Believe it or not, America's favorite holiday is under a fortnight away. And this year, it looks as if Toys R Us won't even wait for Thanksgiving Day to conclude before forcing employees behind registers and breaking families apart as they seek out lukewarm deals camouflaged as revolutionary purchases. This year, Black Friday begins at 10PM on Thanksgiving Eve, meaning that quite a few desperate souls will be lined up in a parking lot rather than circling a stuffed bird and chuckling with loved ones. The culprit? Two devices in particular. The first is an unnamed 7-inch netbook, complete with WiFi, three USB sockets, a sub-two pound weight, a red chassis and a mind-scrambling $79.99 price tag. The second is a 7-inch Sylvania tablet, sporting Android 2.1, WiFi and an SD card slot; we're assuming it's the same unit Kmart is hawking for $180, but Toys R Us will have it for the low, low price of $139.99. Other hidden treasures include a Vivitar point-and-shoot for $39.99, 7-inch Coby digiframe for $24.99 and a Vivitar pocket camcorder for just $19.99. We know your gears are already turning, but lest we forget that time with family is priceless... right?

[Thanks, Dave]

Well, that was brief. Just a few short months after InstantAction went public with its embedded browser-based gaming platform at GDC 2010, the Oregon-based startup has gone belly-up. If you missed out on what this here outfit was offering, you clearly aren't alone -- but for the historians in attendance, we'd invite you to revisit our hands-on for an overview of what was planned. Unfortunately, the company has yanked all of its Vimeo clips detailing the system's features, and its website now affirms that the service as a whole is "no longer available." We're hearing that it'll be selling the underlying Torque Game Engine (and presumably that fancy "chunking" tech that enabled games to be played in a browser with just a broadband connection), but based on the tepid response so far, we're guessing it won't fetch much. We definitely saw a bit of promise in the concept -- after all, browser-based games like Solipskier are all the rage in some circles -- but bona fide console / PC games simply don't fit that mold, or so it seems.

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green.

This week we were blinded by the light as researchers unveiled a way to transform city trees into luminous streetlights using gold nanoparticles. We also showcased a mesmerizing paper LED structure shaped like a tree at Tokyo Designers Week, and speaking of stellar architecture, check out this stunning star-shaped Taiwanese tower topped with a built-in wind turbine.

In other news, strap on your rollerblades and hang tight - from the Department of Questionable Transportation comes the FlyRad, an insane electric unicycle that pulls you down the street at 25 miles per hour. Meanwhile, the city of Toronto is doing their part to preserve the environment by rolling out a fleet of garbage trucks that can be powered by the very waste they collect. Finally, the University of Rhode Island signaled a bright future for efficient transportation as they unveiled four designs that could tap the United States' 2.7 million miles of roadways for solar energy.

This week we also looked at several new applications for futuristic manufacturing technologies - a dutch designer has pioneered a way to create 3D printed shoes that fit feet perfectly, and researchers have found that activated carbon cloth is a quicker picker-upper for toxic waste. Finally, with the holidays on their way, this week we rounded up our top ten green gadget gifts for 2010!

We all knew this would inevitably happen, but seeing it in action is something else -- the Kinect transformed by the power of open-source drivers into a true 3D video camera for capturing oneself. UC Davis visualization researcher Oliver Kreylos fed the streams from his peripheral's infrared and color cameras into a custom program that interpolated and reconstructed the result, generating a mildly mindblowing 3D virtual reality environment he can manipulate at will. And if it makes him look a little bit like the proficiently penciled protagonists in Take On Me, that's just the cherry on top. Don't miss the videos after the break to see what we're talking about.

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Oh, e-readers are e-readers. And tablets are tablets. And surely the twain shall meet. Indeed, they already have, with the iPad hosting not only its own integrated bookstore, but client software from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and others. Barnes & Noble, in turn, describes its new Nook Color as a "readers' tablet." But these devices and their affiliated digital bookstores are all chasing the same avid readers of bestsellers. These readers read mostly for leisure or self-directed enrichment as they can fit it in to their schedules.

