We're normally pretty down on cases for cellphones and iPods since our thought is why cover up a perfectly good looking device with an—and we're generalizaing here—ugly case? Fabrix, on the other hand, has really, really good looking sleeves that we wouldn't mind shoving our iPhones and iPods into. You can see some of the collection in the gallery, but each one costs $21.90 and fits both the original iPhone or the iPhone 3G. With the price of the iPhone being slightly lower up-front, you're going to be able to buy a couple of these and swap'em out weekly. [Fabrix]

I'm still working on the full review, but I wanted to give everyone an update on that performance fix that was released last week for the HTC Touch Diamond. I installed the new ROM (it was easy, just run the executable on your PC), and now TouchFLO is noticeably faster. It's still not instant, but it's definitely improved to the point where it's usable and you won't really mind it. Yeah, it's passed that bar. I'd even say that it's just as fast as the iPhone. Current owners will be able to upgrade to the newer official ROM soon.

Bill Gates is officially "transitioning" from Microsoft this week, but really, he checked out a long time ago. His Big Hairy Vision isn't just modernizing the world anymore—it's saving it. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the world's largest charitable foundation, with a current asset trust endowment of $37.3 billion. Last year, it gave away $2 billion. Its work is divided into three major programs: Global Development, Global Health and United States. It's not your average charity though—and not just because two of its three trustees, Bill and Warren (no last names needed) constantly jockey for the title of world's richest man. It's the smartest. And that's why it just might succeed.

Let's start with the goals of each program. The Global Health program is, no surprise, all about fighting disease, in two ways. One, making vaccines and medicine more readily available. Two, good ol' R&D to develop new vaccines—vaccine development and access takes up half of the Global Health program's money—plus treatments and other higher-tech solutions, the stuff that actually gets Bill excited now.

Global Development has three prongs, with the overarching mission of attacking poverty and hunger: Providing financial aid, spreading internet access as wide as possible, and helping small farmers with crop production and getting food to market.

The U.S. program is all about education, like its $1.37 billion grant to the United Negro College Fund via the Gates Millennium Scholars Program.

The foundation's goals don't sound so much different from anyone else's—they're big, lofty and impossible. What's so brilliant? They're not charging at the world's problems scattering its massive war chest around willy-nilly. They invest in solutions. Take access to clean water (or the lack thereof). The Seattle PI notes in a piece today that the foundation has spent years looking at the problem, but has yet to pump money into a major water project, because simply building pipes won't really crack at the root problem. Sylvia Mathews Burwell, director of the Global Development Program, says in the article that "what we look for is the project has to be scalable, sustainable and catalytic." (Its hardcore focus on vaccines makes total sense from this angle.)

In other words, it plants tons of little techno-seeds and showers them with love and money until they grow to be totally independent and self-sustaining, and doesn't waste its largesse on stuff that's a temporary fix. To keep up the plant metaphor, rather than hoping to grow a single, giant tree of awesome that stretches over all the problems they're trying to fix, they're planting a ton of little, carefully planned and managed trees to make a, um, forest of awesome. It's an approach borrowed from drug companies, which invest in lotsa different drugs simultaneously, not just one miracle drug at a time.

Not that they're cheap—in his person of the year story, Time says that the Gates spent 2005 "giving more money away faster than anyone ever has," It's just that every penny of it is invested with the same sharpness Bill applied to Microsoft in its golden days, so each one works as hard as possible, like the $1.5 billion grant for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

Above and beyond all of that, Bill's philanthropy is nudging other people to chip in. Most famously, Warren Buffet is giving most of his fortune to the Foundation because he believes in its goals and smart, practicable approach to charity. As long as Bill's got the passion—like he did for Microsoft in his past life—then yeah, he just might save the world.

Wired recently published an excellent article on the Dark Knight (Batman Begins 2). It's a must-read for anyone who's a fan of Batman, the film's director, Christopher Nolan, or just doing things the old fashioned way. Between interesting tidbits like Christian Bale himself standing on the edge of the Sears Tower, arguments with the Chinese government to allow stunt helicopters over Hong Kong, and the film's huge 8K Imax cameras outright cracking their mounts, you really get a glimpse of the trouble the filmmakers went through to nail a gritty visual effect while using CGI only sparsely.

But one thing I wanted to highlight was a particularly interesting segment from Wally Pfister, the film's director of photography. He explains the relevance of using huge Imax film stock in the days of 1080p televisions and digital compression.

