Mobile phone battery life is one of the most important factors to consider when buying a phone. And Philips has one that will last a long tme with the Philips X550. This phone apparently has a battery that can last up to a month in stand-by. Some sacrifices had to be made obviously.

No 3G connectivity here and it relies only on GPRS and EDGE for data transfers. Some other features are: A QVGA display with 262k colors, Bluetooth, FM radio with RDS, 3.2MP autofocus camera, MicroSD card support and up to 8GB memory. No pricing info yet.

A PhD student at Carleton University in Canada, Atif Shamin, has out-thought Apple by inventing a ‘transmitter system on-package’ that significantly extends the battery life of mobile devices. It all has to do with the connection between the circuit board and the antenna.

Instead of using wire, he designed a high frequency micro-transmitter and receiver that avoids the usual loss of power through a wire. That’s a significant breakthrough in energy efficiency in mobile devices. He created a module that replaces all of the wires connecting a phone’s electrical circuits and the antennae, making them all communicate wirelessly.

These things are just plain creepy and wrong, but if you’re looking for a toy that resembles a mutated alien baby these are for you. They’re called Genpets and they were created by the demented mind of Adam Brandejs.

They’re the “Only Bioengineered Buddy. Available in 7 different personality types”. Each personality type is linked to it’s respective color, and that color is represented on each package. Continuing with the creepy and wrong factor, each package has a built in heart monitor that is fully functional, with green LED lights and a built in speaker. I guess that way you’ll know if your Genpet has a bad ticker. Each package also has a “fresh gauge” consisting of four blue LED lights displaying the status of the Genpet’s freshness. Check out the video below to be creeped out by the horrible sounds that they make.

There’s nothing more uplifting then wearing a watch that continually reminds you how short your time is on this Earth. This is a concept watch created by Timex and is actually more like a patch. It processes biometric information about your various health factors like fitness, stress, nutrition, sleep and your environment.

All of that data is then taken into account as it makes a guess as to how much time you’ve got left before you are pushing up daisies. I guess it’s a good motivator to diet and exercise. Who knows maybe you’ll start seeing days added to your life if you get yourself a Wii-Fit and knock it off with the ho-hos already.

Does this photograph really prove that we are not alone in the universe? The internet has been buzzing about this photo beamed back from Mars. It may be just an odd shaped rock.

But I can’t help feeling like we are missing something obvious here…Hmmm.