If you were to ask someone whether he or she could create a battery out of wood a few decades back, chances are you would be on the receiving end of an incredulous look, as though you were a mad alchemist from the Dark Ages who is trying to create gold from normal metal. Fast forward to the 21st century, and we have word that scientists have discovered a method to create a ‘green’ battery using wood. This battery is said to be relatively long lasting as well, as they charged and discharged the sodium-ion battery hundreds of times, and it still remained intact after that.

The brains from the University of Maryland have come up with this particular “green” battery that relies on a sliver of wood that is covered with tin. Sodium will replace lithium, where the latter is one core “ingredient” that can be found in many rechargeable batteries. The thing about sodium is this, it does not keep energy as efficiently, but rather, this ‘green’ battery is capable of storing massive amounts of energy at any one time, similar to how solar energy works at a power plant. Wood fibers were used since they are flexible enough to enable the sodium-ion battery to last for over 400 charging cycles, clearly making this as one of the longest lasting nanobatteries to date. As to how this will change the way batteries are developed in the future, it remains to be seen, but exciting times are definitely ahead of us.

Remember when you were a kid, and getting a bicycle was one of the biggest dreams you had, so that you need not walk down the street any more to get to your friend’s house, but rather, you could just cycle down in a jiffy? Growing up, the motorcycle was next, and cruising along with that smug look on your face while the wind is beating back against your hair is another unforgettable feeling. A Kickstarter project that needs to raise $120,00 in 20 days’ time (having already picked up a quarter of that amount) is now making its rounds online, where the final electric two-wheeler is known as the Scrooser.

Best described as an “urban mobility solution for the environmentally conscious individual”, the Scrooser will definitely earn you curious looks, as it comes across in a sexy and efficient design. It is said that if you were to ride in Eco mode, the Scrooser’s single battery charge is able to last for up to 25 days within an urban environment. You do not need a license nor a permit to ride this puppy, and it could end up being one of the more revolutionary urban people movers to cover short distances if it makes the cut big time. With German engineering spearheading this effort, I myself am tempted to drop some serious coin on the Scrooser.

They say that a dog is a man’s best friend, and while we have seen our fair share of gizmos released that make life easier for the humans to manage their pooches, some of us “use” dogs instead – and there are times when such “usage” turns into abuse, and sends these dogs into what Cesar Millan would call the “red zone”. I would like to think that majority of the dog owners out there treat their canine friends as family members, and stick with them for life, but sometimes, circumstances in life do lead us to make some very painful decisions. Kendrick Perkins, a relatively successful NBA player, has decided to take to Twitter as a method of selling his English bulldog on the microblogging network, where he posted a bunch of ads and photos, hoping that one out of his 55,000 followers might want to own his bulldog.

His pooch was going for $1,500 a pop, which is a relatively expensive price for a bulldog (at least in my experience), but when you take into consideration who was its previous owner, the amount pales into insignificance. I mean, no one would want to buy my glittering glove for $10, but see how much they are willing to fork out for that glove that the late Michael Jackson wore?

It is just a matter of one week before Microsoft rolls out the first official public preview version of Windows 8.1, and along with that, you will also find the first preview of the Internet Explorer 11 browser. Microsoft has just announced plans that they will offer a $100,000 bounty to whoever is able to discover and obviously, report exploits in the latest operating system update as well as Internet Explorer 11 browser.

The three new bounty programs will kick off from the moment when the public preview of Windows 8.1 rolls out this coming June 26th. The biggest one would be the Mitigation Bypass Bounty, which obviously carries the $100,000 reward to developers who manage to find, in Microsoft’s words, “truly novel exploitation techniques” in Windows 8.1. It would be interesting to read the fine print to see what “truly novel exploitation techniques” mean. As for the other program, it is known as the BlueHat Bonus for Defense, where it offers up to $50,000 for “defensive ideas that block a qualifying mitigation bypass technique.”

Last but not least, there is the maximum $11,000 bounty for anyone who finds “critical vulnerabilities” in the public preview where Internet Explorer 11 is concerned. [Press Release]

It has been a long time in coming for those who have been looking out to bring home the massive 55″ OLED TV, although you would need to live in South Korea if you were to be able to enjoy this puppy. This move is in step with the general market, where Samsung’s bitter rival, LG Electronics Co., has already started to receive orders for a similarly sized OLED TV in January earlier this year. We first took a look at the 55″ OLED TV from Samsung at CES 2013 earlier this year, and apart from that model, Samsung too wants to release an OLED TV that will feature a curved display in South Korea too, from next week onwards.

