If the LIFX Kickstarter-funded project gets to market, you’ll be able to control your home's lighting system from your smartphone. Like the remotely-controlled thermostats that are also on their way, your home’s Wi-Fi connection can be used to remotely control “LIFX” LED bulbs.

Kickstarter is the world’s largest crowdfunding platform for creative projects. As a result of their posting on Kickstarter, the inventors of LIFX raised $260,000 of their $100,000 goal in two days.  LIFX's position on top of the tech section for the social news website Reddit doesn't hurt either.

Using the LIFX app that controls the bulbs you can turn them on and off and adjust their brightness from your smartphone. LIFX bulbs are designed to save energy and should last up to 25 years. The bulbs screw into the same light sockets as any other bulbs. The app will be available for both iOS and Android.

In addition to turning the bulbs on and off, the project creators are designing the app so that you can choose brightness for individual bulbs, a room full of them or every bulb in your house. The lighting system in your home is directed by a “master” bulb that connects to your home router box via 802.11n and then onto all the other LIFX bulbs in your home via an IPV6 802.15.4 mesh network.

In trade for funding dollars, backers of the project who pledge $69 get one LIFX bulb, $99 for two and $196 for 4. Serious investors willing to commit $5,000 receive 100 LIFX bulbs.

Could you see yourself using a home lighting system that you can run from your smartphone or other wireless device? What would you be willing to pay for one of these bulbs?

Pi in the sky

Yesterday an awesome and inspiring event took place in San Francisco, but it didn’t have anything to do with Apple’s big day. It was all about pi.

Up in the San Francisco sky three jets succeeded in writing the first 10,000 numbers of pi. That’s right, pi: the old ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Most of us know it from high school math class as “3.14159… - the number that never ends.

The planes wrote the numerals in smoke in dot matrix format a quarter-mile high. Each plane wrote every third number in a string that extended for 150 miles around San Francisco.

An artist and a design company came up with this incredibly creative work of art. They may have just eclipsed the launch of the latest flagship product of one of the most innovative companies in the world. As expected, Apple provided a terrific iPhone, and we can’t wait to see the iPad mini unveiling. The project on the ground was impressive, but it wasn't as hypnotic as what Apple used to deliver. But those on the ground couldn’t keep their eyes off what was happening in the sky.

Someday soon Apple, please hypnotize us again.

According to their latest campaign slogan, OIS is on. But Nokia's marketing team is way off in recent ads for the Lumia 920.

As Mashable reported the day of the device's September 5th unveiling, Nokia's been left with pants ablaze after two independent bloggers discovered that images and video used to promote the new Lumia 920 were misleading.

To clarify, the campaign's entire raison d'être was to pump up the Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) technology used for the new Nokia Lumia's “Pure View” camera. The argument here is that OIS makes for better pictures and video.

The campaign, shot in Helsinki, presents a model in different scenarios, with split screens labeled “OIS Off” and “OIS On.” Obviously, the images and video clips labelled “OIS On” are clearer, and even have a more artistic appeal. The only problem is, they're fakes.

Light diffractions in the Nokia Lumia 920 campaign images show they can't have been taken with the device

Neither the campaign photos nor the video were shot using the Lumia 920. Instead, a leaked picture of the photo shoot showed artificial lighting and professional equipment.

Since the story's emerged, Nokia has issued an apology, while still trying to cover its own ass. In an emailed statement, Nokia spokesperson Brett Young told Mashable:

“The video was produced while the Nokia Lumia 920 was in early prototype and still not ready to show the full benefits of the amazing innovation it contains.”

An independent blogger posted this photo of the proffessional lighting and camera equipment at Nokia's shoot for the new Lumia

That's like McDonald's saying the Big Mac in their ads only looks so big and juicy because the squashed sandwich you received with your order wasn't ready to display yet.

Nevertheless, says Young, “while there was no intention to mislead, the failure to add a disclaimer to the video was obviously a mistake.”

Apology aside, the campaign video now also contains a disclaimer that clarifies the footage is a “simulation of OIS technology.”

Nokia posted genuine photos on their site taken in low light with the latest Lumia 

Meanwhile, Nokia has posted some real photos on their site that were shot in low light with the Lumia 920 and without “artificial lighting or stands.” These are compared with similar images shot with competitors' devices. Assuming the new Lumia's pictures are the real deal, they do look quite good.

