Taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II…

(Credit: Pete Souza)

Barack Obama’s campaign proved itself quite worthy of the Digital Era, what with launching Facebook Connect integration, dominating Twitter, and buying an ad in an Xbox 360 racing game, among other tech-savvy milestones.

So it seems fitting that …

The new cloak with the bump, left, and the prototype, right.

(Credit: Duke University)

That cloaking device we’ve been dreaming of appears to be one step closer to actual cloakdom, so start pondering the mischievous possibilities.

Scientists from Duke University have improved on their earlier efforts at producing an invisibility cloak, coming up with a new type of device they say is significantly more sophisticated at cloaking an object (and eventually a person?) from visible light.

The device is made from a light-bending composite material that can detour electromagnetic waves around an object and reconnect them on the other side. That creates an effect similar to a distant mirage you’d see hovering above a road on a hot day.

In Duke’s latest experiments, a beam of microwaves aimed through the cloaking device at a “bump” on a flat mirror surface bounced off the surface at the same angle, as if the bump wasn’t there. Additionally, the device prevented the formation of scattered beams that would normally be expected from such a perturbation. (The team details its findings in far more technical terms than I ever could in the latest issue of Science magazine.)

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A Sega Toys employee pets the new robot cat "Yume-Neko Venus" in Tokyo Wednesday.

(Credit: AFP Photo/Yoshikazu Tsuno)

Some will call it cute, others will surely call it creepy. We’ll reserve final judgment until we see how it feels when Sega Toys’ new “Yume-Neko Venus,” or “…

That hat you see to the right is smokin’. No, it literally is. Chilean fashion designer Alexandra Guerrero made it from recycled cigarette butts.

Through her new company, Mantis, Guerrero combines purified smokes with natural wool to form a raw, textured material that can be woven into …

Sunglasses, check. iPod, check. Charger, check. Actually, nix that last one. A new pair of solar-powered shades that double as a gadget charger mean one less item to toss in the beach bag.

The cool-looking “Self-Energy Converting Sunglasses” by designers Hyun-Joong Kim and Kwang-Seok Jeong …

The back of the Android Dev Phone 1.

(Credit: xda-developers)

Good news if you’re a developer itching to get your creative developer hands on a T-Mobile G1–and especially good news if you happen to be a developer who lives outside an area covered by T-Mobile. Google has announced …

Will we soon be calling Microsoft a “fashion giant” in addition to a “software giant”? OK, that’s probably stretching it, but the company is launching a new line of graphic T-shirts called “Softwear by Microsoft.” Yep, you read that right. Microsoft is getting into the clothing business.
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• Nokia mystery solved.

Meet Nokia's N97….