A lot of designers have taken a minimalist approach when it comes to wall clocks these days, and China’s Yiran Qian certainly fits into that category with his “Vice Versa” clock. However, being gadget geeks, we do appreciate the inclusion of a digital interface on the hands. It’s a truly unique way to blend the aesthetics of an analog clock with the functionality of a digital. It’s only a concept at this point, but I wouldn’t mind glancing at this clock in the morning when I’m running late. [Designboom]

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Alex Roy was just recognized as the record holder for driving from NY to Santa Monica pier in 31 hours and 4 minutes, besting the time set by “David Diem and Doug Turner clocked in a Ferrari 308 during the 1983 US Express run” of 32 hours and seven minutes. That’s 89MPH for over 31 hours. What’s made me especially proud is that Alex wrote about automotive laser jammers and radio scanners for Gizmodo under a previous regime. The seven time world rally champ avoided cops and find his way with a dash full of gadgets, including multiple scanners, jammers, detectors, and other mods on his BMW M5. Equipment is documented in the video above, but one thing not emphasized is that the guy had a plane spotting police activity en route.

The actual time was verified by gas station timestamps on credit card receipts and by Jalopnik editors who witnessed the start and finishes, but Guinness won’t have anything to do with verifying illegal acts. The actual race happened a little over a year ago, but Alex couldn’t tell anyone of his exploits until the statute of limitations was up in all states he drove through. Congrats to Alex for his spectacular performance. For all the details, there’s more at Jalopnik [Departure, Finish, the Record and Gear]

PS Ray Wert, editor at Jalopnik ends the coverage on a sober note, wondering how many more times this record can be beaten before people start dying.

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Lightning. It just goes about it’s business–mocking us. We have always known there is potential there for an alternative energy source, but harnessing that power has proven difficult. However, an inventor names Steve LeRoy may be on the brink of changing all that with a device that generates lightning then harvests the resulting energy. The prototype can generate bolts 3-feet in length, but that is only enough electricity to illuminate a 60-watt light bulb for 20 minutes. However, LeRoy notes that a full-scale version has the potential to power 30,000 homes for a day with just one lightning bolt. Impressive. With that kind of juice you could easily get a Delorean fitted with a flux capacitor up to 88mph. [Buisnessweek via Sci Fi Tech]

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Instead of paying hundreds to thousands on a custom adapter to fit a 35mm lens onto a camcorder, you can now build your own for relatively little cash. Although the end result looks weird and has a horribly messed up weight distribution, your videos that come out of it will look great—as demonstrated in the 35mm test video footage above. Why would you want to do this? To narrow your depth of field for dramatic effect. If you think your grandpa blowing out his birthday candles was cool before, imagine it when barely anything is in focus! [JetSetModels via Boing Boing Gadgets]

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MP3 player alarm clocks are nothing new—but MP3 alarm clocks that allow you to use the player as a joystick toggle control definitely are. If this concept design titled YOM by Philipp Goeder ever sees the light of day, you would be able to do just that. When the MP3 player is inserted into the USB port on top, it can be used as a joystick that can be shifted right, left and forward to toggle through playlists. It seems that the YOM would work best with a player with a narrow form factor, and there would be a little hand-eye coordination challenge in the morning, but it is an interesting design nonetheless. [Yanko Design]

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The folks from Skydeck just received a written notice from Verizon Wireless for an opt-out system for sharing your call records to third-party advertisers. Unless you call them and opt-out, Verizon will sell what numbers you called, how often you called, and your call length with “authorized companies,” which includes their “affiliates, agents, and parent companies.” Although it doesn’t include your own name, number or address, something like this should be opt-in, not opt-out. If you’re a Verizon customer, call 1-800-333-9956 and tell them you want to opt-out. Why should you let Verizon get even richer off your data for nothing in return? [Skydeck via Crunchgear]

