hogs

Speakal has gone whole hog with its popular porcine speaker system, the iPig. Because bigger is apparently always better, meet the iHog.

The iHog takes any iPod or iPhone with a dock connector and makes oink-oinks with four speakers, a 20-watt subwoofer, and more than 28 watts of sound. It also has a 3.5mm jack to connect to a TV, game consoles, or other devices.

Though it weighs around 4 pounds, it's designed to be portable, and its rechargeable lithium ion batteries can power it for 10 hours.

You can touch the hog's ears to change the volume, and its head for playback control. There's also a remote.

The iHog comes in pink and white and is selling for $119.99 until September 30, and $139.99 afterward. … Read more

Packing lunch for your kids--or yourself--every day can get a little boring. But you can spice things up a bit and have some fun with these atomic food containers.

You probably won't convince anyone that your lunch is truly radioactive, but you'll at least have the most recognizable containers in the office, so Kevin from accounting can't claim he "accidentally" grabbed your leftover pad thai.

And despite the warnings emblazoned on the bowls, they're dishwasher- and microwave-safe. They even include a built-in air vent and date timer, so you probably won't poison yourself … Read more

Have I mentioned that I have five kids? Once or twice, right? Yeah, so, when you have a lot of kids, you need ways to keep them entertained. And the Moo Mixer totally does.

This fun mug comes in several different versions, but the basic premise is this: pour in your milk, add your chocolate syrup or hot chocolate powder or whatever you're adding to your drink, and press the trigger button on the handle to create a "whirling vortex of power" your kids will go crazy for. The Talking Moo Mixer adds a moo sound to … Read more

If you can't get your hands on an "Armchair Cruiser" (or don't have the guts), there's an alternative to pursue your Wild Hogs fantasy without excessive risk of bodily harm.

The "V2 Roadster" by Triketec is a tricycle on mega-steroids, turbocharged by a three-cylinder engine that can reach 92 horsepower with independent rear suspension. That may seem like a lot for a trike, but be aware that the V2 weighs 1,227 pounds, so it's not exactly something that can be hauled around on a bike rack.

Adding to its inconvenience is … Read more

There aren't enough down-to-earth, Web-based tools to help you visualize a greener home. The Green Building Studio is for architects, while Lucid Design Group's energy dashboard is found only in a slim number of buildings. Yahoo's Green House is pretty, yet it can't be personalized.

But I just wasted a fine chunk of the afternoon playing with a kids' Web site that makes a great model for what I'd like to see for adults. My Abodo is an excellent, Flash-based interface that walks you through building a virtual green home. Created in part by the … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif.--The biggest battery hog in your mobile phone is the screen, especially if it's a thin-film transistor liquid crystal display. (That's TFT-LCD, for the acronym loyalists out there.) Many of the companies gathered for iSuppli's Flat Information Displays Conference 2006 here are looking for ways around this. Some say that means using a different technology for the screen; others say there's no need to do so.

A company called Clairvoyante has come up with a different way to render pixels to save power, increase brightness and resolution and be able to show video … Read more