According to Duracell, the MyGrid is all about convenience. “This initiative will serve as an important lens for future product innovation as we expand the breadth of our offerings to address the evolution of personal power,” Rick June, a Duracell VP, said in a statement. “Our new personal power solutions allow consumers the freedom to live their lives without the limits of staying tethered to today’s power grid. It is charging made simple.”

Duracell is selling the MyGrid for about $80, and is available on Amazon; Duracell says the MyGrid can handle four electronic devices at once. As for the technology, that comes by way of PureEnergy Solutions, which manufactures its own charging mat called the WildCharger. In fact, the Wall Street Journal notes today, these charging mats have a good deal of commercial ballast – a range of companies are putting their might behind marketing the devices, and several new models are apparently in the works.

Among the most popular is the the Powermat, which has a rounder shape than the Duracell MyGrid. The capacity of the Powermat is also lower – it holds only three devices, compared to the MyGrid’s four. The Powermat, which comes in at $100, is also more expensive. In a statement announcing the release of the Powermat, the designers billed the mat as a clutter killer:

Designed for use at home, at the office, in the classroom and on the road, this technology not only eliminates the unattractive tangle of “wire spaghetti” that accumulates behind and around work stations and home offices, it also eliminates the need to carry multiple bulky chargers to power a variety of electronic devices. Above all, it provides a safe, affordable and environmentally sound alternative to traditional powering methods, taking energy distribution to the next evolutionary level.

The problem with both mats, of course, is the price. Any phone you buy is going to come with a charger; ditto for a GPS unit. But a charging mat is going to come in at least $80. Furthermore, as the Journal notes, devices such as the Duracell MyGrid can drain an awful lot of energy:

The problem for the Powermat, however, is that while it reduces the number of vampire plugs, it is itself a vampire. If left plugged in, it draws 0.5 watts of power around the clock, Powermat says. That isn’t a big amount, but it’s about four times the 0.12 watts used by a typical phone charger, according to the Wireless Power Consortium. In other words, leaving four chargers plugged into the wall around the clock could use less energy than leaving a single Powermat.

What do you think? Would you invest in a Duracell MyGrid? Or will you still with your ordinary charger? Join the conversation in the comments section or on Twitter.

Today, Google rolled out a different custom logo for several European sites. Their “doodle” for the British, Swiss, and German Google homepages features Wallace and Gromit, in all their clay glory, enjoying a cup of tea.

(For some reason, French Google got Sesame Street and Irish Google didn’t get anything. Leave us a comment if you know why Wallace and Gromit may have not caught on there.)

Twenty years ago today, Nick Park unveiled his claymation masterpiece to the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol, England. The whimsical, 22-minute short “A Grand Day Out” debuted as part of an animation festival. It then aired on the BBC and became a worldwide phenomenon.

Today’s Google-doodle double whammy comes after a long line of special days. From cryptic messages about H.G. Wells to the birthday of barcodes, Google has remembered anniversaries that most of us never thought about.

What should the company celebrate next? Leave your suggestions in the comments section. Or join the conversation on Twitter.

Also, make sure to check out Sesame Street at 40: Our favorite clips.

–

–

Sesamestreet.org is sponsoring a vote on viewers’ favorite episodes, but we went to YouTube to bring you our staff picks. Here’s a small sampling of our favorite Sesame Street clips from over the years:

12: This crazy clip of an animated pinball machine helped kids count to 12 in fantastic fashion.

The “Yip Yip” Martians: They discovered everyday objects with a comic curiosity that kept us laughing. Here, they meet a telephone as only they can.

Batty Bat: The Count is one of our favorite Sesame Street characters. Here, with the help of his fanged friends, he reminds us of his favorite dance step: The Batty Bat.

Honkers: Who hasn’t wished their nose wasn’t more like these guys’? Here, the Honkers help the Count count to 20.

Doin the Pigeon: Bert, the less amiable but just as lovable half of the dynamic Bert & Ernie duo, has a special place in his heart for that most lowly of urban inhabitants, the pigeon. Here, he gets down with his favorite feathered friends.

Vintage opening: This clip, from show 2178, shows one of the show’s early intro sequences, complete with running kids, a Big Bird cameo, and that old familiar tune.

C is for Cookie: Though the Cookie Monster has recently toned down his fanaticism for cookies (some were concerned he was encouraging obesity), this is vintage cookie-crazed Cookie Monster. Favorite line: “Hey, you know what? A round cookie with one bite out of it looks like a C.”

