To strengthen it's brand image, Samsung Electronics is said to be launching a 40-inch LCD TV in September. That may not pique the interest of consumers who have seen larger displays, but the LED backlight feature might just get them to give the LCD TV a second look.

The 40-inch LED TV will be offered for $3,000 to the European market. This new TV will source panels from S-LCD, a joint venture between Samsung and Sony. If you would recall, Sony launched 40- and 46-inch LCD TVs with LED backlight in November 2004. Due to the steep pricing, sales of the TVs fell below expectations. Having said that, it's quite surprising that Samsung would want to foray into the TV-with-LED-backlight market, considering it's offering a much steeper price point.

Perhaps Samsung is banking on Insight Media's forecast that shipments for LED backlighting used in TVs will outpace that of cold-cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL) technology in 2010. It's a gamble, but Samsung might be seeing a bright backlight future ahead.

Here's a video showing an ingenious idea of a homemade LED-illuminated wallet. The demo runs at 1:49 and the guy has uncanny humour in presenting his creation. The video also has superb editing (we like the part when one of the wallet exploded).

The wallet has several LED light installed in the interior of the wallet, the part where you put your paper bills. It has a button that is sensitive to pressure. So every time you open your wallet, voila! The LED lights are activated. The lights will stay off while the pressure is on the button, therefore the lights would always stay off while it's in your pocket. For more details on how to create your own illuminated wallet, just click on the video below.

So you're into solar power. You advocate harnessing the sun's energy because it's pollution-free and economical. You tell people about the perks of using solar energy instead of using fossil fuels to provide clean energy for households and businesses.

You dream of owning a solar-powered home, where everything runs on the sun's energy; solar-enabled walls and rooftops surround it. At night, you sleep on the hammock at your backyard, listening to the faint chirp of birds and songs of the crickets.

Sigh. It's so nice to play make-believe.

Or maybe not. The guys at Sharp made a nifty device called the LumiWall, a solar powered wall lined with white LEDs. An LED, according to Wikipedia, is a semiconductor device that emits incoherent narrow-spectrum light when electrically biased in the forward direction. Short for "light-emitting diode", these babies produce light. Thus, the LumiWall looks like a shaded pane of glass by day but can light up at night thanks to the LEDs in it. Ingenious? You bet!

So don't lose hope. Your dreamhouse can still become reality. You'll just need to save enough bucks to make it come to fruition.

Ever since 9/11 and countless terrorist scares, it seems as if everyone is taking countless security measures nowadays. Here's a new one for you - the nanodog, a biosensor that can detect explosives within a one part per trillion range. This sensor slash pseudo-doggie makes use of nanotechnology (that's why it's super-sensitive), which means working on a tiny scale where scientists manipulate atoms to produce new products. Developed by a team led by Professor Maher Kalaji, from the University of Wales, Bangor's school of chemistry, the nanodog still needs to undergo further developments to make it more portable. But the current one is very efficient; it's been proven "extremely effective in response time and in detection levels".

The nanodog uses enzymes to find explosives, hidden or not. So it could be used to check luggage in airports, proving to be a valuable tool in aiding security patrols in airports.

As we all know, nanotechnology's going to be white-hot very soon, as scientists predict that trillions of dollars could be made from nanotechnology-based products. Currently, another team of researchers at Swansea University is developing another nanotech-based "hunter sensor" that could be placed inside a human body to detect cancerous cells. Just imagine what the future could hold!

The RoboScallop is a device that mimics the sea scallop's way of propelling itself. It is a tube a few millimetres long and about 750 microns in diameter that is closed at one end and contains a bubble of air. What's so special about that? RoboScallop can one day carry drugs to parts of the human body that are hard to reach.

When submerged in fluid, the robotic tube expands and contracts when bombarded by sound waves. The sound waves creates an alternately sucking and blowing of liquid from one end of the tube. As the fluid enters the tube from a wide angle and then expelled as a narrow jet, the RoboScallop is able to generate thrust. "Our motor has no moving parts and can be powered remotely with no connecting wires," says physicist Claus-Dieter Ohl at the University of Twente in the Netherlands who led the team that built RoboScallop.

Unlike other robots, RoboScallop needs no internal power source or connecting wires. The sound required to drive the device is loud but bearable. "You could drive one inside the human body by placing the skin in contact with a loudspeaker," says Ohl.

Right now, RoboScallop can only attain top speeds of a few millimetres per second, not enough to swim against the flow of blood inside a body. "You'd probably need about 10 mm/s, an increase of 3 or 4 times," says Ohl. The team is thinking of building a nozzle onto the tube, like a rocket engine, that will maximise the thrust it generates.

Ohl thinks RoboScallop can one day swim to a blood clot before delivering an anti-clotting drug. The Roboscallop could also be used to pump fluids through tiny channels in a microfluidic chemical-analysis device. Pumps used in current microfluidic devices either have moving parts that can jam or rely on electric currents or heating, which can damage samples contained in the fluid. "Our acoustic technology could be a big improvement," he says.

