LaCie’s latest offering makes their flash drives more portable, though you’ll need to be careful that you don’t unwittingly spend it.

It’s thicker than a coin, but the metal exterior of the USB 2.0 drive provides the illusion, thereby making it easy to lose in a pocket full of change, or worse, in some stores register. It will cost you $20 for the 4GB version and $30 for the 8GB version. Not a bad price for the sizes, so you won’t mind too much when you accidentally pay for something with it and some dude at Walmart has some free pics of your wife…

Back in the day it cost just one quarter to play your favorite arcade machine. Well, now you can play two Atari arcade classics for just one penny. They aren’t totally faithful to the original arcade machines, but hey it only costs a penny and you get to save that penny. A penny played is a penny earned.

Every coin you drop in starts a new game, which is much cooler then say, dropping your coins in a bank shaped like a pig. These aren’t easy to find outside of Japan, but Strapya World is taking pre-orders and they will ship them worldwide. They’ll cost you $39.90.

Trickle out economics have you down? You know, Trickle out economics. When the money trickles out of your pockets because of plugged in, yet turned of appliances that are still sucking juice like a toddler building up a good diarrhea diaper bomb. TrickleStar of Hong Kong claims to have the first power-saving device in the world that is able to shave up to 12% off your monthly utility bill simply by killing standby power, while reducing a similar amount on your power usage.

The TrickleStar PC Standby Power Saver is connected to a PC via your USB port. It will keep an eye on the computer’s power status continuously. A power extension cable will connect to your power strip with the rest of all your peripherals plugged in. When your PC is turned off, the TrickleStar’s current sensing circuitry will kill off ALL power to the peripherals, and vice versa when the PC is powered. The TrickleStar will be available in January.

Nowadays you probably don’t have much to do with your extra dollars, so here’s a good option. Make origami spaceships, like those from Star Trek and Star Wars, made entirely from folded dollar bills. The Millenium Falcon is a bit more expensive as it takes three dollar bills to get all that detail. It’s the work of Hawaii resident Won Park, whose next project is apparently Firefly’s Serenity. Awesome stuff.

The idea behind this gadget is that it’s never too early to teach kids the value of a dollar with a freaky fish banker. Every time your kid inserts a coin into the bank, a fish named Gill (haha) will reward your kid with an animation. Thing is, with Cartoon network available to your kid, I don’t think he’s gonna give a tuna what some gameboy-colored fish has to say.

Anyhow, the money they deposit is automatically counted and the total savings is displayed on screen. If that’s not enough, your kid will now be responsible for feeding old Gill and keeping his tank clean. Yeah right. It was nice knowing you Gill! This is gonna be either way too much fun or hardly any for $52. I call the latter.

The Taxi Walker Pedometer from Japan gives you the usual calorie and distance measurements of a standard pedometer, but what’s interesting is that it integrates a meter displaying how much money you are saving by walking rather then taking a taxi the same distance. A good gadget to have in this economic climate.

Apparently, it’s fully programmable, and will calculate cab fares depending on your geographic location. You can even set it to make sound effects whenever a cab fare increases. The device is available in yellow, orange, white, or black for $29.00. Yeah, but will it yell at you in a foreign accent and honk an imaginary horn?

Ecobee’s new Smart Thermostat not only has a nice futuristic look compared to your current thermostat, but helps you save some money on your power bill. It becomes part of your home network operating via WiFi and comes with optional ZigBee expansion slots if you want to integrate it more completely.

At $385, it may take a bit of time for it to pay for itself. Ecobee says 12 to 18 months. It gets better as you get to know your energy usage patterns and make adjustments. The Ecobee Smart Thermostat ships early next year. Which is good because in this economy, it may take you some time to save up the $385.

Here’s the latest in extortionist lamps. This clever lighting appliance forces you to save money if you want light. It’s the Coin Lamp from designer Jethro Macey, who is apparently very thrifty. It’s turned on by a coin-operated switch, with the lamp set to a predetermined time by an internal mechanism. The final version of coin lamp will be available soon.

It’s like having the mafia in charge of your electricity. Imagine if you will that you are sitting by the lamp, maybe working on an important paper and suddenly the light goes out. You have your pile of change sitting by the lamp. It’s not the first time you’ve been shook down after all. But you’ve had enough. You’re not going to take it anymore. You’re sick of giving in to criminals. So, you light a candle. That will teach your rich mafioso lamp a thing or two. But sadly there is an internal mechanism that detects light, so the lamp knows what you are doing. Next thing you know you’re dodging bullets as your house becomes swiss cheese. After the bullets fly and tires squeal away, you crawl to your lamp and put a full ten bucks worth of change in it. You’ve learned your lesson, no more messing with the lamp.

This device sounds too good to be true. It’s called the Blade and it screws onto the end of your tailpipe. Through extensive testing, it supposedly shows from 16-34% savings on gas! That’s an average of about 3.8 MPG’s. As an example, a US driver goes an average of about 30 miles per day or 10,800 miles per year. At the national average of 22 MPG that means about 490 gallons of gas. At $4, that’s roughly $2,000.

Apparently, when you add the BLADE to your tailpipe, you would only use about 418 gallons or about $1,675. Your savings would be roughly $325! Since I suck at math, I’m forced to take their word for it. The device costs $200, so you could make your money back in several months and still be saving after that. It saves gas, money and the environment. What more do you want?

Air conditioners are not usually solar powered because they use so much power you would need a large surface area of solar panels to keep it going. What’s interesting here is that the GreenCore 10200 solves this problem by using a battery pack that it recharges continuously throughout the day. (It can also be charged directly from the wall)

The GreenCore comes with a configuration that will not be enough power to run the air conditioner completely on it’s own, but what it will do is save you some serious money on your next power bill by doing it’s part and it can be combined with other solar panels to supply its complete power needs. The technology looks pretty promising and can be used in a variety of ways.

The Nissan Eco Pedal helps you to save gas by pressing the gas pedal upward when the vehicle is moving too quickly for it’s own good. Nissan claims that the system can improve fuel efficiency by as much as 10%.

The Eco Pedal is programmed to calculate the most efficient rate of acceleration in a given vehicle, so it’s not for those with a lead foot. That’s why Nissan included the option to disable it when necessary. I imagine it would give your leg a good workout as well. You push, it pushes back. Hopefully your wallet will get thicker so you can buy more gadgets.

Here’s the perfect phone for that dark smoky back room, by the cash counting machine and crates full of contriband. It says “I want my money now, or else…”. It also says, I make so much money I don’t even care that I look like an idiot holding a stack of fake dough to my head that’s actually a corded phone. But who’s gonna laugh? You’re the head honcho. If you have a silly cash phone, that’s totally your call. Get it?

It goes with the gun phone quite nicely. This phone is also the phone of choice for bill collectors and pimps.

It’s that time of the week again, which means a look back at the week that was in our network of blogs. It’s been a busy week all around and as usual Poptherapy kept you abreast on all the latest geek news and popculture, while over at Wealthyreader it was all about ways to get wealthy or stay wealthy. Our health blog, Healthyreader focused on ways to stay healthy and enjoy it all. Health, wealth and geekiness is a great combination. Here’s some of what you may have missed.

For those of you with…Let’s say heavy cash flow businesses, that involve large stacks of cash in a dark back room, you’ll want to check out the AccuCounter V30. The AccuCounter V30 is a battery powered money counter that’s capable of counting and adding up to 600 bills a minute.

An LCD display shows the running tally and it even has a triple counterfeit detection system for ultraviolet, watermark and magnetic ink verification. The counter will operate for about 20 hours of continuous use. And if you are working it that hard, your business is certainly booming.