By using advanced facial recognition technology, the monitor can tell when your eyes are on the TV screen, and keeps it turned on only when you’re actually watching. Jump to the 45 second mark on the video below to see an early prototype of the technology in action (or watch the whole thing to see some other cool Hitachi display tech from the CEATEC show)…

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Both Hitachi and Sony have been working on versions of the system, so maybe that lends it some added creedence. I’m just not sure how much power this will really save, especially now that more and more TVs are moving to LED backlighting, but I suppose every little bit helps. I also think I’d turn off this setting the minute I got up to the kitchen and tried to watch my TV from the other side of the room during the football game.

[via BBC News and Engadget]

Seriously though, computers waste a lot of energy while performing such tedious tasks. But fear not, Mother Earth, a bunch of geeks are working on an energy saving device that will maintain a computer’s essential functions while consuming as low as 10% of the power normally used by a regular PC.

Computer scientists at the University of California in San Diego and  *gasp* Microsoft Research have come up with the Somniloquy, a USB dongle that is basically a barebones PC, complete with an OS, flash memory, and network connectivity. The idea behind Somniloquy is simple: if your computer has to perform nothing but a single time-consuming task – downloading all episodes of Top Gear for example – Somniloquy will take over while your computer goes to sleep: “Somniloquy essentially takes over as the computer’s presence on the network while the actual PC is asleep by operating at the computers’ network interface. In effect, it impersonates the sleeping PC to other hosts on the network.”

What’s more, Somniloquy can wake up the “main” computer if needed. For example, if its flash memory gets filled up, it can wake up the main computer and transfer its files, and then tell the big guy to go to sleep again. The people behind the device hope to shrink it further so that it can be installed into a network card, and hopefully into all computers.

[via apc via GetUSB]

The Canadian game  just plain sucked; fortunately the DoE’s offering is better and more polished, plus the website has other fun activities for kids as well. The DoE game looks a bit like Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and Little Big Planet. In the game players guide a character named Watts as he gathers energy and tries to avoid coming into contact with “excuses” monsters. Awesome.

The excuses monsters embody the alibis that people say just to cover up their laziness when it comes to saving energy, such as when we leave devices plugged in or turned on even when they’re not being used. Those excuses monsters are strong too, and it doesn’t help that Watts is controlled using the arrow keys instead of the mouse, making jumping and aiming for platforms a bit tricky.  If you’re a kid, I mean. I mean I just totally went lightspeed with this game. I didn’t die twice at level 2 or get zero energy at level 3 or quit by level 4. I even managed to do a little grinding and some mini-games before killing the final boss. The uh, Excuses Dragon.

After crying because I couldn’t finish a basic platformer conquering the game, I tried out the wallpaper creation tool; it was pretty neat. And so was the wallpaper I created. OFF = WOOT.

Finally, I checked out the videos, which show a couple of kids trying to come up with excuses when asked why they’re not saving energy. The kid above denied that the non-Energy-Saver-lights-equipped room was his; he said it was Baron Davis’ room. I think you know what happened next. Unfortunately, the clip is an Epic Fail, because you don’t expect your kids to go and replace the lights on their room on their own do you? Oh you do? Well then you might want to direct your kids to the DoE website, and help them lose their excuse and start saving energy.

[via geeksugar]

The goal of the game is to help energuy – who is lazy but also possibly wasted or narcoleptic – save energy in his house. Basically, you click on stuff that are either energy-saving alternatives or areas where energy-saving modification is needed while a disembodied hand drags energuy to where you’re pointing.

As you can see, each time you click on something right, energuy suddenly becomes energized and celebrates quite intensely, even if you just pointed out where his bike is. Clear the level and you can move to another area of his house. I think. I didn’t finish the first level; I felt like I was wasting electricity.

[via computerlove]