You see an awesome looking Alien figurine, and even better, it has a USB cable attached to it, which can only mean that it’s a USB storage drive, or a USB hub, right? Apparently not. While an Alien figurine is certainly awesome, all this little Alien does is stick its illuminated tongue out at you. It might scare your 5 year old younger brother, but that’ll probably be about it.

It looks like Twitter has taken another small step towards world domination. Now Vodafone has extended its Twitter options in the UK by introducing a new service that will allow Twitter users to retweet messages via SMS. Customers will be able to send “RT twitter username” to 86444. The texts will be charged at the standard network rate, so make sure you don’t get overboard with your Twitter addiction, or you might be facing a rather hefty bill.

While the PS3 is a very good gaming machine, the built-in web browser is certainly nothing to shout about. Granted the PS3 wasn’t designed to replace your computer as a web browsing machine, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a better browser. Would going around the Internet is that Sony is in talks with Mozilla to port Firefox over to the PS3. Of course, this is still firming in the rumor bin at the moment, but we’ll have to sit back and see how this works out. Stay tuned!

While it’s not all that hard to swap out your current 2.5-inch internal hard disk and replace it with a spanking new SSD, some folks will probably shudder at the idea of swapping out the very item that holds their data. Imation looks like it’s trying to ease that fear with the introduction of its SSD Upgrade Kit, which will enable users to copy out exiting files from the existing drive to the new SSD, swap in the new SSD and after that, convert the older drive with the SATA-USB bonus case so you can access your previous hard drive like you would any USB drive. Drive options are 64GB and 128GB. The M-class drive is $110.99, while the M-Class Upgrade Kit will set you back $194.99.

We’re not sure whose dream it is to have a Jabba the Hutt cake. A Princess Leia cake we can understand (and appreciate), but a cake of a slimy green alien? You’ll probably prove yourself to be one of the most fanatical Star Wars fans if you’re happy to wolf down this cake. You have to give it points for effort though, right?

If you’re looking for a mini spy camera, the Mega Mini Spy Camera Ultra might just fit the bill. It might not be as small as those pinhole cameras that are used to fill up the pictures in the gossip column, but it’s still fairly small. For $199.95, you can pick up the black or silver version, with other colors to be released soon. The Mega Mini Spy Camera ultra can record 30fps video at 640 x 480 resolution into the bundled 2GB microSD card, voice activation, and it supports microSD cards up to 16GB. Of course, if spying isn’t your thing, you’re still welcome to use it as a web cam and audio recorder.

It looks like Google has just made YouTube a lot more accessible to dead and hearing-impaired people. With automatic captions (auto-caps) in YouTube, captions can be processed through Google’s automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology to offer automatic captions to the videos. It uses the same voice recognition algorithms used in Google Voice. Of course, the captions certainly won’t be perfect, but we’re sure they’ll be a big help. It’s currently only able to insert captions on English language speech, but Google has been cool enough to offer users the choice to use its automatic translation system to read the captions in 51 languages, now how cool is that? Check out the official details here.

With electric vehicles become more and more common, the XO2 electric scooter shouldn’t surprise anyone based on it being powered by electric. One of the more interesting features of this electric scooter is that you can fold it up and bring it in to your apartment for charging. Granted it’s still pretty big when it’s folded, but if you’re going to keep it in your house to keep it away from the thieves, you’ll be grateful that it can shrink itself a little. The scooter sports between 60km/h for the XO2 50 Urban and 105km/h for the XO2 125 Urban. You’ll be able to charge the scooter to about 80% within a few hours, and get about 50-70km out of it. There isn’t any information on pricing or availability just yet, but stay tuned, and we’ll update you as soon as we get wind of those details.

Is DNA the next big thing for online dating sites? Well, apparently dating sites think so. Sites such as ScientificMatch and sense2love want to take into account chemical attraction and bring it back into the fold. Those sites seem to be banking on the theory that people are attracted to partners who have different immune systems than their own. So if you suddenly decide that it’s time to try this out, you’ll need to shell out $2,000 for a lifetime membership, and you’ll be given a DNA collection kit which you can work with and send back to them. Somehow, traditional dating seems a little more natural though, don’t you think?

Microsoft has finally given out some details regarding its next browser – Internet Explorer 9. It seems that the main thing that they will be touting is the boost in JavaScript speed, which has always been far behind the other browsers. Apparently JavaScript speed is almost as fast as competing browsers. Aside from then, the Acid3 scores have improved from 24/100 to 32/100, but it’s certainly worth noting that Chrome and Safari score 100/100 and Firefox 3.6 beta hits 92/100. Regardless of whether IE9 can match the other browsers or not, it’s still good to see Microsoft actively working on improving IE, rather than just letting it hang stagnant there like IE6 did for so many years.

A research lab over in Japan has come up with a rather useful tool for nurses and mothers alike – the self-powered diaper monitor system. The device has a self-powered sensor/transmitter, powered by a built-in battery that can generate electricity following a chemical reaction in the presence of urine. It’s still in a prototype mode, but you can be sure that they’re working on this. Maybe in the future we’ll see this implemented into hospitals, no?

A pilot project called FlashTrack has been launched by the Thomas Edition State College, in Trenton. So instead of loaning out books or something similar, the college has decided to offer FlashTrack courses, where the given thumbdrive will have all the relevant data that students need, including the proper applications to assist them. Not too shabby, eh?

If you’ve ever tried moving stuff to the next block armed with only a bicycle, you’ll know that it’s an extremely frustrating affair. Well, the Bicycle Cargo design certainly looks like it can tackle the problem, as long as you’re able to stay safe on such a bicycle design, of course. Would you consider trying this the next time you move your house?

If you’ve ever thought of trimming your hedge in the most noticeable fashion, the person behind all of this must certainly agree with you. After all, how do you describe a person who gets someone to operate a crane to lift him and his lawnmower over the hedges to give it a trim? The funny part is that apparently one of the people involved is nursing a broken hand, but that wasn’t due to a fall from the mower.