A common gift people will give themselves for the holiday season is a new phone. With broadband networks getting faster by the minute, a phone that is smart enough to handle surfing the internet, getting email, supporting IM’s and taking pictures becomes more and more attractive. This holiday season we had the opportunity to take a look at a couple of Palm’s smartphones, and in particular we spent some time with the new Olive-colored Palm Centro.

If you’re in the market for your first smartphone or you’re just looking for something that’s slick and easy to use with broadband access you will be well-served to take a look at the Palm Centro. Palm has been getting some mixed reviews lately when placed against some of the latest in smartphone technology such as RIM’s Blackberry or Apple’s iPhone, but we found the Centro to be a refreshing and fun device, and at just the right price.

The X-Touch Mixer faucet does away with antiquated analog knobs or levers and replaces them with buttons so you can regulate exactly what temperature the water is. It even has a digital readout to show you exactly what temp it is. I don’t know about you, but when I wash my hands or take a shower, I don’t put that much thought into it. You know when it feels warm enough after all. Do we really need to be so anal about water temp? Apparently so.

The X-Touch is a product of Newform Italy, and appears to be a sink faucet or a bath faucet. Either way, obsessive compulsives will love it as they can gauge when it is exactly the right temp.

Sierra Wireless has just introd two new ExpressCard modems for HSUPA wireless users. They feature download speeds up to 7.2Mbps and upload speeds up to 5.76Mbps. The AirCard 501 supports 850 / 1900 / 2100 MHz bands, while the AirCard 502 covers 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz.

Both bend over backwards, being backward compatible with UMTS, EDGE and GSM networks the world over and they’re being called durable, because there are no little plastic pieces to break on you and make you curse. The AirCard 501 is scheduled for release later this month, but if you’re interested in the AirCard 502 you’ll have to wait until early 2009.

iLuv offers plenty of iPod docks these days, but if you’re looking for something a bit more stylish and elaborate than the average desktop model, you’ll be happy to see the new i9500 system. It sports a cool vertical design that can handle four CDs and your iPod.

Wait, there’s more. The system will also handle SD cards and USB storage devices, and you’ll also get all the typical stereo features like AM/FM radio and alarm clock functionality. It should pump out some decent tunes, with 45W of power and a separate, somewhat subwoofer.

John Maushammer enjoyed some minor fame in geek circles with his Pong wristwatch, but he craved more. So he delivered unto mankind a new great thing. The DIY Asteroids Watch outdoes it’s predecessor.

It even features a tilt sensor so the wearer can control the action by just tilting their wrist and going pew pew pew. Frankly, we could go on about it all day, but the bottom line is that the man is a DIY game watch god. Check out a video below.

Imagine how many times great musicians have lost masterpieces just because they didn’t have a way to document it. That’s where the iDea guitar from Ovation comes in. It’s the first guitar to feature a built-in MP3 player for just such occasions. There isn’t much info on specs, but it probably has a decent amount of flash storage so you can record anything on a whim. It features a control panel on the side with an LCD display, mic input and a USB connection. It also has an easy to use 4-way controller for menu navigation. If that’s not enough, you get a set of basic EQ sliders for the bass, mid and treb.

It will let you record the guitar, mic or anything else that’s connected to the aux in jack. You can even mix those features together or use the pitch-stable variable speed playback option to slow things down for practice.

These LightSpeed binoculars were designed mainly for military use and they’re capable of transmitting “untappable” voice and video signals to another set of binoculars using infrared. The LightSpeed system exploits free-space optics, which is the ability to pass data between two points using an optical beam. The method usually involves lasers, but this system uses eye-safe infrared LEDs, similar to those found in TV remotes.

According to Leo Volfson, president of Torrey Pines Logic, which created LightSpeed: “The binocular has an attachment that fits over the ocular side,” Volfson says. “It produces a beam that comes out of the right eye of the binocular. On the left side is a receiver. If you look at me and I look at you, we’ll be able to talk or send information.”

I guess you could say that it’s the end of an era. Apple just issued a press release saying that this next MacWorld in January will be the last, and sadly Steve Jobs won’t be there. Instead, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will be heading it up. It marks an end to the daily conference that has launched some of the most important pieces of consumer tech in recent years.