During last weekend’s Disrupt SF Hackathon events, 147 teams had 24 hours to design, build, test and present their products to judges. Only three teams had the chance to demo their projects in front of the crowd. The first place team was awarded a $5,000 grand prize.

Techcrunch, the sponsor of the event, invited hardware hackers to “Build toys, robots, Arduino cases, or whatever you want and enter the Disrupt Hackathon as an inaugural hardware hacker. We dare you.” 400 hackers took TechCrunch up on their challenge.

While the Sirious Margarita Maker “a highly complex system that allows you to tell Siri to make you a margarita, and the Memstash app “that helps you memorize anything” gave the winners a run for their money, three other teams beat them and everyone else out of the top prize.

First Prize: Livebolt

Livebolt is a cloud-based identity management system. It consists of a metal block that slides on the back of a physical lock. The block responds to an order from an iPhone app. Once a user passes authentication, the iPhone app can authorize the metal block to lock or unlock the user's door.

Runner-up #1: Autopus

Autopus is an app that lets sellers on sites like Craigslist to conduct auctions on their own listings. As bids are placed on their stuff, sellers gets notified and can monitor activity in almost real-time.

Runner-up #2: HeatData

HeatData provides a way to track the gestures of mobile website users. Knowing how users interact with pages helps vendors determine how to improve the design and UI for their mobile app.

Many of the other teams didn’t go home empty handed. Sponsors like AT&T, Evernote, dotCloud, Ford, Locu, Microsoft Bizspark, Dropbox, New Relic, Pearson, Qualcomm Innovation Center, Qualcomm Labs, SAP HANA, SkyDrive, TokBox, Twilio, and Zypr all awarded prizes to the teams that made the best use of their services.

TechCrunch Disrupt is one of the most anticipated technology conferences of the year, and it's underway this week through Wednesday.

Hold onto your smartphones, tablets and any other device with a broadband connection. There's a lot of innovation going on out there.

Now we know a few more details about Nokia’s new Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 phones. The big unveiling took place yesterday in New York City, and what we saw was pretty impressive.

The Lumia makes a big splash with its accessories. It seems that Nokia is determined to pioneer the cause of the wireless charging station.

The Lumia 920 and 820 both incorporate Qi (pronounced “chee”) tech for wireless charging (an option with the Lumia 820.) Rather than connecting to a dock, all that’s needed to charge one of the phones is to place it on top of a (plugged in) pad. We’d already heard rumor about the design of the wireless charging pad, and what Nokia unveiled was actually three different styles.

The basic dock that looks like the same type of design as the phone case. It’s streamlined and shiny, and comes in a few bright color choices – red, blue, white, black and yellow.

The Fatboy Recharge Pillow is a puffy base that looks like a pillow. Its length and width extend at least one inch beyond the edges of the phone when it’s centered on the Pillow. The color choices are the same bright hues as those for the basic dock.

The JBL PowerUp Charging Speaker is definitely the star of the group. The charging stand includes an NFC chip that will trigger an app launch when you place it in the dock. Just put the smartphone on the stand where it will charge and automatically open your music player or alarm clock. The stand is equipped with high-quality audio speakers and a retro style. Its color choices are black, gray and blue.

In addition, Nokia said it has made deals with Virgin Atlantic and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to have charging stations in various public locations. Eventually, Nokia wants to see charging stations in public places all over the world.

Nokia is part of the Wireless Power Consortium. One of the Consortium’s goals is to build a true wireless-charging network with open standards. Qi is part of that design ethic. If your device is equipped for Qi wireless, you'll be able to charge it on any charging base that uses the Qi wireless charging standard.

No word on pricing or launch date for either phone.

Think you’re pretty good with an iPad? Can you draw like this? An 84 year-old woman created this incredible self-portrait in the first thirty minutes of having an iPad in her hands.

According to her grandson’s Reddit thread, “She’s 84 and never had a tablet, and wanted it for ‘art’.”

As his story goes, he installed the app ArtRage and left his grandmother for thirty minutes. When he came back, she had created this work of art. The image was posted to Reddit and quickly shot to the front page.

Finally some pictures have surfaced with close-ups of a device that might be the next generation of Nokia phones.Up till now, we’ve only had leaked pictures, component images and patent application drawings to fuel speculation about what Nokia’s very unique Windows Phone 8 might look like.