Rubber Ducky: In one of the catchiest (and hardest to get out of your head) tunes from Sesame Street’s run, Ernie sings about his favorite bath-time pal, his trusty yellow rubber duck. But you’ve been warned: once you watch this, it’ll be in your head for the rest of the day.

Feist sings 1234: Some of the most fun clips feature celebrities dropping in on Sesame Street. Here, singer Feist leads a custom version of her song 1234 with a (if you’re not familiar, you’ll remember it from those iPod ads) with a troop of furry friends.

Stevie Wonder’s Superstition: Sesame Street has long featured some of the most popular artists of the day. Here, Stevie Wonder and his band play a rendition of their hit “Superstition” that’s a good as any other. This is one of our faves.

Michelle Obama visits: As the show has advanced in age, so has its ability to attract big names to help spread its message. Here, First Lady Michelle Obama reminds kids (and her friend Elmo) of the importance of a healthy diet and staying active.

Have a favorite clip we didn’t feature? Drop us the link in the comments, and be sure to follow us on Twitter.

But after gas hit $4 a gallon last year, Mr. Reid had a big fuel bill, too – and an epiphany: convert his gas guzzler to an all-electric vehicle.

So he did. Now Reid’s bright idea has become a sideline business for his shop, HTC Racing, which produces specialized protective coating for automotive and other metal parts in Whitman, Mass. He offers kits to convert any 1995-2004 gas-sucking Ford Explorer into a cheap-to-keep, no fuel, little maintenance all-electric SUV. Cost: $15,000.

He admits that the idea may be “ahead of its time.” Reid has yet to sell a single kit. With gas at only $2.50 a gallon, the conversion cost is too much for even SUV-loving die-hards. But if gasoline prices soar again, Reid says he’ll be ready – and he won’t be alone either.

Converting America’s vast existing fleet of gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks into electrified vehicles is an idea percolating among policy wonks, start-up companies, and fleet owners such as FedEx and the US Postal Service.

Despite all the hoopla over Detroit’s move to make plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles, there’s a need for a speedier US shift away from oil in order to enhance energy security and slow the buildup of carbon in the atmosphere, says a small but growing chorus.

President Obama has set a goal of 1 million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015. But with 260 million cars, SUVs, and light trucks on the road today, new electrified vehicles won’t arrive in sufficient volume to yield a significant benefit on reducing US carbon dioxide emissions or oil consumption for at least 15 years, says Felix Kramer, cofounder of the California Cars Initiative, an advocacy group that promotes plug-in electric-gas hybrid vehicles.

What that means is that conversions will be needed – and the best place to start is with gas guzzlers, Mr. Kramer says .

They point out that even if all new cars sold in America were electric by 2030, they would only represent a third of US vehicles.

“We’re happy automakers are changing – but new plug-in vehicles sales can’t do the job alone or anytime soon,” he says. “It’s clear [new plug-ins] will initially be a drop in the bucket. So we have to change over existing vehicles – we need conversions.”

A big part of the problem is vehicle longevity. It takes 15 to 17 years for a typical vehicle to go from showroom to junkyard crusher – and sometimes longer for SUVs, pickup trucks, and vans that have sturdier frames.

In the scenario where 100 percent of new car sales are plug-in hybrid vehicles by 2030, US oil consumption would fall by just 21 percent and carbon emissions by 15 percent because of the millions of remaining gasoline cars, estimates a California Cars Initiative white paper.

But with an active conversion program that included tax incentives, the number of plug-in vehicles would roughly double to about two-thirds of the fleet by 2030. That would produce a 36 percent cut in oil use and a 25 percent chop in CO2 emissions.

The reason to focus on gas guzzlers rather than gas sippers is the much bigger benefits from electrifying them. When Kramer of the California Cars Initiative converted his Toyota Prius hybrid into a plug-in hybrid with more electric power – the car went from 50 miles per gallon up to 100 m.p.g. But the United States could save far more, he says, if it converted existing pickup trucks that get 15 m.p.g. to vehicles that can go 30 to 40 miles on a charge before shifting to gas.

And that’s the aim of Ali Emadi, president of fledgling Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies, a Chicago spinoff of the Illinois Institute of Technology. His young company has just converted its first Ford F-150 pickup truck from a 16 m.p.g. gas hog into a plug-in hybrid that gets up to 41 m.p.g. gasoline equivalent.

