TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Gaming consoles are pretty generic looking: White or black plastic, and relatively rectangular in shape. Martin Nielsen, a case-modding visionary, took the tired old Wii console and transformed it into the Wii UNLimited Edition, an almost unrecognizably epic acrylic and aluminum contraption.

Never mind the underpowered console inside. The case is made of CNC-milled aluminum. Dual 22 cm coolant reservoirs housed on either side of the Wii UNLimited Edition feed cerulean-tinted liquid to cool the main console through a series of tubes.

Your soul is slowly shriveling while enduring the second work meeting of the day.

If you don’t get out soon, you’ll fall asleep. Or maybe explode. Or, worse, say something you’ll regret.

Good news, Dilbert: Your problems with the boss are over if you’re using Android, the world’s most popular mobile phone operating system. The platform offers hundreds of apps for spoofing phone calls or texts — or pulling other stunts that can help get you out of work.

Compare that to the limited variety of leg-pulling apps on Apple’s iOS platform, and you’ll see why Android is the mobile OS of choice for shirkers like myself.

April Fool’s Day is a good time to give these Android exploits a look. Get out of that work meeting by using an app to program your Android phone to send yourself a fake text or a bogus phone call.

I get them from Kim Kardashian all the time, forcing me to leave meetings to attend more, um, important business. Having to excuse oneself to go to the bathroom only works so many times when it comes to escaping a meeting.

After Texas resident Keith Geissler noticed his new Motorola Atrix wasn’t offering the fast “4G” download and upload speeds that AT&T promised, he filed a complaint to the Better Business Bureau, asking the wireless company to “uncap” his data connection.

AT&T’s response was surprising. While the company assured Geissler it “has not capped the upload speeds on the Atrix,” it did admit that the phone’s HSUPA capability — a key feature in increasing upload speeds on the Atrix as well as the new HTC Inspire 4G smartphone — will not be enabled until a later date.

If you own an iPad and a DSLR, it’s likely that you have already sprung for Apple’s camera connection kit. And if your camera uses compact flash cards, then it is equally likely you own a card reader.

But if you don’t have any way to get pictures into you iPad, or you’re sick of stringing cables between otherwise convenient and portable accessories, then you might pick up the iPad CF Card Reader from MIC Gadget.

It’s a 2-in-1 reader which plugs straight into your iPad’s dock port and has CF and USB slots on the other side. Just plug it in and the images on the card will show up in the iPad’s Photos app, ready to be imported.

If you own some kind of tablet, you can make it do double-duty as a wireless, external add-on screen for your computer, if you don’t mind laggy, pixelated graphics and are happy with just ten inches of extra space. It’s handy for maxing out a laptop in emergencies, but hardly ideal.

Toshiba’s USB Mobile LCD monitor, though, looks a whole lot better.

Electric bikes don’t need to be dorky, or look like something you borrowed from grandma. In fact, if it wasn’t for the down-tube bulge that holds the battery, this electric bike concept could pass for a pretty cool-looking mountain bike.

The concept is a team-up between Bosch (the electrics), NuVinci (the rear hub) and Gates (the belt-drive), and was built for the Taipei bike show in Taiwan. It is designed to be an almost maintenance-free commuter bike, aimed at those who want to ditch their cars to save money.

The iPhone appears to be gaining serious momentum on the Verizon network after just one month on the market.

About 10 percent of iPhone customers in the United States could be on Verizon, according to estimates by mobile advertisement firm Chitika.

If that estimate is accurate, it signifies rapid growth of the iPhone on Verizon. The Verizon iPhone went on sale online Feb. 3 for pre-orders, and the handset hit stores Feb. 10, ending AT&T’s exclusive partnership with Apple.

“For Verizon to pick up that big of a share of iPhone users in about a month is impressive, and doesn’t bode particularly well for AT&T,” Chitika said in a blog post.

Dynamo hubs are fantastically convenient. They power your lights whenever you ride, meaning you never have to change batteries. And because they are sat inside the wheel hub, they’re safe from the bumps and whacks that can damage external bottle-dynamos.

But they are also a drain on your leg power, dragging at your every stroke with their magnetic generators. Velo Orange’s Switchable Dynamo Hub fixes this with a switch that disengages the dynamo, letting you cycle drag-free by day, only engaging the lights at night.

The Airspresso couldn’t be more appropriate for me to write about if it had my name written all over it. It’s a nerdy espresso maker which uses a bike pump to provide the pressure and drive the hot water through the grounds. It also looks hard to use, giving a good opportunity to complain.

It works like this: you put the grounds in the red part and tamp them with the included tamper.

Olivetti, once the maker of beautiful typewriters, has gotten into the tablet game. The inevitably named Olipad will be sold through TIM, the Italian telecom company, from today for €400 ($561). That sounds like a lot, but it’s €100 less than the entry-level iPad, which goes for €500 ($700) here in Europe.

The Olipad eschews Olivetti’s history of beautiful design and instead opts for an ugly slab-like block.