Unveiled in Sony's native Japan today, the next version of the PlayStation Portable will feature touchscreen controls, two built-in cameras, and play games sold on small, dedicated flash cards. Due for launch at the end of 2011, Sony has yet to come up with an official name for the new handheld, instead referring to it by the codename "Next Generation Platform" or NGP for short. No word on price, but boy, will it be packed with features.

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San Francisco plays hosts to some very entertaining events and the Edwardian Ball, an extravaganza of Steampunk and Goth expression, is certainly one of them. Turning heads amongst the crowds this past Saturday was this innovative space man who combined a retro astronaut suit with goldfish bowl, complete with swimming, living gold fish. The effect is rather dream-like isn't it? Wonderfully shot by Mark Day, he promises to upload more scenes from the fantastic event in the coming days on his YouTube channel. 

A new accessory coming to the iPhone will turn the smartphone into a dermatoscope, allowing doctors to evaluate moles and keep visual records for later diagnosis or consultations with their peers. The Handyscope from Fotofinder is a shell that slides over the backside of the iPhone, adding a 20x magnified lens. When placed directly to a patient's body it illuminates the skin with polarized light and uses a housing and lens shape that keeps a consistent distance and focus, making it easier to compare one set of photos with another.

Despite police raids, court convictions, and a proposed change of ownership The Pirate Bay, the web's leading torrent site for illegitimate copies of movies, TV shows, and software, continues to sail on, much to the annoyance of Hollywood studios. This weekend the Swedish torrent directory made plans for a second website with fear.themusicbay.org. Currently the webpage offers a simple "comming soon" message, but the hint sent out to torrent community sites is that this will be a new venture devoted to music.

In typical nose-thumbing fashion, the new site is expected to launch on the anniversary of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents the recording industry worldwide. While other file-sharing networks have done their best to promote themselves as working to offer legitimate services or at least to operate within a perceived set of guidelines, The pirate Bay has stood out for

Wishing you were hob-nobbing with the stars in Park City, Utah right now? Well you can get an online taste of the Sundance Film Festival through the YouTube Screening Room which has partnered to offer an on-going selection of new films over the next few weeks that will include twelve shorts from the festival, four short films from the Sundance Director's Lab, and four shorts that have been chosen as "career-starters". [More]

When you make the decision to start smoking, you're trading in on more than just your health, you're also trading in on your looks. This is the message of a new social networking campaign by the Ontario Lung Association which is using their Facebook page to offer access to digital aging software that will age your looks to show what the effects of smoking will be on your face down the line. There's a catch I'm afraid, the association doesn't own the aging software, instead they have arranged to get 500 free licenses for it and so only the first five hundred people to visit the Facebook page and enter in the promo code "nosmoke2011" can try it out for free. Others can visit Age-Me.com for a free trial before having to purchase digital tokens or the application itself for $9.99.

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One of those overlooked gems from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, 360kid.com snagged this video report of new Hot Wheels technology coming out later this year. The Mattel Video Racer places a tiny camcorder inside the toy car and an equally tiny view screen in the undercarriage. Press the record button and send the car off and speeding and the camera will record the journey from the driver's point-of-view. You can play the video back on the tiny screen or connect it up to a computer to share with your friends. An accessory will allow you to mount the car on a helmet, bike, or skate board so you can also use it to record your own action adventures. Very cool, should be one of the hot toys for 2011. [More]

If you've been using your Facebook profile to share your personal phone number or home address with friends, you may want to rethink that choice. This past weekend the popular social network advised companies that develop games, apps, and other Facebook add-ons that they can now access phone numbers and addresses from users' profiles as part of app's functionality. The caveat is that such applications will have to ask permission from users first. The change wasn't revealed through the Facebook Blog where many users might spot it, but rather through Facebook's developer's blog.

In the announcement they explain that, "Because this is sensitive information...These permissions must be explicitly granted to your application by the user". Here's a sample of what the privacy controls look like. 

Update - Due to all the concern voiced by users, Facebook has decided to "temporarily disable" the feature upon further review.

We're coming up on that time of the year when people start to get the snowy blues, or suffer from seasonal affected disorder as it is referred to. Valkee in Finland has decided they might be able to cash in on the trend with a system that uses illuminated earbuds. The explanation they offer is that, in addition to our eyes, the brain can also detect external light through our ears. Increasing your exposure to light is one way to counterbalance the decrease of sunlight during these months that contribute to a sense of gloom and mood change. Valkee proposes that, instead of simply adding an extra bright white lamp to the room you spend time in most, you insert of pair of LED lights into your ears, and to that end they've created their own MP3 player which adds the lights to a set of earbuds to include music in the mix. [More]