Here's a little story for you: An Apple Store employee had a party in her apartment. A couple weeks later her place was cleared out to the tune of about $5,000 worth of electronics, including her new Mac. Days later, a friend sees that she's online and alerts the Mac's rightful owner. Since she was running Leopard with Back to My Mac, owner-girl logged in remotely and activated Photo Booth via the screen-share function. And what do you know, it turned out that the thieves were some "friends" who were at the party a few weeks back. She took the photos to the cops and -- voila -- busted! The thieves, Edmon Shahikian, 23, and Ian Frias, 20, both of the Bronx, have been charged with second-degree burglary and fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property. Go go crafty nerdy girl!

[Via TUAW]

Despite all the lawsuit hoopla over who-stole-what, Fisker Automotive is trudging along with its $80,000 Karma plug-in performance hybrid. New, stripey pictures of the actual vehicle in test runs popped up this week telling us that the Karma could actually hit dealers by 2009 as promised. The pictures are nice -- so nice, in fact, that it turns out they were "leaked" by Fisker's own PR agency along with a video. For review, the Fisker Karma will do 0-60 in 5.8 seconds and top out at 150MPH via an electric / internal-combustion hybrid engine. Latest word is that the combustion engine portion is of Volkswagen build. Fisker is only saying that the engine is of German build, and we say, "gut!" -- let those external speakers roar! The "leaked" video is after the break.

Good lord. No, really. Good lord. The TEO MP-301 MP3 player from IceTech USA crams 1GB of media storage into -- as you can see -- a very Jesus-friendly form factor. The $49 player features a built-in microphone with voice recorder, mirrored front panel, and even a little speaker. According to reviews, the player has some serious interface issues and a weak screen, but if crucifixion is your thing, you can't go wrong with this necklace cross-cum-MP3 player. Or is that the other way around? Is this an MP3 player that's also a cross? Anyway, there you have it: the cross-shaped MP3 player, indeed.

[Via Crave]

Edward Keith Stoddard Jr. really likes his PlayStation 3. So much, in fact, that if you were to touch his PS3, he may just kill you. Such was the fate of his neighbor, Douglas F. Abrams, who Stoddard believed had taken his console. During an argument over the missing system, police say Stoddard shot Abrams, fatally wounding him. When cops showed up on the scene, Stoddard surrendered and was taken to Land O'Lakes jail (no, really) in Dade County, Florida. It's okay to love your console, people -- just don't get jealous if it drops by the neighbor's house for some tea.

[Via PS3Fanboy]

Hitachi went and sucked more desktop performance out of a 2.5-inch, durable laptop drive once again. Their new 2.5-inch Travelstar 7K320 spins at 7200RPM with a 320GB storage capacity. It also boasts 12ms seek times and optional Bulk Data Encryption, which scrambles and unscrambles data as its written just in case you lose your little precious on the road. This drive is shipping now unless you want the enhanced availability version -- meant for media servers and 24/7 uptime -- which should ship this fall. And let's be honest: until solid-state drives hit that elusive price / storage sweet spot, drives like this may just be your best bet in compact computing.

We had a little thumb-print orgy with the new HTC Touch Diamond immediately following its launch. Light and small, the Touch Diamond comes off as a unit with promise. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait a while to get our hands on this via a US carrier, but Orange users in the UK will no doubt be pretty happy with this new handset, the first of its kind to use Windows Mobile 6.1.

Check out the gallery below, complete with comments and interface walk-through. A couple vids after the break, too!

Here we are in London at the Soho Hotel with HTC, and we are among the first to see their new Diamond handset. While we thought we may see three new products in three different form factors, HTC Prez and CEO Peter Chou led-off the event by mentioning that they would be launching just one product today. He peppered his intro by talking about the Touch, so we were prepared to see an update on that product utilizing their TouchFLO tech.