It's more of a visceral thing. You can see something way off on the horizon. You can see a little glint of light, a reflection in Batman's eye. You can't see it in a conventional theater. And you definitely can't see it on a plasma screen at home.

Only a handful of the Dark Knight's scenes were shot with Imax film and cameras, but I'm looking forward to them all the same.

Now read it all over at Wired. Or I swear I'll blockquote the whole thing. [Wired]

In the unsettling video found after the jump, Soviet scientists in the mid-20th century keep the severed head of a dog alive via an "autojector," a primitive heart and lung machine. The dog reacts to sounds, opens its eyes, eats, licks its lips, and generally looks alive. The video has been debated by experts for years, but now you can be the judge thanks to the wonders/horrors of the internet. So, what say you? Is this poor pooch surviving sans body, or is another Ruskie trick? Either way, I'm sure we can all agree on one thing: holy f'ing shit.

Yikes. To make you feel better, might I suggest revisiting the adorable bionic puppy? [Environmental Graffiti via io9]

The long-in-development force-feedback PC game device Novint Falcon is a good idea in theory, but without actual support from games there's not a whole lot you can do with it. Good news though, since Valve just announced support with the controller for PC versions of The Orange Box, Counter-Strike: Source, the Half-Life 2 series, Team Fortress 2, Portal and Left 4 Dead. With the pistol grip accessory it'll be fine for every game, but what we really have hopes for is fiddling around with that gravity gun and feeling the force feedback with it. [Novint via Crunchgear]

A while back, my luddite cat had a run-in with an R/C dragonfly. It left her jaded and frightened of the device, so much that we topped our Christmas tree with it to keep her ornament attacking at bay. It was remarkably effective. Since then we've relocated to an apartment and she has a new nemesis...the washing machine.

I think it's the spin cycle. The tiny water-efficient unit rotates with incredible speed, making a sound that's somewhere between a pneumatic drill and a jet engine launch. During the first load of laundry we washed, Anya (the cat) stood three feet away trembling in fear.

She's a tough cat, so it's a bit disturbing to see her scared.

Anya raised one paw, ready to smack the mechanical beast down if necessary. We couldn't approach her to assuage her fears with pets/snuggles. She was busy in a battle for her/our lives.

Since that evening, it's gotten better, but only a little. Frequently, she sits in front of the washer when it's not in use, studying the slumbering beast for any weakness and knowledge of what makes it tick.

It's just a lousy situation, as there's no good solution here. (Imagine that conversation with our landlord. "You have to buy our cat new laundry equipment, sorry.") We have to give it time—time for our very loved pet to become less and less intimidated by an electronic device that doesn't even know she exists. Because there's simply no way to tell an animal that inanimate objects mean them no harm.

And while it's kind of funny for a moment or two, eventually you start to feel like a real jerk for keeping such electronics around. Has anyone out there had similar issues with their pets and gadgets?

While everyone is up in arms about US ISPs such as Comcast instituting bandwidth caps that'll keep you from downloading all the sweet, sweet data that you want, what about telcos in Japan? Well, they're going to start instituting caps as well. Oh, the horror? What is it, 25GB a month? 50GB? No, actually. NTT Communications is going to start instituting an upload cap of 30GB… per day. I'm pretty sure if I was uploading at max speed at all times I couldn't hit 30GB a day.

The cap is being put into place to control a small number of users who have set up file sharing servers and are pumping out far more than that a day. If you're a downloader, don't you worry, no download cap is going to be put into place, so feel free to continue using the hell out of that gorgeous 100Mbps connection of yours.

Sure makes that Time Warner download cap of 40GB per month seem stingy as hell, doesn't it? Stupid jerkface American ISPs. [Ars Technica]

We're more than a little excited over the prospect of inexpensive liquid lenses, even if Varioptic's first outing with the technology isn't all that mind-blowing. The initial devices on the market will be the S1300 and S2000 AF SnakeCams (yeah, they're pretty typical webcams featuring 1.3MP and 2MP resolutions). But starting at just $20 per unit, the technology is every bit as inexpensive as Varioptic originally promised. Here's hoping it's just as good, too. [Varioptic via Engadget]

Poor Spidey. His disembodied head suction-cupped to your windshield, forced to hold your mobile devices with his face. That's no way for a superhero to go out. On the plus side though, this little plastic gadget will give you a unique place to store your cellphone while keeping it at eye level in case you receive a call. Plus, it will only set you back $17.

[Gadget4all via Geekalerts]