I recently had the misfortune of being in a grocery store with someone who felt the need to shout into her phone. From half an aisle away, I could catch up on her old roommate, who tricked her boyfriend into marrying her. Two aisles away, I heard about her weekend plans. Ice cream aisle, the foot fungus plaguing her mother. It felt like she was broadcasting to the entire store that she was important.

There are currently debates raging about whether cellphones should work mid-flight. Every time I hear about an airline possibly extending the network to planes, I think about my "friend" in the grocery store.

But there are a few more things to consider. My take on the in-flight conversation after the jump.

Archos follows its competent media players — the Archos 5 and Archos 7 — with the Archos 9 PCtablet. Instead of a 5- or 7-inch screen, this one has a 9-inch touch-sensitive display, and its new-found versatility makes the 22-ounce unit more netbook than mere media player.

It's packing more power than its brandmates, employing the latest Intel Atom Z515 processor, with storage choices consisting of either a 60GB or 120GB hard drive. Thankfully, instead of Archos's own clumsy operating system, this one comes loaded with Microsoft Windows 7.

We're hoping Archos has improved that touchscreen, which we found a bit cumbersome in the Archos 5 and Archos 7. Whether its resistive touch system will be as responsive as other advanced capacitive touchscreens remains to be seen. The company hasn't announced pricing yet, planning to ship the PCtablet this Fall. Here's the Archos press release:

Samsung, the company that feels good about brand-spamming its customers with untold hundreds of barely-different cellphones, finally differentiates itself with the first cellphone equipped with a night vision video camera. Samsung says the SCH-W760's infrared camera is perfect for users to videoconference in the dark.

We weren't aware the kids these days are calling those nocturnal interactions "videoconferencing," but hey, we do our best to keep up. Like you see in the pic above, this technology might be great for shooting videos of owls, and other night creatures.

Other than that 3-megapixel night shooting trick, this 3G slider is fairly conventional, using a 2.8-inch AMOLED display with 240x400 resolution. Available in Korea first, Samsung isn't saying if it will find its way Stateside, but we're guessing this see-in-the-dark cellphone tech will soon be widely available.

Akihabara News, via Electronista

There's only a couple of days until we gaze at explosive eliminations, jaws agape while vocalizing ooos and aaahs rivaling those coming out of a streetwalker's boudoir. But what makes them work? The fireworks, that is.

Those colorful detonations are chemical-laced bombs, carefully configured for explosive effect, and launched with lift charges from mortars, with fuses lit by brave souls wearing fire suits. Sometimes, they're lit by computers and remote controls.

We got to see 10,000 of these bombs lit, fired and launched, up close and personal last year. It was unforgettable.

Via Gizmodo

It's the hottest month of the year, and now it's easier than ever for cyclists to stay properly hydrated with the Bottleclip. It snaps right onto your bike frame, and its standard-sized bottle cap interface lets you attach just about any container with a screw cap onto it — even that 40-ounce Colt 45.

This makes sense, letting you use just about any bottle of your choice rather than some elaborate water bottle and a holder. The design concept is cheap, light, and unfortunately, not available yet. But like most great ideas, this one has a good chance of seeing the light of day. Two more pics:

If you're like us, you long to be a master grill chef. This summer, elevate the art of grillery from start to finish by taking advantage of the highest technology. No more rough estimates of when the meat is done, no more haphazard tossing of raw meats onto the flames, throwing caution to the wind and wondering when everything is done.

Grilling in the 21st century has evolved way beyond just holding meat over a fire with a forked stick. Once you have your high-tech grill in place, you'll want only the best gadgetry to precisely turn that raw animal flesh into grilled nirvana. We've found the right tools for the job, certain to turn even the most ham-handed backyard cook into a master outdoor grill chef extraordinaire.

Bow down, people, and worship your new leader, the SCRATCHbot. Cute little critter, isn't he? This biomimetic rodent robot has been developed by the Bristol Robotics Lab and the University of Sheffield and could be used to rescue people from disaster zones. And it's all got something to do with the bot's whiskers.

SCRATCHbot, which stands for Spatial Cognition and Representation through Active Touch, uses a technique called active touch sensing. The "rat"'s plastic whiskers sweep the area in front of its nose to work out the size and shape of the object in front of it — useful in places where there is low visibility, such as smoke- and dust-filled rooms.

While not quite as real as this guy, the SCRATCHbot will be able to do one thing that its real-life counterpart can't, and that's clean up after itself. So, the closest ordinary citizens like you or me will come to this technology (unless we're being rescued from a towering inferno) will be when our robot slaves are pushing around the vacuum cleaners of the future, while we while away our time watching bad disaster movies.

Via Daily Mail

The usual spy camera devices out there require that you either harness some ungainly contraption to yourself, or don some accessory that may not stand out but definitely won't win you any style points. The new Spy Button Camera from Thanko allows you record all the spy footage you want while maintaining a semblance of fashion sense.