LG Electronics ain’t doing too bad for themselves either in their home market, having rolled out a similar revolutionary model that boasts of a 55″ curved screen in April earlier this year, making it the first of its kind in the world. Right now, we do not see any other competitors in this particular arena just yet, as the South Korean firms are the ones who seem to spearhead this particular market segment at the moment. [Press Release]

Here we are with yet another appcessory for the living room by the folks over at Logitech, where it is known as the Logitech Harmony Ultimate Hub. The Logitech Harmony Ultimate Hub is an appcessory that has been described to transform your smartphone into a powerful, personal universal remote, and it can even be purchased as a standalone product. Having said that, the appcessory is right now part of the Logitech Harmony Ultimate and Logitech Harmony Smart Control, where those two happen to be the latest universal remotes from the Swiss-based hardware manufacturer.

With the the standalone Harmony Ultimate Hub, all those living under the same roof as you are able to download the free Harmony Smartphone App, transforming their respective smartphones and compatible tablets into a personal universal remote. Imagine customizing your own activities and picking your own set of favorite channels icons, where you get to enjoy a greater degree of personalization unlike ever before. Your smartphone will wield the ability to control up to eight home theater devices, and a simple swipe or tap your thumb across its screen will let you adjust the volume, change the channel, fast-forward or rewind, pause, play, and skip forward or back. It even plays nice with video services such as Netflix on game consoles. The Logitech Harmony Ultimate Hub is tipped to arrive in the US and Europe sometime this August for $99.99 a pop. [Press Release]

Modern day smartphones tend to be all touchscreen, with very little room or space left for physical buttons other than the On/Off function, a volume rocker, and for some, a Home button. The camera shutter button is a very important piece in a device’s design if you were to ask me, as sometimes, taking self portraits with the rear camera can be quite challenging if you were to hold the handset while leaving it to chance by touching the screen, being a hit and miss situation. Things get worse if you can only hold the handset with one hand, and the phone itself is relatively large and heavy, it can be hard to get a good grasp overall. Relying on audio cues alone won’t make the cut, which is why we are pleased to announce that the Sony Xperia Z, which lacks a camera shutter button, has received a mod from xda-developer member black97one that will use the volume down key to snap photos.

This particular mod also opens up the door to capture photos in fast capture mode from standby. Those who are interested will be able to check out the mod as well as its installation instructions here. Since a video says more than words ever could, why not check out the YouTube video above as well?

You cannot teach an old dog new tricks, but if you were to take an old program into consideration, things could be very much different. We all know that no companies will be able to progress in the right direction forward if they were to remain stagnant at where they are, so it is not surprising to hear that the folks over at Twitter are far from finished when it comes to polishing what TweetDeck’s interface can offer for the masses, by offering web and desktop overhauls recently. This time around, we have heard that Twitter has just updated the Chrome and web versions of TweetDeck, where grab handles will allow users to drag and drop columns according to their fancy.

Not only that, life is made easier as one can jump back to the top of a column whenever you come across unread tweets, while there is also a selected column which will snap to the sidebar should there arise a situation where there are fewer than three total columns on the display. Right now, the spanking new interface will fall under the Web-only, but we are keeping our fingers crossed that folks who prefer the native Mac and Windows apps would be on the receiving end of some matching upgrades sometime down the road.

Word on the street has it that Best Buy has issued a recall for up to 5,100 units of MacBooks, especially after a recent spate of reports that some MacBook replacement batteries have caught fire. Good thing those torched MacBooks did not happen to cause any potentially fatal situations, but why wait until something terrible happens when prevention is clearly better than the cure in this case? According to AP, Best Buy started to contact customers individually and asked them if they would be more than happy to accept a battery replacement, or if they are willing to take their chances, to receive a Best Buy gift card for the value of the replacement battery instead.

Best Buy issued a statement as well which reads, “Best Buy Co. is voluntarily recalling both black and white ATG lithium-ion replacement batteries for the notebook computers. The batteries were sold online or shipped to customers through its Geek Squad services from September of 2008 through June of 2012 for about $50.”

So far, a total of 13 reports have been sent to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, touting that the Best Buy batteries happen to catch fire, with one consumer having suffered from a serious leg burn. Would you choose a Best Buy gift card over a battery replacement?

They say that a picture speaks a thousand words, so in a short clip of five seconds or so, you can more or less cram in a few thousand words with ease. Extremely short videos seem to be catching on these days, with online services such as Instagram having reported that they would be debuting a spanking new video product tomorrow. What is Vine going to do then? Obviously, the folks over at Vine are not going to sit back, fold their arms and legs and bury their heads in the sand. No sir, it seems that Vine has a repartee already ready to get going, by teasing upcoming features and design tweaks via short Vine clips, with one of the examples being shown above.

Co-founders Dom Hofmann and Rus Yusupov have already posted a couple of Vines which do seem to drop clues about some new additions in Vine, such as the ability to record multiple Vines simultaneously as well as save draft copies of Vines. We do hope that these new features will deliver some vintage Vine videos down the road, instead of ending up with a dud.