“Our technology could be applied to almost any vehicle from SUVs to pickup trucks, buses, or even school buses,” Dr. Emadi says. “The important issue is that when you apply our technology to larger vehicles – trucks and buses – the fuel economy savings and return on investment are much more attractive.”

Unlike Reid’s all-electric approach, Emadi’s company plans to add an electric drive system to an existing internal combustion engine to create in essence a retrofitted plug-in hybrid vehicle that runs primarily on electricity. But once the battery is depleted after 15 miles or so, it can continue running on its internal combustion engine while recapturing braking energy just like a standard hybrid.

Emadi is in talks with potential customers. Big commercial fleets of pickup trucks, SUVs, and vans seem likely to be the first arena where the economics line up and gas-guzzler conversions get the go-ahead.

FedEx, the big delivery company, began retrofitting some of its trucks to standard hybrid models. But its president, Frederick Smith, says that, in the long term, the company “would likely convert a substantial portion of our fleet to the new plug-in hybrid technology.”

Bright Automotive, an Anderson, Ind., startup, has its sights set on building a new commercial 100 m.p.g. plug-in hybrid van it calls the IDEA. But until it wins funding it is focusing on converting Volkswagen’s Transporter van from a 15 to 22 m.p.g. vehicle to a plug-in hybrid workhorse that goes 22 miles on all-electric and 57 m.p.g. across its 50-mile daily drive cycle.

Earlier last month, Inglewood, Calif., announced it had tapped REV Technologies, a company in Vancouver, British Columbia, to convert its existing fleet of 21 Ford Escape SUVs into all-electric vehicles that get 100 miles on a charge.

“When you just look at the sheer number of cars on the road, they’re not going away anytime soon,” says Jay Giraud, president of REV. “People are saying, ‘I want to keep driving what I’ve got – I just want it to be electric.’ ”

Making a similar point in dramatic fashion, Raser Technologies in Provo, Utah, unveiled a converted plug-in hybrid “extended range” Hummer that gets 100 m.p.g., according to the company. Raser is trying to sell its technology to a manufacturer and has no current plans to convert existing vehicles, a spokesman says.

Which leaves Reid wondering when gas prices will rise high enough that individual consumers begin converting their beloved SUVs, vans, and pickup trucks. He also wonders why those fat federal tax credits of $7,500 for new plug-in hybrids like the upcoming Chevy Volt don’t yet apply to converted all-electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids that accomplish the same fuel savings and environmental benefits. Why not a “cash for conversions?” Kramer adds.

“If the government would help with a reasonable tax credit, you’d get all these entrepreneurs like me converting all kinds of vehicles for maybe $10,000,” Reid says. If gas rose to $4 or more a gallon, he figures his SUV conversion to electric-vehicle kits would be selling like hotcakes.

“The way I see it, Americans have a love affair with their SUVs,” he says. “None of my friends want anything to do with little cars – no matter how high [the price of] gas goes.”

Today, visitors to the site, lately one of the most sparse spots on the Web, are seeing possibly the world’s most famous pair of legs (and no, we’re not talking about Heidi Klum’s, which were just insured $2.2 million.) We mean Big Bird, of course!

The reason? Today marks the 40th anniversary of children’s TV show Sesame Street.

To celebrate, Sesame Street’s website has been running a contest, where visitors can vote for their favorite episodes from the the show’s impressive four-decade public television run.

We here at the Monitor have a soft spot for our furry friends from the Children’s Television Workshop. Our recent “Famous Grouches” gallery was headlined by none other than trash can-dwelling Oscar himself (and good friend Telly).

And we were there in May, when First Lady Michelle Obama famously declared at the UN that she was happy to be there, but that she had just been at Sesame Street and that was more exciting.

Big Bird’s cameo on the Google homepage follows a long line of “Google Doodles” – clever sketches or graphics that the site puts up to commemorate notable dates.

Most recent was a tribute to the humble barcode, which had many scrambling to decode what the site’s cryptic symbol said (Hint: it was “Google,” but we made up one of our own that kept readers guessing.

Before that, a Google Doodle paid homage to peace activist Mahatma Gandhi to commemorate what would have been his 140th birthday.

Then there was a period of days that saw cryptic UFO-related doodles taking over. It wasn’t an invasion, but rather a tribute to “War of the Worlds” author HG Wells ahead of his birthday.

––

Got a favorite Sesame Street memory? Leave it in the comments. And be sure to follow us on Twitter – we’re @CSMHorizonsBlog.

