To those who'd like to support a real world cause while defending the princess from Bowser's latest kidnapping, this limited edition Pink Ribbon DS Lite raises money for the cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure. For every unit sold, Nintendo passes $5 to the organization. $5!!! Whoa. That's big money!

I know, how can I talk bad about someone giving money to cancer research? So ungrateful! So taboo!

The sad fact is, as big of a failure as RED products may be (some projections show more money spent on advertising than goes to cancer research), most RED-participating companies are giving a lot more money per product to charity than Nintendo is here. Gap has passed on 50% of their profits on RED items and Apple has given 10% of the total price (probably their entire profit) on iTunes gift cards. And they're just the tip of the iceberg.

Meanwhile, the company that is making $1.6 million per employee is slapping a ribbon on a device, tossing spare change in the face a cause and probably netting more money because of it.

$5 doesn't even come close to Nintendo's profits per DS.

This isn't a donation. This is exploitation. Nintendo, you can do better. [Amazon via Kotaku]

If Android sputters out and fades away, Google might have another plan to shake up the phone industry. In a patent filed and 2007 and published this week, Google details plans for an "Instant Bid" system for dealing with wireless connections. The concept is pretty straightforward: devices broadcast their request for service, and available networks automatically return a list of price offers for that service. The system makes perfect sense for locations with competing Wi-Fi hotspots, but the application specifically talks about telecommunication devices. That's where things get interesting.

With the national dominance of a few wireless carriers, there's little threat of this technology taking off, but the concept is exciting to consider. For example, open network bidding would make price comparisons between carriers a constant concern, rather than a one-off choice, at least in the pay as you go space. Conversely, it might also negate the need for smaller network to lease coverage from larger ones when their users roam, leaving that task up to the individuals.

That said, this might be one big paygo pie in the sky. Google has basically said as much, telling New Scientist "We file patent applications on a variety of ideas that our employees come up with. Some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don't." [Patent via New Scientist]

This is the new XM25 Individual Air Burst Weapon. It looks straight out of the Marines' guns locker in Aliens, and in fact, it can take out an Alien if they actually existed because, according to the US Army, it is capable of killing anyone behind walls, beyond hills or even below a trench. The XM25 is not just a concept: three prototypes will enter the final testing phase on the field next month, which means it could be deployed very soon. According to Christian at Defense Tech, even Army officials seem to be amazed at the firepower and precision of this weapon:

We've done a lot of testing with this and what we're seeing is the estimated increase in effectiveness is six times what we'd be getting with a 5.56mm carbine or a grenade launcher. What we're talking about is a true 'leap ahead' in lethality, here. This is a huge step.

Christian promises a full article tomorrow at Military.com, and I can't wait for it because I'm wondering now how the heck this glorified nerf weapon can actually kill someone beyond a hill or in a trench. [Defense Tech]

For those of you who were skeptical of the Griffin AirCurve wire-free iPhone amplifier/dock thingy comes this USB dock that is a genuine neato solution. Dubbed "Simplifi," for once it's a product name that tallies with the product's purpose: it's a combined iPod/iPhone dock that has a CF card slot, a Memory Stick/SD/xD card slot and two powered USB ports. See how useful and clutter-reducing that'd be perched on your desk? It's out now for $69. [Griffin via Wired]

The 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge has just concluded with some pretty astonishing imagery in the winning slots. This picture, dubbed "Glass Forest," is a scanning electron micrograph of diatoms (weird unicellular algae) clinging to a marine worm, and won the photography category: to my eyes it looks half like a palm tree and half like a Star Trek effect. The illustration category winner is even more amazing.

It's by Linda Nye from the Exploratorium Visualization Laboratory, and demonstrates the human bloodstream at a level that zooms from blood-vessel level all the way to oxygen atoms binding to hemoglobin, and everything in between.

I find science pretty amazing full stop: but this kind of competition really goes the extra mile to communicate how intricate the world/universe around us is. Check out the link to the National Science Foundation (who ran the challenge) to see more of the entries...you'll probably be amazed too. [NSF via New Scientist]

Reader Mike Chung sent us these pictures of his MacBook Pro battery, which has almost failed for the second time? Why do I say almost? I mean, it's clear that the battery has ballooned into some sort of slimy, Alien-like monstrosity. Well, apparently this battery is still alive and working.

Mike says that this is his second battery failure on his two year-old MacBook, and it's nothing we haven't seen many times before, but the timing is suspicious, to say the least. My money's on an October(ish) detonation switch secreted away in every last MacBook, MacBook Pro and, for good measure, MacBook Air. -Thanks, Mike!

Reuters is claiming that the long, long-awaited Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Touchscreen 'Tube' will be launched in London on October 2nd, according to their sources. This confirms the rumor that we floated Wednesday, when the first actual picture of the device surfaced (It's mostly screen. surprise!). As with most of the glut of new touchscreen phones out there now, the key to Tube's success as well as the most exciting part of the launch will probably be the device's software, which is rumored to be a touchscreen revision of the venerable Symbian S60 OS [Reuters]

This is Samsung's promo video for the upcoming M8800 cellphone (aka Pixon) with 8-megapixel camera. In fact it looks very much like a compact camera from the rear, and its 3.2-inch screen bears the same TouchWiz interface as the Omnia. That screen is a 400 x 240 pixel touchscreen with touch keyboard and handwriting recognition, and the phone has AGPS, accelerometer and FM radio. Read on for hands-on photos and full specs.

• Quad-band GSM, tri-band HSDPA
• 107.9x54.6x14.9mm, 110 g
• 3.2-inch touch screen display (240 x 400 pixels)
• 8 megapixel camera, auto focus, face recognition with smile detection and blink detection, WDR (wide dynamic range), ASR (advanced shake reduction), GPS geotagging, ISO 1600, WVGA (720x480 pixels) and VGA (640 x 480 pixels) @30fps video recording
• Built-in GPS receiver
• Accelerometer
• DivX playback
• FM radio with RDS
• microSD card slot
• Bluetooth
• Landscape virtual QWERTY keyboard
• Handwriting recognition
• ShoZu integration - direct image and video upload
• Office document viewer

Interestingly, there's no mention of Wi-Fi in that list of specs. It'll be out early November (in Russia, at least) for around $800. [ via GSMArena]

Alps Electronics has decided to take the occasionally annoying sensitivity of some capacitive trackpads to a new extreme, demoing a technology that can accurately sense fingers without coming in direct contact with them. The system is able to sense movements at an admittedly modest range of 3cm, from which distance users can control applications with a range of gestures.

While the raw tech isn't new (capacitive proximity sensors have been around in other forms for a while), this application is, and could prove useful in situations where the sterility is necessary. Alps says that they've still got a few problems to address, namely that device "often malfunctions." Of course, there's also the fact that using one of these things will invariably make you look like you're trying to perform a magic trick and/or dramatically faith-heal your laptop, two of the most surefire methods for remaining alone for the rest of your life. [TechOn]

Check out the Hong Kong Apple store online and you'll see a couple of lines of text that'll tempt, tease and beguile you if you're dreaming of an unlocked iPhone 3G: "iPhone 3G purchased at the Apple Online Store can be activated with any wireless carrier. Simply insert the SIM from your current phone into iPhone 3G and connect to iTunes 8 to complete activation." About $700 will get you an unlocked 8GB version, and the 16GB is just $800. Handy for the dev team, no doubt. [Hong Kong Apple StoreSlashphone]