Japanese company Soken showed off a wall made entirely out of 12x12 inch, 0.1mm thick e-ink paper displays at the FDPI conference in Yokohama this week. Called “Twist Ball,” after the rotating fine particles the paper is made of that change when voltage is applied, Soken's e-ink vaguely represented something made out of tacky Christmas wrapping paper.

Even if it doesn't look so great, the technology behind Soken's e-ink is pretty impressive. The company is currently trying to make their displays show more than two colors at a time, which means that, maybe in the future, we'll be able to highlight on our Kindles. [Wired]

Sony has released a minor update to firmware 2.5 on the Playstation 3, which should be showing up sometime tonight. No. 2.52 fixes a test entry issue that some titles had and improves the “playback quality of some PS3 format software.” Users are already reporting that some things, like Trophies, are loading faster with the new version. [Kotaku]

It's been less than two weeks since T-Mobile's G1 hit shelves, and Android's already been jailbroken. Folks over at the xda-developers forum discovered an easy way to start telnet on the device, log in as root and get full system access and read and write. While the Googlephone is nowhere near as restricted as the iPhone, there were apparently still a few walls that needed to be broken down and now, anything goes. Check out modmygphone for the full list of jailbreak instructions. [modmygphone - Thanks Kyle!]

Sure, election coverage is getting the most play tonight, but we're equally (well, almost) invested in the destruction of everybody's favorite mediocre consumer electronics chain – Circuit City. A tipster has sent us a sneak peek at Circuit City's severance pay, and it's not pretty. Part-time associates get an extra 75 cents an hour, full-time and home entertainment associates get a full dollar, and supervisors recieve a generous (NOT) extra $1.50 per hour. Even better, employees can't transfer to different stores and must stay until the very last day of liquidation to get the bonus. Those who are about to end their jobs as disgruntled gadget jockeys, we salute you. [-Thanks Tipster!]

Those of you who watch CNN have probably noticed the neat multitouch screen the anchors have been playing with since the beginning of the election season. Now that all the votes are coming in and we're literally counting down to the big reveal, the news network has given a shout out to the man behind the Magic Wall—Jeff Han of Perceptive Pixel.

Han first showed off his wall at an entertainment and design conference known as TED, where he charmed the CNN crew enough to take his product mainstream. The crew bought an eight-foot long version of his wall, which became an instant hit—garnering about as much screen time as Wolf Blitzer and inspiring parodies all over the place. But what I want to know, and what the article unfortunately doesn't touch on, is... where do I get my own? [CNN]

If you are like most Americans tonight, you are probably tuned in to CNN, analyzing everything you see—even those television screens about the Magic Wall. And if you're looking over the wall, you might catch Family Guy running on screens above all that red and blue. It wouldn't be the first time we'd catch these guys goofing off during politics. I wonder if this episode is the one that Peter becomes the president his own nation? If so, it’s certainly fitting. [Thanks Joe!]

Hypochondriacs should be comforted to hear that scientists have developed a card-reading device that can test blood, urine and saliva for diseases and illnesses instantly. This medical card-reader uses the giant magnetoresistance principle, which means it can diagnose diseases from bodily samples just as a computer would collect data off hard disk drives. Because it is currently the size of a desktop computer, this device will not be available for commercialization as of now. So, if you're too impatient to find out whether or not you tested positive for gonorrhea, and you just can't seem to keep it in your pants in the meantime, please use a condom. Thank you. [Gearlog]

CNN's holographic election coverage is fancy pantsy, but how did they manage to send 3D 360 degree footage of virtual correspondent Jessica Yellin from Chicago all the way to the station's election center in NY? As Arthur C. Clarke says, Magic. A magic made possible from technology Vizrt and SportVu with the help of forty-four HD cameras and twenty computers. Here are the details.

On the subject's side:
• 35 HD cameras pointed at the subject in a ring
• Different cameras shoot at different angles (like the matrix), to transmit the entire body image
• The cameras are hooked up to the cameras in home base in NY, synchronizing the angles so perspective is right
• The system is set up in trailers outside Obama and McCain HQ
• Not only is it mechanical tracking via camera communication, there's infrared as well
• Correspondents see a 37-inch plasma where the return feed of the combined images are fed back to them. Useful for a misplaced hair or an unseemly boogar
• Twenty "computers" are crunching this data in order to make it usable

On the HQ side:
• Only used on two out of 40-something total camera feeds that CNN has
• Wolf Blitzer really loves it (or loves Jessica Yellin):

It's still Jessica Yellin and you look like Jessica Yellin and we know you are Jessica Yellin. I think a lot of people are nervous out there. All right, Jessica. You were a terrific hologram.

• The delay is either minimal, or we've gotten used to satellite delay that we don't even notice now
• An array of computers takes the crunched info feed from the subject's side in order to mesh it with the video from Wolf's side.
• Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the images are actually "projected" onto the floor of the CNN studio so that Wolf can actually talk to the person, you know, in a face to face. So it's not quite Star Wars just yet. Only after computers merge the video feeds together do you get a coherent hologram + person scenario

We've seen Tesla crashes before, but none as severe as this current one. How did this one happen? A sales director was showing a potential buyer how the super fast, super cool electric gadgety vehicle cannot take wet turns at over 100MPH. Better showing than telling, we always say. Luckily neither suffered extensive injuries. Who's up for trying it again at 90MPH? [Wrecked Exotics via Jalopnik]

Today's silicon solar panels absorb about two-thirds of the light that reaches them, but a new nanocoating developed by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute gives most run-of-the-mill solar panels the ability to capture almost every drop of sunlight. Not only does it grab 96.2% of the sun's rays, but it can do it from any angle, so there's no need for panels to waste energy by mechanically tracking the sun in the sky. This is happy leap forward for solar technology, whose quest for cheapness has been long and hard.

I said it's one coating, but it's actually seven, each between 50 and 100 nanometers thick, made of silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide nanorods that can be vaporized and deposited on "nearly any photovoltaic materials." PhysOrg compares the tightly hugging nanorods to "a dense forest where sunlight is 'captured' between the trees." There's no word yet on the deployment of this process—it's barely a year since its chalkboard conception—but this efficiency means lower cost to acquire energy, which means solar power is more viable than ever as an alternative to fossil fuels.

I hate pigeonholing myself as one of those wide-eyed Trek fans who thinks that alt energy will radically change the way we live our lives and help us get on with impulse drives, synthehol and breathable spandex formalwear, but seriously, this is my kind of breakthrough. [PhysOrg via Kurzweil AI]