We've seen our fair share of iPod speakers around here, and all too often they resemble boom boxes or clock radios (or sometimes both). Now, thanks to the combined efforts of EOps and industrial designer Michael Young, we finally have something that appears equally suited to the home, office and Korova Milk Bar. The i24R3 consists of an iPod dock / 40W subwoofer and two (upgradable to eight) 3-inch 20W satellite speakers, all in a fetching pure gloss white and aluminum casing. The whole shebang can be controlled with the included RF remote, from your iPod / iPhone or from any PC or Mac sporting iTunes and the included Wireless USB dongle. The base accepts a bevy of inputs and outputs, including RCA audio, video and composite video out -- and if that weren't enough, each speaker can be controlled separately using the included motion sensors, allowing hands-off volume and equalizer control. Something like that must be seen to be appreciated, so make sure you check out the video after the break. No price yet, but these guys should be hitting the street in early 2009.

[Via Engadget Spanish]

We're relieved, here's why: we don't have to report on this on-again / off-again relationship like we're a celebrity tabloid rag anymore. Around the same time it gave the thumbs up to Verizon and Alltel, the FCC also decided that timultuous lovebirds Sprint and Clearwire can finally get hitched. Their eventual offspring will be the WiMAX network they've been promising with a bunch of other partners -- the plan is to offer wireless broadband to 140 million people within 30 months' time, so today's a big day for WiMAX and corporate romantics everywhere.

As should be clear by now, patent application land is quite a bit different than actual product land, but that's never stopped companies from devising their share of ambitious ideas and, in the case of Apple, perhaps more than its share. Its latest describes an all-encompassing "personal area network" that would make use of RF modules in everything to communicate with each other and connect to the internet. That would include devices with both short range (WiFi and Bluetooth) and long range (GSM, EDGE, etc) communications capabilities, as well as devices with just short range modules, which would be able to communicate with and identify themselves to any other modules around and, potentially, piggyback their way onto the internet. Ambitious, to be sure, but we think Apple may have to come up with a catchier t-shirt slogan if they really want to sell it.

[Via Unwired View]

As the global economy curls up into the fetal position in the face of rising energy costs, we're as determined as anyone to be as energy efficient as possible -- as long as it's completely convenient, of course. Mi Casa Verde hopes to help with that with Vera, a Z-Wave / 802.11 hub with an exceptionally robust web interface for monitoring the energy usage of devices in your home as well as turning them off, setting up scenes, events and timers, and operating locks and security cameras. Since it's a low impact little device running a stripped down version of Linux, it operates on less power than desktop-based solutions -- a benefit that Mi Casa Verde claims makes it one of the few systems that save more power than they use. Its retail price will be competitive, with the box at $299 and a secure remote access gateway at $8 per month, but Mi Casa Verde is trying to entice would-be testers with a pre-street sale price of $149 and one year of free remote access service -- that option will be available through October 31st, with the final product available to conscientious tree-huggers (tech savvy and otherwise, the company hopes) everywhere on November 15th.

[Thanks, Dmitry]