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, and trade shows have become a very small part of how Apple reaches its customer base. Also, the increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores factor into it as well. More than 3.5 million people visit them every week. Plus the Apple.com website lets Apple reach more than a hundred million customers around the world.

It looks like that mystery Korean handset we spotted awhile back has been identified as a MID from Compal with the strange name of Tabasco. The shot that we saw was taken at Computex 2008 in June.

The non functioning prototype features a rear facing 3.2 megapixel camera with 2x optical zoom and a flash, a front-facing webcam, and it measures about 6.3 x 3.3 x 1.3-inches with a 4.5 or 5-inch screen. The processor, as well as OS and storage capacity are unknown. So there’s still some mystery here. We have no idea if it’s on track for release or just a prototype. We may learn more at CES.

Jamo has announced the A 804 wall-mounted speaker. The A 804 will help you out by not having to buy separate home theater audio components when one model will do it all for you, with good performance in a slim speaker.

The A 804 sports a contemporary design that will match most flat panel TV’s. It can be mounted horizontally and vertically, so it works well as a center channel or a front left or right, even rear surround speaker. Under the hood, the A 804 shows off Danish audio design. The .75-inch silk-dome tweeter featuring Jamo’s proprietary WaveGuide technology makes for clean, clear highs, while the 4.5-inch midrange and two 4.5-inch woofers provide stirring midrange and deep bass.

This is the funniest thing I’ve seen all day. We’ve seen tons of tons pics of the aftermath of what an LCD TV looks like after it’s had a Wiimote encounter of the nerd kind, but I’m thinking this may be the first actual recorded instance of the phenomenon. It’s captivating.

The dude is playing Wii Bowling real close to the TV. When the carnage takes place, the first thing he does is call for his mama, then he touches the TV and gives it a few gentle nudges, no doubt believing that this will somehow make it all right again. Again he calls for his mama. Video below.

A good way to sell drives is to repackage them with preloaded special edition movies or music content. That’s what Sony is doing with their Microvault USB flash drives. The company has unveiled a number of movie titles that will be available in their MicroVault USB drives, as well as some music.

Microvault drives range from 1GB to 16GB storage capacities. Preloaded content is available from a few popular choices such as Thriller: 25th Anniversary Edition, The Da Vinci Code and Men in Black. The special edition Thriller includes the complete re-release version of the original 1982 album, seven bonus tracks and four Billie jean videos.

Anyone in the market for a small MP3 player should definitely take a hard look at the Sansa Clip from Sandisk before making a purchase. Comparable in size to the iPod Shuffle, the Sansa Clip packs in more features and now more storage giving some significant bang for your buck.

The most significant item for us on this particular MP3 player was the storage capacity. This little device now comes with the ability to pack as much as 8GB of music which is really a lot of songs. Connect it to your computer through the included USB cable and quickly transfer music or even use the device as mass storage to go. Also as we had mentioned when the 8GB Clip first came out, the clip provides 4x the storage of the iPod Shuffle for just a small more in price. But the storage is not all you get.

We covered the Zune Pink project rumor regarding a Zune phone by Microsoft; however, the latest rumors indicate is that the mobile arena isn’t looking at a single Microsoft branded mobile handset, but an instead an entire software and services platform.

The news is that Project Pink may include Zune Mobile support, which may render into a Zune Mobile software package for Windows Mobile that could well be more robust media support than any previous Microsoft powered mobile phone, and could also predict a mobile downloads store.

Mamoru is a small elder-care robot created by the University of Tokyo that sort of resembles an old granny, complete with little plastic bun. It’s designed to help the elderly or disabled remember where they left their remote control or their slippers, and even offers polite reminders when it’s time to take their medicine. Mamoru recognizes objects by using a wide-angle camera to study the room. Image recognition software tells it what each object is, so it knows where everything is.

Why do we need creepy robots to look after our elderly? Do they not already fear one creature known as the Grim Reaper? Are we trying to creep them into the grave? No. No we are not. There are simply not enough caregivers compared to the number of those who need care. So, we must take our chances and hope that these robots do not torment them and start hiding the meds rather then helping to find them.