Look at your own archives... the idea has been done and for a lot less money!

http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/21/art-lebedev-intros-verbarius-electronic-clock/

(PS - I have one and it is COOOOL).

Label printer would be STIMULATING.

Hmmm. Wasn't news when you reported it. Isn't news now. VZN has been advertising this to FiOS customers for some time - first via their web portal and then via specific VZN Wireless handsets.

Not clear if the handset limitation is technical, designed to allow time to ramp up, or designed to restrict the benefits of the technology to "quadruple play" customers...

I could REALLY use this....really. I know it is just $99... but it would be SOOO great....

Yehaa - Send me some swag!

Actually the answer for Apple is:
* 1 product manager to spec the product and lead the product team
* 1 engineer to make the iBulb work
* 2 industrial designers to make the iBulb look really, really cool and different from every other bulb
* 3 VPs to act as the interface between the poor product team and Steve Jobs who is REALLY going to design the thing and thinks the PM is an idiot and the engineers are fools and wonders why Apple actually needs more than 1 employee
* the aforementioned 12 lawyers - some to work on the recall, several to work on threatening
any site that leaks information on the iBulb
* A cadre of PR flacks to properly stroke Mossberg, Pogue and others to ensure breathless write-ups from day one
* 1 guy in a black shirt to record the web video demo on how an iBulb works and how the fact that they've designed a bulb without threads is really a huge improvement over that "regular" bulb you get from anyone else
* 3 people at every Apple Store to applaud the customers who are "visionary" and "cool" enough to stand in line for 10 hours to buy an iBulb (given that the hardware store down the street sells "just bulbs" for 1/3 the price, you don't have to wait in line, and they work with your existing electrical equiment)
* 1 person at every Genius Bar to make customers feel stupid because they can't get the threadless iBulb to work in their existing lamps
* A million fan-boys to so want the product that they'll wait in line...

[and I'm a freakin' FAN of Apple!]

Ouch - someone is getting very fired at Apple over this. Totally nuts.

Favorite MS product is one they didn't build, but bought. Visio!
Why? Because it just perfectly accomplishes what it wants.
Because every time you think "you know, if this were cool it would do X"... it does and it does it the way you think it ought to.

Microsoft gets kudos on Visio for 1 thing... they did NOT f it up after they bought it - they let it mostly be.

iRobot Looj... as much for the name as the function and, BTW, at $99 it is pretty darn amazing.
(Not that I can possibly use it on MY home)... but still cool

First (as far as I know) done in 2000 at Brown University in RI:

http://bastilleweb.techhouse.org/