Not bad eh? These tiny 35 x 25 x 20-mm remote controlled cars fit inside your choice of sport-themed balls which double as the controller. You can even dangle your ball from a lanyard... perfect for all you athletic supporters. While no real technical details are provided regarding battery life or RC range, for $13 you can afford the surprise.

Somebody call grandma, Creative's Zen X-Fi player just passed its FCC exam and is now ready to make a living on its own. While most of the information is locked down, it's pretty clear by that label that we can expect at least one version of the X-Fi to ship with 32GB of flash memory. Testing was done across a trio of 802.11b/g channels so that's a lock as well. While an appearance on the FCC site doesn't guarantee that the device will be sold in the US (we're looking at you, Japanese FOMA phones), we're guessing that a US launch announcement will come any day now. Although at this point, we'd settle for Creative just making the X-Fi series official so all this speculation can come to an end.

[Via Pocketables]

The Creative kids over at epiZENter have what looks to be a genuine scoop of an unannounced ZEN X-Fi. Not only did they receive this supposedly leaked photo, they also managed to dig out a "ZEN X-Fi Starter Pack" (software and user guide) from the bowels of Creative's own site. Accordingly, we're looking at a new DAP with SD expansion and built-in WiFi, speaker, FM tuner, voice recorder, and the ability to stream media from Creative's "Public Media Server." Additionally, users can chat with Yahoo! Messenger and Microsoft Live! users thanks to the 9-button, cellphone-like keypad. More details and genuflecting lie just beyond the read link.

[Thanks Tony and everyone who sent this in]

Well, it looks like Philadelphia's on-again, off-again WiFi network won't be going dark for good quite just yet, as The Philadelphia Inquirer is now reporting that a group of local investors are stepping in to keep it aloft. While complete details are a bit light at the moment, the new company is apparently at least considering going with an advertising-supported business model that'd provide free access wherever the network is available, as opposed to the $20 a month Earthlink was charging for the service. To bolster that potentially losing proposition a bit, the company will also apparently be going after institutional subscribers like hospitals and universities, who'd be offered the opportunity to extend their own secure wireless networks into the city.

[Thanks Brad L, image courtesy of Stippling]

It's not exactly a surprise that Sprint Nextel and Clearwire have some pretty big plans for their newly-merged WiMAX network, but a recent FCC filing has now revealed some tantalizing details about exactly just what they have in mind. As Ars Technica reports, the two companies foresee the "New Clearwire" WiMAX network as being nothing short of a true "third pipe" into the home, and a fully open one at that. That would let users use any "lawful device" on the network so long as it's "compatible with and not harmful to the WiMAX network," and it'd offer non-exclusive wholesale access to the network to anyone looking to hop on the WiMAX bandwagon. The two companies are also promising that customers can expect to get speeds up to 6Mbps on the downlink, and 3Mbps uplink, and that the network will cover 140 million people by 2010 -- and a full 220 million by 2017.

We've already some efforts to tailor Bluetooth for use with medical devices, but it looks like a team of researchers from Queen's University Belfast have now come up with another method of keeping devices connected, which they say is more efficient and better suited for implants. Their solution is effectively a "skin-tenna," which makes use of a puck-like device worn on the outside of the body that allows wireless signals to "creep" along an individual's skin. That, the researchers say, not only minimizes the "off-body signals," but requires far less power than Bluetooth or other wireless technologies, which is obviously a plus when a battery change consists of a trip to the operating room.

While devices that integrate WiFi and WiMAX are hardly anything new, Skyworks now looks to be taking some further steps to ensure that the two frequency neighbors play nice with each other, with it today introducing what it claims are the "industry's first" bulk acoustic wave (or BAW) filters that enable WiMAX and WLAN co-existence. Those filters include the SKY33107 WiFi reject/WiMAX pass filter, and the SKY33108 WiFi pass/WiMAX reject filter, each of which measure a mere 3 millimeters square. That, Skyworks says, makes them ideal for just about any consumer or enterprise application, including USB dongles, laptops, ultra-mobile computers, and femto and pico base stations. Just don't expect 'em to show up en masse until sometime in the fourth quarter of this year, although hardware makers interesting in testing them out can apparently get their hands on some engineering samples now.