Check out this great innovation in the world of packaging. Shown at the Nepcon world expo in Japan, a company named Sealedair demonstrated the ‘Pack in instance’ packing system. It looks like a perfect way to pack delicate items for shipment and it can be used no matter what product or box size you’re working with.

Just insert the packing material, inject the gel and you have a perfect mold of the object where it rests comfortably. It may just be the future of packing materials. I assume the real trick would be to make it cheap enough to be affordable to use.

You want to eat healthy, but it’s hard. Those nutritional labels are small for a reason. So they are hard to read. You’d rather focus on how delicious those chips are going to taste in an Oreo sandwich. But some of us actually want to know what we are putting in our bodies. Some people are obsessive about it. Whether you are just watching your sodium intake or you believe that too much high fructose corn syrup will give you erectile dysfunction, it could sure be easier to read those labels with a shopping cart like this.

These carts feature a built-in magnifying glass so you can easily read the package as well as have a closer look at the shrinking boxes they are giving us for the same money. The carts can be found at a co-op in Geneva, Switzerland, but I think we here in the US could do with some.

Looks like there was a happy ending for Chris Ogle. He’s the New Zealander who purchased an MP3 player that turned out to be full of classified US Army stuff from a thrift store. According to Reuters, the man gave the device back to US authorities.

But as a reward for his cooperation, he got a brand new MP3 player. We don’t know what brand he got, but we suspect that Uncle Sam bought it for him with your tax money. We will probably never know. But, hey at least they did that much for him.

New York Representative Pete King wants the US to have a law that requires all cameraphones make noise when they take a picture. It’s not unheard of. Japan and South Korea already have similar laws. In his quest for cameraphone sound King has re-introduced the “Camera Phone Predator Alert Act,” , which sounds very urgent and dramatic.

They tried it first in 2007, but it died. The idea behind the bill is to prevent people from taking cameraphone pictures without other people knowing. That’s what the sound is all about. It would sound off and be “audible within a reasonable radius” and you would not be able to disable it.

When you buy used stuff like computers, ipods etc, you can sometimes find surprises inside. Cool games, songs you like, porn… Chris Ogle bought an MP3 player for $14.50 at an Oklahoma second-hand store that had a much bigger surprise inside. 60 files that contained classified info like Iraq and Afghanistan deployed soldiers’ personal info, mission briefing and even a base equipment manifest.

Chris says the MP3 player never worked properly, so when he plugged it in to see why, he found the files. What he got was huge lists of soldier’s SSNs, cellphone numbers and health info. Chris is reportedly returning it to the DOD upon request. Hell, we all lose our flash drives from time to time.

Circuit City has been one of the hardest hit electronic’s retailers in this economy. After announcing the closing of many of it’s stores in November and saying that they would not be shutting down additional stores in December, looks like they will be closing down more after all.

The company’s CEO admitted that liquidation might be a very real possibility if a sale of the company didn’t occur by January 16th, and well, time’s up. According to a report from the AP, the once giant electronics retailer will be forced to liquidate after all, which is good news for bargain hunters and bad news for employees.

Something caused this wind turbine in the UK to break. It could have been any of a million things, all very rational. But residents of the village of Conisholme, in Lincolnshire are having none of that. They know that aliens did it. And they don’t need any stinkin’ Men In Black, Mulder & Scully, Leonard Nimoy, Agents from Majestic or Alien corpses to prove it.

They claim that they saw bright lights in the sky “like an octopus’ tentacles” right around the time that the blades were damaged. Others claim that the damage was the result of a “cow-sized ice chunk” and even a “robot stealth bomber” was blamed. According to The Guardian, the mysterious lights were most likely from fireworks being shot off for one of their 80 year old residents. But what are you going to believe, something rational, or stories about aliens in robot stealth bombers?