But those who sell e-readers and tablets would really like to tap into a market of people who have to read versus want to read -- not just the low-stakes novellas of Amazon singles, but hefty, cumbersome, expensive, perpetually obsolete tomes that are assigned to 19 million full-time college students annually. The National Association of College Stores estimates that the average full-time college student spends nearly $700 per year on course materials. For the 2008-2009 school year, the average new textbook price was $64. And the mean gross margin on course materials for a college bookstore is 27 percent.

That is a prize worth pursuing. But can a device dedicated to the way students study survive amidst an onslaught of tablets from every corner of the PC, consumer electronics and cell phone industries? Kno thinks the answer is yes.

Along with a Sony Ericsson Anzu, the James Bond of cellphones -- alias Eldar Murtazin -- claims to be playing with a Samsung GT-i9100 right now, calling it the "Galaxy 2" and saying it's "so technically advanced" thanks in part to a dual-core processor. It seems like a long shot that this would be the Cortex-A9-based Orion since chips and development boards are just now being sampled -- but considering how far in advance Murtazin tends to score phones, we can't rule anything out.

One possible scenario is that the i9100 could be something akin to a TouchWiz-skinned version of the upcoming Nexus S, much as HTC's Desire was essentially a Sense-skinned version of the Nexus One. Samsung, of course, has been pushing TouchWiz very hard across its Galaxy S line this year, and if the Nexus S is as beastly as the rumors are claiming it to be, there's little doubt that Samsung would love to repurpose the hardware for something with a little more of its flavor thrown in. Speaking of the Galaxy S, keep in mind that the original European GSM model goes by the code GT-i9000, so it would stand to reason that the i9100 could be the proper successor -- and with Gingerbread-based TouchWiz and a dual-core processor on board, we'd say they're off to a strong start.

[Thanks, Peter]

What would you name your next superphone? HTC may be calling its device the HTC EVO Shift 4G, as that's the name its lawyers filed for trademark for on the 21st of last month. We can't say which particular gizmo the moniker refers to, though it evokes a Sprint leaning, as well as dredging up our suppressed feelings towards a certain QWERTY-equipped MID. Though, interestingly enough, the company applied for "HTC EVO 4G Shift" before changing the name to "HTC EVO Shift 4G." We'll let you draw your own conclusions about what that could possibly mean.

[Thanks, Naval P.]

Yes, Verizon's calling them "Windows 7 mobile devices," but the underlying message is clear -- Verizon's tossing the Windows Phone 7 CDMA ball squarely into Microsoft's court. There are no CDMA-ready smartphones running Microsoft's latest mobile operating system (save the late-blooming HTC 7 Pro for Sprint) and Verizon doesn't intend to take any of the blame for that. You're up, Microsoft. Time for a three-point basket.

P.S. We suppose this could also be a coy reference to CDMA-ready Windows 7 tablets.

[Thanks, Daniel R.]

£999.99 ($1,612) for a Toshiba Folio 100?! That's a fair bit more expensive than its original $560 price point -- either its Tegra 2 chip's made out of gold (which would explain its rarity) or someone got super bored at that PC World store in the British Midlands. Soon after receiving this photo, we put on our detective hat and headed over to our local branch in London, only to find that it had already stopped selling the offending Android tablet merely ten days after its European launch. We quizzed the staff about the aforementioned £999.99 pricing and then all was clear: apparently this is a standard internal convention to stop its folks from selling certain products, so the price tag and display unit you see above weren't supposed to be there at all. Oopsie!

So why is PC World (and the whole DSG International chain) pulling the Folio 100? Turns out this has nothing to do with Toshiba; but it's simply because of a high return rate from disappointed customers. In fact, head over to MoDaCo and you'll see a screenshot of PC World's internal memo that confirms this sad news. We had already given the tablet some decent (and disheartening) hands-on time back at IFA, but since our new friends at the store kindly offered to let us unbox a Folio 100 for a giggle, we decided to give it another go. And boy, it sure was a letdown: you'll see in our hands-on video after the break that the 10.1-inch LCD is haunted by an inferior pixel density plus narrow viewing angles; and the cheap plastic casing doesn't help, either. Most importantly, the official Android Market app was still MIA, which is no doubt the biggest turn-off for the buyers. Too bad, Toshiba, but do come back next year when you have Honeycomb and some decent screens.

