Well, we suppose the first two Orange Box mods we saw were Portal-related, but a love for Half-Life 2 is really implied in anything Valve-related, and this here Team Fortress 2 case mod feels like the end to a beautiful, Orange story -- or perhaps the beginning of another. We'll confess, we got our ass handed to us enough times in TF2 to make it a rare incident when we'd even make it to a Dispenser, but there's love for this glorious blue box all the same, and TiTON has certainly done his homework in building the thing. Props all around. Now can someone swap to medic and give us a little backup over here?

The folks at SETI@home have put out a desperate plea for the community to bust out those quill pens and start writing strongly-worded letters to congress persons. Apparently the Arecibo Observatory, the world's largest radio telescope and SETI@home's data source, is being threatened with some massive budget cuts. Given that a replacement for Arecibo won't be online until 2020 at best, folks are understandably upset. Turns out Arecibo is also one of the best shots we have at detecting an earth-threatening asteroid before it's too late and we have to sit through another Elijah Wood movie on the subject. You know what you have to do.

[Thanks, Brian]

Look, this top ten celebrity child-rearing tips list of ours is gonna make it to the top, we just know it, and we're tired of hitting up family members to get stories out of the single digits. Luckily there's a better way. The robotic Digg arm -- which appears to be slightly or entirely fake -- refreshes a page, detects Digg badges on the screen, and then moves the cursor over them to "manually" Digg the stories. Apparently the bot can Digg 1500 stories a day, but we're gonna need some more evidence than this joke vid (embedded after the break) to be convinced of this bot's actual, welcomed existence.

[Via Make]

We're still a bit unconvinced about this whole "using our own energy to induce motion" thing, but if you got restless leg or some other siren call to the bicycle, the Lithium Vivi RX-10S seems the way to go. Panasonic is launching the bike in Japan this August, and stuffed in some fancy hybrid car-style regenerative braking to set it apart from the pack (though Sanyo does have something similar). There are four levels of assistance electric motor assistance, which means you're probably going to end up peddling now and then, but the bike's range with regenerative braking to power a secondary battery is almost 78 miles, compared to 56 miles without it. You'll obviously benefit more if you have a lot of hills and "stop and go" type stuff on your commute, but that's certainly nothing to scoff at.

If you're a lazy ass consumer (the very best kind), bent on pulling a device out of the box, plugging it into a wall, and never messing with another bit of "setup" again, you're certainly not alone. In fact, most folks never lift a finger to calibrate their displays, plug better speakers in, or place those speakers in actually advantageous spots. To that end, Mitsubishi is debuting its new LT-46149 and LT-52149 LCDs with integrated 16-speaker sound projectors. Similar to the sound bars offered up by many home audio manufacturers, the "Integrated Sound Projector" (iSP) is designed to bounce sound off walls and around the room to give the illusion of surround sound. The perk of TV integration is an easy to use room configuration on-screen tool to specify your room's dimensions, couch placement and preferred sweet spot size. At the end of the day, your sound is all coming from one spot, so directionality isn't going to quite match a for-realsie surround sound setup, and the system we listened to was a little sharp in the high end, but it's certainly a unique and appealing offering from Mitsu to the everyman TV watcher. The TV itself is CableCard ready, can support sound over HDMI and PCM inputs, and offers Mitsu's 120Hz film dejuddering -- that rather awkwardly makes your favorite films look like they were shot by a TV news crew. The 46-inch and 52-inch LCDs will sell for $3,299 and $3,699, respectively.

Look, how many times to we have to explain this? Lasers + headbands = a very good time. We're not sure what you don't get about that, and frankly we're a little disappointed. Alzheimer's patients like laser headbands (laserbands, for short, artist's rendition above) just fine, since the technology is providing a potential way to scan and diagnose brains for Alzheimer's while the patient is still alive -- doctors currently have to rely on symptoms for diagnosis, and a post-mortem look at the actual brain tissue to know for sure after the fact. There are still a few kinks to work out, but this could be a big breakthrough for the detection and treatment of Alzheimer's, and the fashion ramifications are unimpeachable.