The phone in the pics has a boxy design, like the shape of a deck of cards. One of my first thoughts: if you aren't connected by Bluetooth or a headset, the edges might make it tiring to hold for a long period of time.

The views also show elongated speaker grilles down one whole side. The phone is  supposed to feature DTS sound - multichannel audio technology that is known for surround sound formats. The poor quality of speaker sound in portable devices today is almost as big a deal as battery life. DTS could mean a big leap forward in the audio experience. From a design standpoint, we can't imagine speakers extended the whole length of the handset. Maybe it's just for effect.

There's a lot that pictures can't tell. So the rumors of specs like a quad-core SoC, 12-megapixel camera and 4.5-inch HD screen should be taken with a big grain of salt.

Of course, this is all just a guess at whether these models are sourced from Nokia or rendered from legitimate hardware images or specs, but they are interesting. Maybe, we'll hear more on September 5th when Nokia and Microsoft hold their press event.

No matter what, a boxy design like this would be a real departure from the Apple, HTC and Samsung smooth, rounder edged and stylized cases we love right now. Windows 8 or not, I'd feel like Nokia's new device is drawing attention to my hand the way my eyes can't help but notice to a Nissan Cube on the street.

Just in case you haven’t sprung for the Galaxy S III, extended your contract for another 2 years to get that HTC One X, or aren’t a Apple loyalist, you might be glad to hear that we’ll finally be getting the official word on Motorola’s new Droid RAZR M 4G LTE next week – September 5th to be exact.

If even that’s too far away, the specs have been leaked. This looks like a pretty sweet phone.

• 4.3-inch, 960 x 540 pixel, Super AMOLED Advanced display
• 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor
• 8 GB of storage
• 1 GB of RAM
• 8-megapixel rear camera and a 3-megapixel one on the front
• Gorilla Glass 2 display glass
• Kevlar-reinforced back
• Virtual navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen
• MicroSD expansion
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth
• GPS

NFC, GSM / UMTS / HSPA+ global roaming are on board and the whole package will be powered by Android 4.0 - Ice Cream Sandwich

No word yet on price and availability. It would have been nice to hear about the battery, too, but September 5th isn’t far away. If you’ve got a purchase decision to make, you might want to hold off a week.

The HTC EVO 3D is one of the newest HTC Smartphones to be released specifically by Sprint during the past year.  The HTC EVO was originally released in June 2011 but the good news remains is that is popularity has not waned. The HTC EVO 3D features a 4.3-inch, glass-free 3D display and a dual megapixel camera. The HTC EVO 3D also includes a front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera, support for 1080p video playback via the HDMI out and a Android 2.3 with Sense. With those thoroughly defined 3D features, we must also include thoroughly defined 3D accessories for the  HTC EVO 3D Smartphone.

1)      Every beautiful and bountiful Smartphone needs protection especially if its the  HTC EVO 3D Smartphone. The Griffin View Twin Shell HTC EVO 3D Case is featured in a Majestic Red and features a two layers of protection for this majestic Smartphone. The Griffin View Twin Shell HTC EVO 3D Case also features a inner sheer silicone cushion and a hard outer polycarbonate shell for duality and durability. The “Twin Shell” name says it all as it fits snug around the HTC EVO 3D Smartphone's cutouts of connectors and controls to keep the dust and dirt out and to protect your smartphone from scratches and scrapes.

2)      Some other skillfully crafted HTC EVO 3D Cases include the Incipio HT199 NGP for HTC EVO 3D in Matte Black and the Incipio HT200 NGP for HTC EVO 3D in a magnificent Magenta. The Incipio HT199 NGP for HTC EVO 3D and Incipio HT200 NGP for HTC EVO 3D comes accessorized with an Incipio Vanity Kit that includes a surface protector and an applicator card and cleaning cloth. Both of these cases are soft shell cases, that are slim, flexible and compact all at the same time.

3)      Every good and smart smartphone needs a smart battery such as the Seidio Innocell Slim Extended Battery for the HTC EVO 3D. The  Seidio Innocell Slim  Extended Battery is specifically designed for Smartphone users who need some extra battery life without the extra weight. This particular model fits in your HTC EVO 3D existing battery space and doesn't require a replacement door and is a perfect replacement for your original HTC EVO 3D Battery itself.