It took long enough didn’t it? But it has arrived. The same benefits of HD DVD have finally made it over to Blu-ray. A Blu-ray/DVD hybrid disc. It features a single-layer of Blu-ray on one side and a standard DVD on the very same side (You won’t have to flip it).

As you are used to hearing, it’s appearing first in Japan, with something called Code Blue emergency helicopter doctor Blu-ray BOX as the first hybrid title. It’s a shame we have to miss that one. No word yet on when or if we will see this technology in the states, but a little backwards compatibility never hurt anybody.

Here’s a great idea. If you ride your bike at night, hopefully you have reflectors attached so cars can see you and you don’t get ran over. Thing is, there is now a better type of reflector for your bike, as in making the entire bike a reflector. Did I mention that it’s invisible?

Impossible you say? Not anymore. It’s made possible by retroreflective vinyl. The material looks black under normal light, but turns completely and utterly white and reflective when a bright light, like headlights shines on it. It also gives you a two-color chameleon-like bike. You can actually buy it and do it to your own bike.

Energizer has partnered with Pandora Radio to create a brand new message board that caters to passionate users of the Pandora community. Many of you are faithful users of Pandora, so I don’t need to tell you how awesome the popular internet radio site is. The new message board is a place where users can share tips on how they use Pandora as well as be a part of posts by up and coming artists and discussions on all kinds of musical subjects.

The message board just launched and since the subject here is music, Energizer, Pandora and Slipperybrick want to help stuff your stocking with some extra music. We’re giving away TEN $20 iTunes vouchers.

In what could be the first step toward recording your dreams, researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor. That means it won’t be long before you can share your thoughts and dreams with others the way you share your flickr pics. They’ve successfully displayed simple images produced in the human brain on a computer screen.

The device converts electrical signals sent to the visual cortex into images that can be viewed on a computer screen. In the experiment, they showed test subjects the six letters in the word neuron and successfully reconstructed the word on screen by measuring brain activity. So, is this awesome or scary as hell? I vote scary.

A research team at Stanford has developed a refrigeration device the size of a thermos. What’s interesting is that it uses no electricity. Zip. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Instead, it contains some kind of coolant that becomes cold when it’s exposed to heat.

Details are scarce, but the units would be fairly cheap to produce at about $50. The price makes it an ideal way to deliver medicines and cold water to developing countries as well as having a bunch of other uses a bit more noble then your next camping trip. It’s a great breakthrough. All a user would need to cool any given thing is fire, which is readily available.

Firebox is known for their oddball gadgets. We’ve covered our share right here on this site. Turns out they’re offering a wrapping paper service along with their gadgets. Crap Wrap features brown parcel tape instead of clear tape, the gift will have uneven edges and paper that was cut very wrong. Just select that type of wrapping paper when you check out and you can send these off to someone special.

The idea is that these gifts won’t look so professionally wrapped. Which will make them think that you actually wrapped it. Because everyone knows you wrap gifts like a grade school kid overdosing on Ritalin, while using the awkward green-handled lefty scissors.

It’s that time again. Greenpeace has released their new Guide to Greener Electronics. Compared to last year, there are many changes. Some you might expect, some you may not have foreseen.

Some manufacturers went up on the scale, while others went down. Nokia is the standout at the top, right at the 7 out of 10 mark, but poor Nintendo… The Big N is once again stuck at 1 out of 10. How did Apple fare? They fail once again and drop to the 14th position out of 18 companies.

Nanotechnology strikes again, making technology seem like magic. Chemists from the University of Zurich have developed a new fabric that never gets wet. Never. Not even when completely submerged in water for two months. Nope. Not wet yet. The fabric is made of polyester fibers that are covered in a layer of 40-nanometer-wide silicone nanofilaments.

The nanofilaments are spiky and this causes the water to sit in a sphere above the fabric, while a permanent pocket of air is protected below. Think self-cleaning clothing, or truly spill resistant furniture. Another plus is that it reduces drag in water by 20%. So Michael Phelps better get himself a new swimsuit or be beaten by it.