Look, we've heard our fair share of PSP phone rumors, and there's really no reason to trust this one any further than your average baseless musings, but if Marketing Week's "sources in Japan and Korea" can be trusted, Sony's PSP phone could be hitting shelves as soon as Christmas 2009. What does seem clear to these shady sources is that Sony won't be forking over the PlayStation branding to its Sony Ericsson partnership, and instead will build its PSP phone all by its lonesome. Other "details" from "analysts" are slightly less legit-sounding, with some stating it would be "relatively easy" to work phone features into the PSP since it already includes WiFi. Um, ok. Still, reasonable or not, this is clearly a rumor that will never die -- until Sony builds the dang thing, in which case we can start talking up a sequel.

[Thanks, Alex]

It's official, MVNO lone survivor Virgin Mobile is picking up the struggling Helio from SK Telecom and Earthlink for a cool $39 million in Virgin Mobile USA stock. They expect the deal to close in Q3 2008, pending regulatory approval. The acquisition comes as no surprise, but it's still sad to see the one true innovator in a mostly doomed MVNO space fall to that pesky little "completely failing to make money" thing. The good news is that it while the Helio brand will be phased out, Virgin Mobile isn't just in this for the 170,000-ish subscribers it'll be picking up. They plan to leverage Helio's technology and content offerings, not to mention the willingness of its customers to pay a few extra bucks for the perks, to build the Virgin Mobile brand into new spaces -- spaces which hopefully prove profitable and Ocean 2-ey.

It's not every day we get to glimpse a brand new experience from Dell, and while Studio might just be near-XPS laptops in everyman clothing, that certainly seems to be a good thing. The laptops appear to combine the power of XPS and the prices of Inspiron, with some new perks like HDMI out and slot-loading drives to keep things fresh. The laptops tend a little thicker than their XPS counterparts, and the fact that these are hitting just before Centrino 2 might be cause to hesitate, but otherwise we're getting the feel from these reviews that the Studio line just might be the consumer lineup to beat if you can dig the design quirks and a little bit of bulk.

Read - NotebookReview, Studio 17 ("Hard pressed to find a better 17-inch notebook in the same price range")
Read - CNET Reviews, Studio 15 (7.3 / 10, "We'd be tempted to save up a few extra dollars for a thinner, lighter XPS.")
Read - PC Mag, Studio 15 (4.5 / 5, Editor's Choice, "Retaining many of the XPS's qualities while selling it for Inspiron prices.")
Read - Laptop Mag, Studio 17 (3.5 / 5, "For $1,599, you'll get plenty of multimedia muscle.")

You know how we love plug-in hybrids around these parts, particularly if they're actually going to get built -- crazy, we know. Now it looks like Volkswagen is going to get into the game, with a "Twin Drive" Golf powered by a 122 horsepower diesel engine and 82 horsies of electric motor. The car should debut around 2010, and VW plans on spending $769 million on the project, helped along by a $23.5 million program put in place by the German government to help along such development. The car, which uses the electric motor for primary power, supplemented by the diesel motor and regenerative braking for extra juice, should be able to squeeze about 31 miles out of its Sanyo-developed lithium-ion batteries in all-electric mode.

We got a look at some engineering prototype versions of Dell's new Studio 17 and Studio 15 laptops, so while they might be lacking a minor bit of polish here or there compared to the real versions, Dell certainly had these up and running a good couple months ago. We're not totally blown away by the design, but it's certainly a step in the right direction for Dell, and a few elements (like the hinge) even seem to be taking some cues from Lenovo's ultra-designed IdeaPad line. There's no denying that the Studio 15, with its flush-to-the-edges keyboard strikes a more stunning figure than the slightly bleh Studio 17 version, but neither one is quite as thin as we'd like, and the material doesn't quite shake off the cheap plastic feel of Dell's Inspiron series. But hey, color (and graphic) lid customization is fun, and you're still going to be hard pressed to beat Dell's prices. Pics are below, and we apologize for the blurring: a few unannounced products snuck into the shots, but hopefully we'll be hearing more about those shortly.