I don't know much about horse racing but most likely, the Japanese just love this sport or the horses -- whether they are betting trifecta or pentafecta. Another thing that I'm sure of, my dad will definitely love this: Mitsubishi Electric has recently completed construction of the world's biggest high-definition video screen at a horse track in Tokyo. Want to know more about the screen? Well, it employs Mitsubishi’s Aurora Vision LED technology and measures 11.2 meters (37 feet) x 66.4 meters (218 feet), giving it a surface area of 744 square meters (8,000+ square feet). If you ain't good at math and you can't imagine how big it is, combine 3 tennis courts and there you have it.

The Japan-based Mitsubishi made the screen especially for the Japan Racing Association (JRA) and the manufacturing took place at their Nagasaki factory. The screen is so huge that it has to be divided into 35 pieces for delivery to the Tokyo Racecourse in Fuchu, Tokyo. This one is three times larger than the previously-installed HDTV in the same horse track. The screen’s three sections allow the audience to take in the action at other tracks. Total cost is reported to be ¥3.2 billion (US$28 million), which could feed an entire famine-struck African village for a year or two.

The answer is another innovative piece of audio-visual device called Tenori-On. In the tradition of his work on the Nintendo DS, Electroplankton (rumored to be coming to the Wii), a pleasantly odd game that has ten mini-games for musical and visual creation, his new brainchild also delves on the concept of "visual music."

Iwai and Yamaha have collaborated to develop this new digital musical instrument for the 21st century. It is a 16x16 matrix of LED switches that allows everyone to play music intuitively. Push on a switch for a short while a ripple of light will spread on the display that corresponds to the sound you have chosen. If however you held it down slightly longer, a dot of light remains on the panel to indicate that the sound and the light will be looped. What makes it dynamic is that the back of the Tenori-On also has a similar LED display, keeping the maestro's audience enthralled in his composition.

In his blog, Iwai says that although far from being complete, he can already use Tenori-On in his live performances like in Futuresonic 2006, an electronic music and art festival held in Manchester from July 20-23, 2006. Thanks for the heads up Badam!

Suppose you're a design student and you were handed an assignment to come up with a product for a company that makes batteries and LEDs, got any ideas? Ours was a toilet seat that flash red LED light when left up to remind the guys to put the toilet seat down after doing their business. But our prototype made it look like a demonic creature is about to crawl up the crapper. That idea was quickly flushed down.

North Carolina State University Design student Chris Owens, on the other hand, got a killer prototype LED display shelf that we're sure would give him an A, and more importantly, make him a rich man in the near future. His vision was a shelf with pressure sensitive plates and embedded LEDs. The LED lights up when objects that are placed on the shelf. A simple but ingenious way to make a dark corner glow with elegance.

Wi-Finder is the modern day counterpart of the dowsing rod. Where as the dowsing seeks water and minerals under ground, WiFinder looks for Hot Zones - available wireless access points nearby. Once detected, tech-savvy users can use their WiFi enabled PDA or laptop to connect to the Internet wirelessly.

As usual, where there's a trend, a gadget isn't that far behind. One of these WiFinding gadgets looks like a pen and writes like a pen mainly because it is a pen. This WiPen from Informatica ($18.95) also tells you of any local wireless networks within a 50 feet range. By pushing the button on the barrel Green/Yellow/Red LED's will light to detect the strength of WiFi signal. Push the button on the barrel and the Green/Yellow/Red LED will indicate the strength of WiFi signal. The Wi-Fi Pen...like techno-geeks don't have enough pens in their pockets.

Not everyone has a Gakken Mechamo Centipede, those ultra-cool infrared remote controlled multi-legged bots that can move forward, reverse, turns either way while going forward or backward, and pirouettes. But if you're one of the lucky ones who own a Gakken Mechamo, this project is for you.

It all started when a man, let's call him Dr Frank, ordered a bunch of PIC programming materials. He was playing around with it when he saw his Gakken Mechamo Centipede. PIC... Gakken Mechamo Centipede. Hmmm. That's when it hit him. Why not do PIC project by replacing the brain on his Mechamo Gakken Centipede kit with a radio-controlled PIC motor controller! Why not, indeed. Dr Frank also decided to make the motor control PIC-based so he could easily control it with a key glove (which is another project altogether).

We'll spare you the bloodless but nevertheless gory details (lots of exposed wires and transistors that would make a a brain surgeon disgorge his lunch) and skip to the post-op. Dr Frank says "Overall, I can control the robot well enough that I've explored with it using the attached camera from one floor away. I've also sent it into other rooms in complete darkness and successfully explored and navigated back. The only thing I'd like to add to the rover is GPS."

If your Gakken Mechamo Centipede's current personality pales in comparison with Dr Frank's PIC CentipedeBot, you can check out the details of his PIC project at the link below.