––

You know what else is warm and fuzzy? Snuggies. And now Weezer has one of their own. Seriously.

Badly. According to Reuters, China Unicom has signed up only 5,000 iPhone subscribers since the launch, which is well below most optimistic estimates. In a conversation with Reuters, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster called the figures a “disappointment,” and said he had predicated 30,000 units might be sold.

“We believe that eventually China will emerge as a major market for iPhone sales but it could take a year or two to gain meaningful unit traction as it did in the U.S.,” Munster wrote in a research paper.

The 8-gig Unicom iPhone 3G went on sale for 5,880 yuan, or $861; the 32-gig model retails for the equivalent of more than $1,000. The prices may look high to US consumers, but they’re in line – if on the upper end of the spectrum – in terms of what Chinese customers might expect to pay. The real issue here may be Wi-Fi access, which the Chinese iPhone doesn’t have.

Over at the Register, Rik Myslewski argued that it will take a little time for the iPhone to catch on in China:

Sophisticated Chinese customers may simply be waiting for the next batch of iPhones, which may very well be WiFi-equipped. The Chinese government relaxed its ban in May, but this came too late in the manufacturing process for the first batch of ChiPhones. And before the meager 5,000-sold figure prompts you to prematurely declare Apple’s China move a failure, remember that the iPhone’s US debut – despite a frothing hype storm unmatched in recent memory – was not itself meteoric.

—

Drop us a line here, or on Twitter, @CSMHorizonsBlog.

Now, a company has filed suit in California court, alleging that Barnes and Noble incorporated the dual-screen design into the Nook without notifying its creators. According to Spring Design, a maker of electronic readers, Barnes and Noble was originally interested in a potential partnership.

Instead, the bookseller unveiled the Nook – which does bear a resemblance to Spring Design’s Alex e-reader – without notifying Spring Design.

“We showed the Alex e-book design to Barnes & Noble in good faith with the intention of working together to provide a superior dual screen e-book to the market,” Eric Kmiec, Spring Design’s vice president of sales and marketing, said in a statement.

CNET reports that Spring Design is seeking monetary damages from Barnes and Noble, and also an injunction, which would bar future sales of the Nook. Thus far, Barnes and Noble has declined to comment.

The Nook, which will be priced at $259, is now available for pre-order.

“Barnes & Noble’s new Nook e-reader is the e-reader that competitors must now beat,” David Coursey of PC World wrote recently. “So long Kindle 2, it was nice knowing you, but a better reader has come along. And just in time for the holidays, too. If Amazon doesn’t have a new model up its sleeve, it will be a Merry Christmas at B&N and a sack of coal for Amazon.”

–

Find us @CSMHorizonsBlog.

The Snuggie, the “blanket with sleeves” made popular by infomercials that tiptoed the line between campy and, well, creepy, is now available emblazoned with the logo of rock band Weezer.

For $30, fans can pick up a Weezer-branded Snuggie (Wuggie?) along with a copy of the band’s new “Raditude” album. It’s a match made in hipster marketing heaven.

Snuggies, mocked for their low-budget TV commercials, have enjoyed a surge of tongue-in-cheek popularity. There have been YouTube parody videos (one with more than seven million views), appearances on major TV shows, Snuggies with your favorite team logo, even Snuggie pub-crawls.

No stranger to odd cultural references, Weezer, whose 1994 eponymous album went triple platinum, once did a music video modeled after 70s TV show Happy Days. The Snuggie tie-in, frontman Rivers Cuomo told Rolling Stone, is completely above-board: “The people at Snuggie are doing it with us and promoting it with us. It’s a totally legit Snuggie.” Expect them to sell a bundle.

And, in true recession-defying fashion, for the Snuggie connoisseur, there’s the $50 zebra-print “Snuggie Safari.” (We can’t make this stuff up).

Watch the new Weezer-branded Snuggie commercial below, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter – we’re @CSMHorizonsBlog.

“TwitterPeek will make it easy and affordable for everyone who doesn’t have a smartphone to really enjoy Twitter on-the-go,” said Peek chief Amol Sarva wrote in a statement. “Newbies will finally ‘get Twitter’ once they have TwitterPeek in hand. Even businesses that Twitter will dig TwitterPeek as a convenient way to stay connected with their customers.”

The Peek pricing scheme is pretty straight-forward: $100 gets you the device, in blue or in red, and six months of free service. The plan is $8 a month after that. Alternatively, folks convinced they will totally love the TwitterPeek can fork over $200 for a lifetime plan, with no monthly charges. The device comes with a 30-day money back guarantee, and a 1-year manufacturers warranty.