Alright, this one is no surprise, but Dell is finally officially official about its leaked and re-leaked "Studio" laptop line. The specs are as previously stated, with a 15-inch Studio 15 model starting at $799, and a 17-inch Studio 17 model that starts at $999. What is perhaps more interesting than rehashing those laptop specs for old times sake is the new software Dell is pushing to these laptops and eventually the rest of its computers. Dell Dock is just like what it sounds, a program launcher along the lines of the OS X dock, but with some app-categorization magic and fairly extensive customization. Dell is also doing up Dell Video Chat, in partnership with SightSpeed, which integrates some rather easy-to-use video chat (powered by those integrated webcams on the Studio Laptops) with VoIP and IM for a pretty compelling alternative to Apple's iChat. In all it seems Dell's continued fascination with Apple is starting to really pay off for the end user, and those pricepoints are just as loveable as ever. Both laptops should be hitting retail in the next few days.

We spent some touching (get it?) minutes with the new LG Dare that's hitting Verizon Wireless today, and while we didn't come away from the experience a changed human being, we've gotta congratulate LG and Verizon for the obvious effort they've put into this unit. Particularly with the hardware the phone seems determined to differentiate itself from its iPhone competition, with helpful tactile feedback while typing, (almost helpful) handwriting recognition, video recording (in slow-mo, if you'd like) and even editing, and the beefed-up photo taking capabilities that a 3.2 megapixel sensor and built-in flash provide. The basics aren't too bad either, with a sturdy and bright screen, peppy EV-DO Rev A., expandable memory and a flush 3.5mm headphone jack.

Verizon Wireless isn't kidding around with this new Dare phone from LG: it'll hit Verizon's online shop tomorrow (the 26th) for $200 with a $50 rebate, and then land in retail on July 3rd. We've had little time to get accustomed to its touchscreen mug, unlike Sprint's long run-up to the Instinct, but Verizon and LG have certainly done their homework. There's a whole lot to chew on here, so we're going to drop it on you bullet point style:

Hardware:

• Dimensions: 103.9 x 55.6 x 13.8 mm (that's 0.54-inches thick for us yanks)
• 3-inch, 240 x 400 touchscreen LCD with "Vibe-Touch" tactile feedback
• Rev A EV-DO
• 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash, autofocus and exposure control
• 120 fps slow-motion movie record mode
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• microSD up to 8GB
• Proximity sensor for switching off the LCD when against your face
• Light sensor to adjust LCD brightness automatically
• Accelerometer
• 3D graphics acceleration, supports app transitions and rotations

Software:

• "Full HTML" browser (barely) with page overview and zoom functions
• V Cast store and VZ Navigator
• Cover Flow-alike music app
• 51 possible apps, 11 app "drag & drop" shortcut menu
• Shortcuts draggable to home screen
• Graphical favorites menu, drag icons to pertinent task like message, call or edit
• Contact list includes search ribbon and filtering
• Text input via QWERTY, predictive keypad or handwriting recognition
• Drawing pad includes colors, pen widths, eraser for scribbling and picture "editing"
• Background music listening
• Video editing, picture editing, panoramic stitching

Phew, these guys really packed it in. Stand by for our hands-on impressions.

We got a first glimpse of Mitsubishi's brand new rear-projection-ish laser-based TV tech, LaserVue, back at CES, but now the sets are just about primed for action, and should be hitting store shelves, as previously noted, Q3 2008. LaserVue will debut in 65-inch and 73-inch, with the 65-inch version hitting the scene first. Mitsubishi is still pretty coy about what exactly makes the technology tick -- other than the "zomg, lasers" aspect -- but is quick to point out the 200 percent color gamut that LaserVue provides, more than twice that of most traditional HDTVs. The sets also run at 120Hz, and boast 500 nits of brightness. Head to head against LCD and plasma sets we had trouble finding the differences, other than the color depth (particularly in the reds, almost too much so, though we're sure you can tweak that). Have no fear: the blacks are black, the brights are bright, and the viewing angle puts DLP to shame. That said, we're hearing price points are going to be more comparable to plasma and LCD than DLP, so Mitsubishi might have its work cut out for it in convincing consumers that these new "chubby," 10-inch thick TVs are the way to go. We're not entirely convinced ourselves, though one aspect can't be disputed: LaserVue draws under 200 watts, about half that of LCD and a third of plasma.