DRM’d movie rentals onto an SD card from a kiosk. Let’s say that you’re at the airport, or some mall. You want to rent a movie. Apparently you just format a spare SD card (because it doesn’t look like they give you a card), put it in the machine, select a movie, pay about $4. Then you have the movie on your card with DRM.

Are they serious? An SD card won’t play on iPhones and Blackberrys. Now Mini SD and Micro SD, sure. Most mobile devices will take them. I guess it works for netbook and laptop users, but that’s about it. How about more options?

Anthony Toth really likes Pan Am. He likes it so much that he built a vintage Pan Am first-class cabin in his garage. It looks awesome and the setup includes almost everything fliers in the late 1970s and 1980s would have found onboard.

You’ve got your red-and-blue reclining seats, original overhead luggage bins and even a curved, red-carpeted staircase. Anthony is a 42-year-old global sales director at United Airlines and he spent more than 20 of those years on his recreation of a Pan Am cabin, which includes a few economy-class seats.

It’s interesting how technology is finding a place in women’s cosmetics more and more. The Lashlight has a brush-tip that gives you access to even the tiniest lashes and the exclusive light-up LED wand spotlights every lash you might have missed.

I’m assuming this is HUGE OMG news for women. It also features a close-up mirror on the side of the tube for when you need to fix things on the go. But that’s not all. The formula contains millions of microscopic mirrors that bounce light off your lashes to make your eyes look brighter.

Douwe Egberts wants you to work for your coffee. They think that consumers would like to interact more with machines so they are creating a coffee machine that can interact with consumers through simple games.

BeMoved can be operated using a large touchscreen, or with a motion sensitive camera. Users will be able to drag and drop virtual ingredients into the cup, explore more info about coffee and even check out the news. The weirdest part is that you can play a game where you earn your coffee by jumping. Think of it as a kind of Wii-Fit game that will give you your precious coffee in return for actually burning a calorie or two.

Seems that Polaroid can’t make up their mind. After killing off their instant cameras along with instant film, they have now decided to get back into the game. At least part of this decision has to do with new management.

Whatever the reasons, they have realized their error and would like it very much if you used their cameras and film. The company is re-launching the One Step Camera and instant film in 2010. That’s not too far off for all of you Polaroid fans. But are you over instant film or do you really want more?

AC/DC knows how to rock and they have never slowed down. Only a super hard rocking band like them could put out a Box Set like this, which has to be the best Box Set ever. AC/DC’s Backtracks package obviously looks like a guitar amp. But take a closer look.

The top of the box is actually a working 1-watt guitar amplifier. This mini-amp won’t Shake Your Foundations, or even bother the neighbors, but who cares. It’s a real amplifier. You can’t get that on iTunes people. For $199 you get three CDs and two DVDs of rare tracks from the band, a 12-inch vinyl LP, a bunch of memorabilia and a 164-page hardbound book.

Vitality Inc. wants to sell you a new pill bottle system. The idea is that it will transmit a signal to a base station in your home every time the bottle cap is opened. So if you are not able to open the bottle cap in time, the base station will play sounds to remind you.

Should you go on vacation or are away from home, just set the base station so that it can place a call to your handset as a reminder via AT&T. No word on when we might see this or what it will cost. Do you think something like this will be popular for the elderly?

Suck at Photoshop? No problem. PhotoSketch is a web program that will let you make a rough, labeled sketch and magically turn it into a Photoshopped image. Your lame skills are no longer a problem.

How does it work? It searches the web for images that correspond to the shape and label you’ve drawn, then it puts them all together into an image. It isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty impressive and is sure to only get better.

Vonage, a provider of VoIP home phone services, has announced a new mobile application designed specifically for the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and RIM’s Blackberry devices providing alternative discounted rates for international calls. The application is a free download available today available from the Vonage site or through the iTunes App Store.

The application will allow mobile users to dial international calls as they normally would with no extra steps or special numbers to enter, and those receiving the calls will see the mobile number in their callerID just like a regular international call. In the future Vonage plans on extending the offering to a monthly flat rate, but for now the discounted per-minute charges will apply.

mSpot isn’t new. It has been streaming full-length movies to cellphones for a few years. Now however, the company has a potential customer base of 40 million. Mobile phone users on Sprint, AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile (including the G1, Pre, iPhone and other smartphones) can go to m.mspot.com to stream movies.

The service is on-demand, so you can also pause and restart them whenever you want. How about that? They have deals with Paramount Studios, Universal and the Weinstein Company, and it looks like more agreements will happen shortly.

Google has now started public testing by invitation only of Wave, a new online tool for communication and collaboration between people online. Wave has been described by its designer as what email would look like if it was invented today, and contains real-time communication through text, photos, video, maps and more according to Google.

The communication using the Wave tool is live somewhat like an instant messenger allowing users to see others edits as they make them, character by character. Should a users not be online at the same time, the communications will still be available to view at a later date, much like emails waiting in your inbox.

The European Commission has set volume limits for MP3 players in all European Union member states. This means that your Zune HD or other mp3 player will not be allowed to output anything louder than 80 decibels under the default settings.

Officials argue that the limits are necessary since devices can play music at levels loud enough to cause permanent hearing damage and they do so without warning listeners. The EU mandate will still allow users to override the settings as long as they’re informed about the possible consequences.