The device has some pretty nice interface tech that they're calling TouchFLO 3D that heavily emphasizes one-touch browsing and single-finger dialing. They emphasized web accessibility, zoom-in navigation with "just one hand" and not too many fingers. As expected, the device is loaded with Windows Mobile 6.1, a VGA screen and HSDPA 7.2, among other nice specs.

Updates, specs, and pics after the break!

Once thought to be the exclusive domain of Ford, Sync-like technology looks to be coming to Hyundai and Kia cars by 2010. While Microsoft and Hyundai aren't calling the technology Sync officially, the new "music and information system" will be a voice-controlled interface that links mobile devices to car stereos, complete with remote firmware updates. Sounds a lot like Sync to us. Interestingly, only later versions will include multimedia and navigation-related features. This is a curious omission -- why would Hyundai need Microsoft's help just to plug in some iPods? The product will be made official at a ceremony in Seoul attended by Bill Gates and Hyundai Kia Automotive Group Chairman Chung Moon-koo. Cocktail hour and family photos to follow immediately.

According to Nokia chief designer Alastair Curtis, Nokia will be offering several -- nay, a "lot" -- more products in the US very soon. "In the next few months," Curtis promised, "operators will carry a lot of new products from us." While Nokia controls 40% of the worldwide handset market, they only have a 10% share in the United States. It seems they're not happy with that and want a bigger piece of the American pie. Bring it on, Nokia. We're ready to see these phones from you, say, in the form of an E71 or Tube?

After a fire at LG Chem, li-on batteries have been hard to come by for companies like Asus and Quanta. But fear not, laptop lovers, because it looks like the battery plant is getting things back in order. According to Sung Fu-hsang at Simplo -- a battery manufacturer that relies on LG Chem -- the li-on supply will return to normal by Q3 2008. So how bad is the current shortage? Asus CEO Jerry Shen noted that his company could have sold a lot more than 5 million Eee PCs were it not for the problem.

Couldn't fit those last two Oingo Boingo albums on your Zen when you thought you had enough space? Get ready for payback, because if you own a Creative Labs MP3 player made between May 5, 2001 and April 30, 2008, you could be entitled to a class-action settlement over this very issue. The proposed settlement -- not the first of its kind -- will force Creative to "make certain disclosures regarding the storage capacity of its hard disc drive MP3 players" and give a 50% discount on a new 1GB player or 20% off any item purchased at Creative's online store, if it's approved by the court. For its part, Creative denies any wrongdoing, but it looks like it's offering up the settlement to smooth thing over with consumers -- but you know it's going to fight the $900,000 requested by plaintiffs' attorneys in fees. Applications are due by August 7, 2008, so start digging up those serial numbers.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Our best friends at T-Mobile are getting set to roll out 3G in New York soon -- real soon, as was previously expected. New York will launch on May 1, to be exact, according to TmoNews.com. That's, like, tomorrow. The leaked document promises T-Mobile customers the "great call quality they've come to expect...and more network availability". The rest of the network will be rolled out in 2008 to 20 markets, including Los Angeles, Detroit, San Diego, Austin, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Miami, and several more. As TmoNews.com points out, New Jersey and Long Island are mysteriously off the list. View all the launch cities after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Want your own multitouch control surface? Have a webcam, cardboard box, and photo frame? The folks at Hacknmod MacGyvered their own with just those materials. By simply pairing a fixed camera and controlled light surface, they were able to mimic what others have paid hundreds for, albeit in a decidedly less attractive package. Peep the somewhat uncomfortably porn-like vid after the break. Oh, and seriously, Hacknmod guys, what's with the sexy techno and slow-mo insertion of the USB cable?

[Thanks Dan S]

Energy conservation and gadgetphilia are tough to combine, but this Power Cost Controller power strip might be just the ticket for those looking to monitor -- and potentially cut back on -- their power usage. The strip's display counts kilowatt-hour power usage and tracks by hour, week, month, and year. It also monitors line quality with voltage, line frequency, and power factor readings. We're just not sure if we really want to know how much power we're using, but if you're ready for the bad news, the strip is $99 and available now.