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Greenpeace has slammed Apple once again on environmental issues, claiming that scientific tests they arranged uncovered hazardous chemicals in the iPhone. I’m sorry, but I have a hard time believing that Apple is the only phone maker that has these toxic chems, considering that the plants that iPhones are built in also make Nokias and Sony Ericsson phones too. Apple doesn’t just say “Hey, put this poison in phones”—They’re just a high profile target of these treehumping-nazis. At least take the entire industry to task if you’re going to do something like this. And require that no Greenpeace workers and volunteers ever use another cellphone again, or any oil in their boats, or any gasoline in their car as they drive to their treehouses. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but we’re all a part of this, and unless they have a fix, like some hemp circuit boards, I don’t want to hear it. [Edited to rant by BLam]

Analysis revealed that the phone contains toxic brominated compounds (indicating the presence of brominated flame retardants (BFRs)) and hazardous PVC. Of the 18 internal and external components tested, half the samples returned positive for brominated compounds—including the antenna, which amounts to 10 percent of the total weight of the flexible circuit board.

This isn’t the first time Greenpeace has been all up in Apple’s face about their supposed lack of commitment to becoming a green company. If you recall, Steve Jobs talked of a greener Apple in the past, but Greenpeace wasn’t buying it. So is Greenpeace being unrealistic in their desire to make Apple “green to the core,” or should Apple do a better job of eliminating these hazardous chemicals in their products? Or should we just forget about the environment, enjoy our gadgets and tell these hippies to stop bumming us out? [Greenpeace - thanks Mike!]

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Today Fabrik announed that they are launching a pro line to accompany their designer line of drives released last year. The Simple, Pro, and Pro Duo all have features such as a stackable design, security locks, eSata (Pro and Dual Pro) and Raid 0 (Pro only) connections. The eSATA connection transfers at 445 Mb/sec while transferring with eSATA and Raid 0 bumps speeds up to 856 Mb/secHowever, the bigger news is that Fabrik also launched a new online backup service that efficiently backs up the content of your hard drives to a server.

Fabrik Ultimate Backup is designed to run in the background, sensing when CPU usage is low, and using that time to upload data to their central server. Because the software isn’t built into the drive, Fabrik Ultimate Backup onkly works when the computer is running. A variety of parameters, such as file types or specific folders, can be used to determine what gets backed up and Ultimate backup constantly scans for new updates. The files can be reverted to a saved state up to 30 days prior and can be accessed remotely from the web. But it should be noted that files can only be accessed from one computer.

Each Fabrik hard drive purchased comes with a lifetime allocation of 2 GB of online backup. Unlimited backup space is $4.95/month and is compatible with any hard drive, not just Fabrik models. But you do need a PC to run the software. The Pro line of hard drives range between 250GB-2TB of space and will cost between $100-$800.

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At its developer forum in Taiwan today Intel showed off its Penryn-based quad-core mobile chip we heard rumbles of in April that’s set to drop in the latter half of 2008 as part of its Montevina chipset, which will be replacing Santa Rosa. They also bandied about some new cooling ideas, like one based on compressor tech—think fridges and ACs—that’ll drop notebook temps by 10 degrees Celsius.

The chip will run at a power envelope 45W, which AppleInsider notes is higher than its mainstream thermal design power of 35W, so its processing jujitsu—they demoed it running Enemy Territory: Quake Wars—will suck up a requisite amount of battery juice.

Aside from showing off external cooling units using compressors, like a notebook stand and cooling system, and demoing how they could be built into a laptop’s heatsink and fan setup, Intel also talked up a material that air can pass through but liquids can’t. It’d be useful for letting air come in through a notebook’s keyboard for cooling while keeping your coffee from also reaching your computer’s guts, allowing for more flexibility in notebook design. Unfortunately, this mystical material probably won’t hit production systems for another year or so as Intel refines the necessary voodoo to produce it. [Apple Insider]

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The Xbox 360 is finishing up its second year on the market, which means this is the perfect time to get in on all the great titles coming out this holiday season courtesy of Gizmodo. From Mass Effect to Lost Odyssey to PGR4 to Halo, it’s hard to beat the amount of games on 360. Plus, when you throw in an HD DVD player addon, you can watch a crapload of high-def movies as well. Here’s how you can win the two.

Send an email to contests@gizmodo.com with the subject “Xbox 360 and HD DVD contest”. We’ll pick a winner at random on October 22. Standard Gawker contest rules apply.

Sponsored by Xbox 360 HD DVD: Your center for home entertainment.

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