TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

I find the mirrored Apple logo on the back of the iPhone 4 to be convenient for the occasional “Has my makeup melted?” or “Is there food in my teeth?” check. If it weren’t for that, I’d definitely be interested in a cool mod like this glowing Apple logo.

This iPhone 4 mod, from British iDevice repair service iPatch, sets the Apple logo on your phone aglow whenever the screen lights up, much as the logo on a MacBook lights up when opened.

If the cost of a handset has left you tentative about dipping your toes into the smartphone pool, here’s your chance to dive in without draining your bank account.

Today, AT&T officially announced the dirt-cheap Huawei Impulse 4G, an Android 2.2-running smartphone aimed at those of you clinging to your feature phones. It’s got a $30 price tag with a two-year service agreement, which is as low as $15 a month for 200 megabytes of data. You’ll probably spend more than that on coffee this week, making the Impulse 4G a great entry-level rig for someone who wants a smartphone and doesn’t anticipate quickly becoming a data hog.

There may be another victim in the smartphone-strewn battlefield of the mobile OS wars.

Intel’s Meego OS could be dropped from the ranks due to a lack of enthusiasm from smartphone and tablet manufacturers. Industry sources say Intel will instead focus on hardware and turn to Android or Windows Phone 7 as a platform for mobile devices that debut in 2012.

We asked Intel about the report, from Taiwanese publication Digitimes, and got this response:

Intel does not comment on industry speculation or rumor.

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You know those silicone armbands that turn the touch-screen iPod Nano into an oversized watch? Imagine that you could have one of those, only without the Nano, and for €200 instead of €150.

You have now successfully imagined the Mutewatch, a watch named (presumably) for the silence that will gush from friends and coworkers when you tell them how much you paid for it.

The Mutewatch is actually pretty cool: Its face is a multitouch display.

Way back in the misty depths of 2009, we brought news of Daniel Kurth’s concrete Nixie clock. Now Kurth has been at it again, only he’s using an even more dead and useless base for his clock than the original concrete: Behold, the Apple TV Nixie Clock.

Kurth’s project uses the original, giant-sized Apple TV with its guts removed and its acrylic lid replaced with a machined PVC version. Into this lid are sunk the Nixie tubes– glowing, flickering digital numbers from the Cold War era.

Today is shaping up to be a big day for new camera announcements. First we had the new P7100 from Nikon, and next up will be some news from Sony. Now, though, we look at Nikon’s first ruggedized point-and-shoot, the Coolpix AW100.

As you’d expect of a rugged camera, it can be used underwater (to 33 feet), survive drops from five feet and keep working down to a chilly 14˚F (-10˚C).

[UPDATE Aug 22 2011. All may not be as it seems. According to Gadget Lab reader and grown-up Patrick Theiner, Dwyer made several schoolboy errors when making his experiments. An article debunking the experiment and results appears on the UVdiv blog. Apparently Dwyer was measuring the open voltage on the circuit, which "is practically independent of power output," and stays all but constant regardless of light falling on the cells.