[Thanks, John L. and Adam C.]

Update: Some commenters are pointing out that many software bugs -- especially in the Toshiba Market Place app -- and the lack of pinch-to-zoom in the browser are to be blamed as well. Yikes.

In our inevitable Utopian future (assuming we make it past this 2012 noise), we'll all use one frequency for our high-speed wireless broadband across the globe. Actually, we'll probably just beam information directly between our brains and brain-like supercomputers at speeds so fast they can't be measured, and we won't need smartphones at all because they'll be installed in our bodies at birth, complete with eyeballs capable of 1080p video capture. Until then, though, we've got companies like Nokia showing some hustle to put pentaband 3G radios on the market, and the trend continues with the upcoming E7. Of course, we already knew it was going to be pentaband -- Nokia had said as much -- but seeing it in the cold, hard graphs and tables of an FCC filing is still music to our ears. Won't be long now, folks.

You know, our readers are really awesome. Super awesome. Not only are you guys really smart and funny, but you're wildly creative -- and there's no more compelling evidence for that argument than the video in this post. Based on nothing more than an Engadget Podcast rant, commenter (and podcast listener) Michael Jacob created an amazing parody trailer for the non-existent film The Gadget Blog. And that image up top? Created by commenter AWartinger! If you're not familiar with the source material, go back and take a listen to our most recent 'cast, but for the rest of you, enjoy the hilarity below.

November 3rd came and went without a Gran Turismo 5 game to play, so as you'd imagine this gorgeous Titanium Blue PS3 launch bundle also failed to see the light of day. However, now that we've got a totally plausible and twice-confirmed November 24th release date for the little uber-realistic racer that could, it's probably fair to take Sony Japan at its word that we'll see the commemorating console appear without further delay. Tell your Japanese importer to line up on November 25th if you want one with your name on it, and be sure to hand him at least ¥35,980 (about $436) of your rainy day fund.

Well, it seems we finally know why TiVo was waxing poetic about software in recent months -- it's the way the company primarily plans to charge for its DVR hardware from now on. Following a week-long experiment of free-on-contract DVRs conducted last month, TiVo's opening up subsidized and partially subsidized pricing tiers to the entire US for those willing to chain themselves to a pricier $20 monthly fee. You can now get a TiVo Premiere for $0 on a two-year contract or $100 with a one-year arrangement, or pick up a TiVo Premiere XL for $300 on a one-year deal -- the same price the regular old 45-hour TiVo Premiere cost originally. TiVo's also kept the original $12.95-a-month plans around in case you want to pay full price for your hardware, which would normally make better financial sense after about three years, if not for the fact that there are still lifetime subscriptions available for $400 if you're truly in it for the long haul.

We're all for expanding our buying power in this arena, but there's one group of customers who are liable to get mighty pissed at the new arrangement -- the regular Joes and Janes headed to Best Buy right now to pick up a $99 TiVo Premiere "on sale." You see, retailers apparently didn't get the memo about the new tiered pricing and are advertising the arrangement as a $200 discount instead, which leaves TiVo's fine print the unenviable role of explaining that they're going to pony up $20 a month from now on.

2.1.2 When purchasing a TiVo Premiere box from a third party retailer at $99.99 (includes an instant $200 savings off MSRP) for the TiVo Premiere box or $299.99 (includes an instant $200 savings off MSRP) for the TiVo Premiere XL box, you may only subscribe to the TiVo Service on a monthly basis for $19.99 a month with a one (1) year commitment (renews monthly after one year).

Choices, choices.

[Thanks, Daniel and Chris R.]

Remember that time when you sipped some herbal tea and thought, "I really want a pink gold ring?" Yeah, that was some good tea alright, but the brainiacs at the University of Southampton have actually found a way to achieve this potential fashion trendsetter. The idea is simple: rather than coating metals -- especially naturally colored ones like gold and copper -- with paint, these folks alter their color by using an ion beam to carve fine patterns that are smaller than visible light's wavelength. The resultant metamaterial dramatically boosts the metals' light absorption efficiency, thus reflecting a different color depending on the pattern's radius and etch depth. So for instance, gold can reflect colors ranging from orange to red to green to brown with its ring pattern etch depth ranging from 85nm to 205nm, respectively. See? We told you it's simple, but there's also some visual aid after the break to wrap up this science lesson.

