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In theory, snowboarding in the dark sounds like a fool's activity, but Swedish energy-drink company Burn makes the idea cool in a wild video called "Black Snow."

In the short vid, we observe seasoned European snowboarders Stale Sandbech, Ulrik Badertscher, and Gigi Ruf riding a futuristic artificial-snow course filled with LED-infused rails and obstacles set against a pitch-black night. Before the action kicks off, a voice channels Jeff Bridges' Kevin Flynn character in "Tron" and emits a solemn sentence: "When you find your passion, it will light up the darkness ahead." That's followed by a healthy dose of futuristic techno music. … Read more

Cleaning a TV screen seems easy. Windex, right? Wrong. Most modern HDTVs have special coatings on their surface that can be ruined by strong cleansers.

But at some point, every HDTV screen needs a good cleaning.

Here's how.… Read more

Here in Albuquerque, we have a 5-feet-to-pass law. You need to give cyclists that much room when you go around them in a car. It's easy to visualize when you have marked bike lanes, but some drivers push the limits on unmarked streets, especially at night.

If bicyclists carried their own bike lanes with them, it might help alert motorists to give them proper room. That's where Xfire's clever Bike Lane Safety Light comes in. The light uses two 5mW red lasers to create bike lane markings and five red LEDs for increased visibility overall. … Read more

Hewlett-Packard is adding a new thin X series monitor -- this time a 24-incher.

The new HP x2401 24-inch-diagonal LED backlit monitor has an 11-millimeter profile encased in a glossy black-piano finish and brushed-metal case.

Sporting a resolution of 1920x1080, it taps MVA (multidomain vertical alignment) to deliver good viewing angles and 5,000:1 and 10,000,000:1 static and dynamic contrast ratios, respectively.

DisplayPort and HDMI ports are built in. And wall mounting is also possible.… Read more

On one side, there's 4K: four times the resolution of your current TV. LG, Sony, JVC, and others have all announced or shown upcoming 4K displays.

On the other, there's OLED: Organic Light-Emitting Diode. Significantly better picture quality than your current TV, plus lower energy consumption, and even thinner cabinets.

So what's more exciting?… Read more

One of the things I take for granted as a TV reviewer is the translation from model number to things like screen size, model line, display type, and so on.

I've gotten a few e-mails lately from people looking for help trying to decide between similarly priced models, with radically different model numbers. Are they similar? What does the alphanumerical soup mean?

While model numbers change yearly (or sometimes even more often), there are a few guidelines you can use to help you sort out the what from the what.… Read more

Adding blinking lights to anything is a surefire way to make it totally obnoxious. For some of you, that's a good thing.

Here are two techniques you can use to add sound-reactive lights to your stereo, boom box, computer, or pretty much anything that makes music.

The first option is to use something like an EL Wire Sound Kit. These are sold online from various places and include some combination of electroluminescent wire, a power adapter, and a special power inverter that drives the wire's power in response to sound picked up by an integrated microphone.

The whole … Read more

This year the gap between the picture quality of the best LED/LCD TVs and the best plasma TVs has grown wider than ever. Unless you're interested in overspending for buying a Sharp Elite, there's no 2012 LED TV that can come close to the picture quality of even midlevel plasmas like the Panasonic TC-PST50 and Samsung PNE6500.

But maybe you're simply not interested in plasma. If that's the case, then check out the following list of 2012 TVs that (A) employ an LCD panel illuminated by LEDs and (B) perform better than most such TVs. The list doesn't include the Elite and the Sony XBR-HX929 simply because they debuted in 2011; both are excellent performers, still current and exceedingly expensive. It also considers picture quality only, so if you're interested in seeing the best LED TVs overall, including some that scored well according to our other TV reviews criteria, here ya go.

The list appears in descending order of picture quality.… Read more

We live in a world full of LED lights, but the everyday illuminated fixture simply can't inspire like the Water Light Graffiti art wall.

Created by French artist Antonin Fourneau and his team at the Digitalarti Artlab studio in Paris, this piece proves that when you mix modern technology with traditional art, something quite compelling can happen.… Read more