4)      The Sony Mobile Smart Wireless Headset Pro is a multifunctional Bluetooth Headset that is compatible with a variety of Smartphones including the HTC EVO 3D. The Sony Mobile Smart Wireless Headset Pro features a professional display of caller names, media titles, text messages and Email. The  Sony Mobile Smart Wireless Headset Pro also includes a MP3 player & FM radio perfect for those especially on the go.

5)      The HTC EVO 3D Headset with Remote Controller allows its users to talk on the phone, watch video clips, play games or listen to songs in stereo without holding the phone.  The HTC EVO 3D Headset with Remote Controller features  lightweight and comfortable ear-buds that readily reduces noise in the surrounding areas and is perfect for those users who are once again on the go. Of course the built in remote controller allows you to to pause, play, fast forward and rewind on your HTC EVO 3D Smartphone.

6)      The HTC HS U110 3.5mm Audio Adapter with Headphone is also another perfect accessory for your perfect HTC EVO 3D Smartphone. The HTC HS U110 3.5mm Audio Adapter features an audio adapter cable lets you listen to music on your HTC EVO 3D and the headphones allow you to listen to your own music selection with your own favorite headphones. The HTC HS U110 3.5mm Audio Adapter with Headphone also include an internal microphone and an answer call and end call button.

7)      The BlackBerry Music Gateway for HTC EVO 3D is one of the HTC EVO 3D's newest accessories that has been released in recent months. The BlackBerry Music Gateway for HTC EVO 3D allows you to wirelessly play music from your HTC EVO 3D to your Bluetooth enabled laptops, personal computers, smartphones and tablets with just the click of a button. The BlackBerry Music Gateway for HTC EVO 3D can be connected to a speakers on the bookshelf, a car stereo system or an MP3 Player Docking Station. The BlackBerry Music Gateway for HTC EVO 3D is compatible with any devices such as tablets and smartphones supported by A2DP and AVRCP Bluetooth profiles, the devices must also be supported by a Near Field Communication connect feature and must be connected with the include 3.5mm auxiliary cables.

8)      The HTC Scribe Digital Stylus Pen is perfect digital pen for the HTC EVO 3D that allows you to digitalize your smartphone without scratching and scraping its exterior.  The HTC Scribe Digital Stylus Pen allows you to ink on photos, notes and screen captures of your favorite websites and even allows sharing on your favorite social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. This digital pen can also be used to scribble and scribe your very own thoughts onto your HTC EVO 3D Smartphone interface.

9)      The HTC Desktop Docking Station is perfect for your HTC EVO 3D Smartphone. The  he HTC Desktop Docking Station allows you to to quickly and easily place your phone in the dock where  it can and will synchronize your files with your PC and fully charge your device. The HTC Desktop Docking Station is specifically designed for the HTC EVO 3D Smartphone allowing you to ensure its convertibility and compatibility, it also hold your smartphone at such an angel to allow you the ease of surfing the internet, play some games or even watch movies.

10)  The HTC EVO 3D Screen Protectors are not only designed to protect your smartphone from scrapes and scratches and clean from dirt and dust but is also meant to enhance your smartphone screen viewing. The HTC EVO 3D Screen Protectors are designed with unique materials to enhance your your screen by reducing the distracting glare that is caused by reflected light. The Screen Protectors are very easy to remove and use on your HTC EVO 3D Smartphone.

Samsung is bringing a new addition to its Galaxy smartphone line called the Galaxy S Duos, and it’s got one really unique feature – the ability to operate on two wireless carriers at the same time.

The Galaxy S Duos hardware is designed to support two SIM cards. You can have two different phones numbers running on two different networks from the same phone. In other words, even if you have AT&T for work and Verizon for personal use, you can use the same phone for both.

As Samsung said in a blog post announcing the phone: “Its unique ‘Dual SIM Always On’ feature allows you to receive calls on one SIM number while taking a call from the other, ensuring that you can manage both personal and work commitments without ever missing a call. You also have the flexibility of selecting different billing plans for either SIM, switching between them at your convenience.”

At first glance, the Galaxy S Duos looks a lot like the Galaxy S III, but its features are very different. The Duos has a 4-inch 480x 800 TFT touchscreen display, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, 1GHz processor and 4GB of storage.

In contrast, the Galaxy S III has a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED screen with 1,280 x 720 resolution, a higher-resolution 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and either 16 or 32GB of built-in storage.

The Samsung Galaxy S Duos will be available next month in Europe. There's no word on when those of us on this side of the Atlantic will see it.