So what are the odds that the TwitterPeek will take off? Pretty low. Our math, by the way, has nothing to do with the aesthetic feel of the TwitterPeek. (By all accounts, the full QWERTY keyboard and click wheel work flawlessly, and the color screen sparkles.) Instead, our big issue with the Peek is functional. This device fills a niche that not many people need filled.

Consider the average Twitter aficionado. He tweets from his laptop, and when he’s not in front of his computer, he tweets from his smartphone. When he’s using the latter platform, he gets help from a third-party application such as TwitterFon, which pulls in information from the feeds of his Twitter pals. In fact, between his laptop and his phone, he doesn’t have much need for a third device – everything, from email to his address book, is synced between his desktop and his mobile.

For this hypothetical user, where does the TwitterPeek fit? Presumably, he’s not going to fork over a hundred bucks just to carry another plastic platform in his pants pocket. In fact, we’re moving away from a time when we had to shuffle between phones and laptops and desktops. Netbooks are shrinking; smartphones can do more. As Monitor staffer Gregory Lamb has noted, laptops and netbooks could eventually reach a convergence point, and become one and the same.

Let’s play devil’s advocate for a second, and assume that the TwitterPeek might appeal to a younger user, with less disposable income. In this scenario, the price is the major draw: $200 for unlimited use, or $100 for six-months and the occasional top-up. It’s pretty cheap, yes. But wouldn’t a younger user be better served by a cheap smartphone with a whole lot of social networking functionality? Even if such phones cost $50 to $100 a month for service – something out of reach for high schoolers – they offers a lot of features that mom and dad will appreciate and the TwitterPeek can’t match.

For instance, T-Mobile just rolled out the Motorola Cliq, which it is marketing as a “social fanatic’s dream.” In a statement timed to coincide with the release of the Cliq, Motorola noted that the phone pulls data from “Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, work and personal email,” and “automatically delivered to the home screen of the Cliq in easy-to-view streams.”

The Cliq currently retails for $199, with a two-year contract. Assuming that a user will need a regular phone along with the TwitterPeek, wouldn’t he or she be better served by just buying the Cliq? That way, they’d get a voice plan, and Internet access, and close to the same quality of Twitter access as the TwitterPeek owner.

But hey, we could be totally off-base here. Let us know. Drop a line on Twitter or in the comments section below.

—

But how do these “industrial quality” noise-blocking cans stack up to their higher-priced cousins? Before you pull the trigger on today’s Woot, have a look at what folks are saying about them.

Noise canceling, or noise isolating?

There’s a difference. These come with a triple-flange noise-isolating system – essentially rubber tips you jam in your ear canal to block out other noise. There’s no electronics inside, covering up outside noise with white noise. Suffice it to say, the experience of wearing these versus something from, say, the Bose QuietComfort line is going to be very different.

The benefit of noise-isolating over noise-canceling, according to Woot forum poster “winafew,” is that they don’t require batteries, and block a wider range of frequencies.

Safety first

AO Safety’s Blockade ‘buds not only block out 24 decibels of noise, they also have a hearing-saving volume limiter. Try to crank your Crunk past 91 decibels, and the Blockades won’t budge – their inline volume controller keep things at a mild roar. Everyone, including The Who’s Pete Townshend, thinks that’s a good idea.

Walking, talking, running, riding

One of the most in-depth reviews of these out there is on motorcycling enthusiast site webBikeWorld. It focuses on their performance when on a hog – Honda or Harley, it doesn’t discriminate – and for 15 bucks, they’re hard to beat. When talking about sound quality, reviewer “Glenn W.” points out that, when at speed on a motorcycle, wind noise drowns out so much of your hearing that sound quality is difficult to measure, but these do as good a job as any.

But most Wooters won’t be using them while astride a bike – and for a little perspective on how they sound, we head to Macworld. Reviewer Tony Silva writes:

There’s nothing objectionable about the Blockade’s sound quality—it’s about what someone who’s never heard a good set of headphones might expect. But while the midrange frequencies are balanced, they’re also muted and distant, and the highs and lows both taper off significantly.

And the kicker: “Apple’s stock earbuds produce better overall sound, just without the Blockade’s noise isolation.”

Should you Woot? At $19.99 shipped for two, it seems like a bargain, but serious audiophiles should probably move along.

––

Follow us on Twitter – we’re @CSMHorizonsBlog.