The camera is attached to a 4 gigabyte USB drive that easily plugs into your computer for video/audio transfer after you're done shooting. Perhaps the coolest thing about this set-up is that it is activated by a very unassuming ring that is worn like any other piece of jewelry. You can pick up your ultimate spy rig for 5,980 yen ($61.78) here.

Via Akihabara News

China's Spring Airlines is in a bit of a pickle. The air carrier has enjoyed a steady increase in passengers since its start in '05 thanks to low fares (which means next to no complimentary in-flight amenities), and now its fleet of 13 planes can't handle all the prospective customers. The airline already has 14 new jets on the way, but that's not enough, officials say.

The solution? Make passengers stand! Well, not completely, but close enough. "It's just like bar stools. The safety belt is the most important thing. It will still be fastened around the waist," Spring Airlines' Zhang Wuan told China's CCTV. The new arrangement, according to Spring Airlines, would allow 40% more passengers on every flight and help reduce the carrier's cost by up to 20%, which would in turn lower fares.

Spring Airlines president Wang Zhenghua may even want to take the idea further, after talking with China's vice premier, Zhang Dejiang. "He suggested that, for a lower price, passengers should be able to get on a plane like catching a bus, with no seat, no luggage consignment, no food, no water, but very convenient," Mr. Zhenghua said.

That kind of reasoning is entirely opposite to most airlines, which seek to recoup losses through luxury services and optimized routes while still providing comfort. Still, it's just a proposal for the time being. Spring Airlines wants to submit its plan by the end of the year.

Via Sky News

Browsing a newspaper on an Amazon Kindle DX has a lot of advantages over doing it for real. Riding the subway into Manhattan this morning, I managed to get through a dozen articles in the Wall Street Journal without flipping a single page. But as I stumbled upon a piece on Chinese drywall while clicking around the Personal Journal section, it dawned on me that this is the kind of article I probably wouldn't even notice in the print edition.

Why? Simple: Page layout. The design of the page — including position, headline size, and the number of columns — would have subtly encouraged me to read other articles before that one, or possibly skip it altogether. Curious, I picked up a hard copy of the Journal to confirm if the paper's diligent copy editors working late last night agreed with me that Chinese drywall was, well, rather dry. And there it was, stuck on the bottom of page 2 with a fairly small headline.

Of course, those visual cues are lost on the Kindle's screen; the drywall story is the top story on page 2 of the PJ section on the DX. Stories are typically ordered first to last in a section, with few hints as to their relative importance. Sure, the ones up top are on the front page of that section, but beyond that all articles are created equal in the Kindleverse.

Does this matter? Do the benefits of a gadget that does away with paper, delivery, and all the hassle and expense that go with them outweigh the tradeoff in graphic design? And what can the next generation of e-readers do to improve in this area? Browse the photos beyond the Continue jump that compare the paper journal with the DX's section lists, and let us know what you think in the comments.

In a recent foray into the deep South, we spotted a plethora of Ford F-150 trucks, but none like this. Chris Lentz of Michigan strapped an M-701 turbojet to his pickup, and the result? A 2,700hp jet truck, even crazier than that jet cycle we showed you last month.

Fed by a 20-gallon kerosene tank, the $10,000 jet engine develops that impressive 2,700hp only when it's going 516mph. Because of the vehicle's 6,600-pound weight, it takes a while to get going, but we can imagine it might be able to go plenty fast given the right conditions.

Never mind those pesky details of 0-60 acceleration and weight — the guy is driving a jet truck! Is this street legal? Hardly. It might be a bit problematic if you follow too closely. Here's a video of this monster truck in action:

Just when we got used to the new iPhone OS 3.0, Apple rolls out a beta of version 3.1. Top of the list of this bug fix is the ability to nondestructively edit video. With the current OS 3.0, if you trim the beginning or the end of the clip and save it, those edited parts of your video are gone forever. In OS 3.1, you'll have the option to save a copy of the edited video, leaving the original intact. But wait, there's more:

• Voice Control now works over Bluetooth
• Faster boot time
• iPhone vibrates when moving icons
• Updated AT&T profile to 4.2
• Updated modem firmware to 5.08.01
• Improvements to OpenGL and Quartz.
• APIs to allow third party apps to access videos and edit them.

Developers are getting the beta software and firmware now, but the official release date for the rest of us iPhone-totin' suckas is unknown.

The iPhone Blog, via Geeky Gadgets

Kitchen islands are common in roomy seven-bedroom split-levels, but they're not a staple of your average downtown studio apartment. That could change if the Modern Space Saving Mini Kitchen catches on. Created by students at French design school Ensci, the all-in-one kitchen island combines all your essential kitchen appliances into a single piece of furniture, including a sink, range and cabinets. All done with your meal and cleanup? Transform! Everything in the island folds up and tucks away, leaving just a sleek white block that you can use as a desktop.

The idea has some merit, especially for small spaces in big urban centers. The design is probably too modern to work in a lot of apartments — in the photos below, you can see it really clashes with the hardwood floors. But if it gets back a chunk of floor space, what the hell?