Clouds are beautiful things that fill our skies with wonderment, and as it turns out they make awfully good places to store our precious data, too. In that way European Union wants to make them even better, providing a €15.7 million (that's $21.4 million US) research project called Vision Cloud. It's set to tackle a number of related storage issues, including the ability to run applications within cloud storage, proper auditing and access restriction, and mobility of said data, so that it can be accessed from anywhere. IBM's Haifa, Israel think tank is going to be leading the effort, while Siemens and SAP will be playing nice too. Really, when you're getting paid to think about clouds, how would it be possible to not play nice?

Ioxus Inc. is an up and comer in the energy storage industry that has plans this Monday to announce a new hybrid storage device that it hopes will radically alter batteries used in the auto, medical, and consumer electronics industries. The teased product is said to be roughly the size of a typical C-cell battery and combines the fast charge / discharge benefits of ultracapacitors with the impressive energy-to-weight ratio of a lithium-ion electrode. As a result, Ioxus says the hybrid devices can store more than double the energy of traditional ultracapacitors and charge in a matter of seconds. The catch is that the hybrids have shorter life spans of 20,000 cycles compared to millions of cycles for typical ultracapacitors. We're also taking this with a grain of skepticism until these claims are proven in the field. Some brief digging though did unearth an article written by MIT researchers and published in Scientific American last year that discusses the possible benefits of supercharging lithium-ion cells -- which is encouraging.

The first iteration could be used to power a host of devices like off-the-grid lighting or power tools. Use in larger systems like the regenerative breaks of electric cars however won't be possible until the second generation arrives -- which the CEO pegged as sometime in the first quarter of next year.

Yes, the HP Slate 500 is officially backordered, less than a month after its enterprising debut, and Hewlett-Packard claims it's because of "extraordinary demand," a phrase that's presently not quantifiable. The long and short of it, though, is that you're not getting one by Yuletide if you purchase the pricey portable today, as you'll have to wait six weeks until they're ready to ship out. Still, if your budding business bought in on day one, there's still a chance it might arrive in time -- ours is due to our door in early December, if that gives you any idea. We've pinged HP for comment, and hope to hear back soon. We'll be sure to let you know just how "extraordinary" those sales numbers might be.

Update: We've yet to hear back from HP proper, but a trusted tipster with a contact inside HP spun us a very interesting tale -- HP reportedly only ever planned a limited production run of 5,000 units, and received orders for 9,000 instead. When demand outstripped supply, HP apparently had to re-hire production workers just to get the presses printing out tablets again, and are presently placating angry customers by offering them over $100 off their $800 purchase as apology.

[Thanks, Dan]

Folks on this side of the pond will unfortunately miss out on this one, but our friends in the UK will soon be able to get their hands on Elgato's new EyeTV Netstream Sat box and make everyone else a bit envious. It will not only let you stream Freesat satellite TV to any computer on your home network, but straight to your iPad as well with Elgato's EyeTV app (though not your iPhone or iPod touch, it seems). That sort of streaming has been possible before but, as Pocket-lint notes, you previously had to keep your computer on to stream satellite video to your iOS device. Look for the device to start shipping on November 22nd for £189.95 (or about $300), while the EyeTV app will set you back an extra £2.99.

We don't blame you if you fail to recognize this good looking fella. Just a quick recap: this is Mark Papermaster, the ex-IBM chip designer who stirred up a storm while transitioning to Apple, only to quietly depart the company 16 months later for reasons that we'll never truly know. Fear not though, folks, as word has it that the boy is back in town: Papermaster is now hanging out with Cisco's Silicon Switching Technology Group as its new vice president. Ironically, our man here will be responsible for making chips that power Cisco's switches, so it'll probably be more or less like his good old days back at IBM. Oh, and without Steve Jobs breathing over his shoulders.