As the global economy curls up into the fetal position in the face of rising energy costs, we're as determined as anyone to be as energy efficient as possible -- as long as it's completely convenient, of course. Mi Casa Verde hopes to help with that with Vera, a Z-Wave / 802.11 hub with an exceptionally robust web interface for monitoring the energy usage of devices in your home as well as turning them off, setting up scenes, events and timers, and operating locks and security cameras. Since it's a low impact little device running a stripped down version of Linux, it operates on less power than desktop-based solutions -- a benefit that Mi Casa Verde claims makes it one of the few systems that save more power than they use. Its retail price will be competitive, with the box at $299 and a secure remote access gateway at $8 per month, but Mi Casa Verde is trying to entice would-be testers with a pre-street sale price of $149 and one year of free remote access service -- that option will be available through October 31st, with the final product available to conscientious tree-huggers (tech savvy and otherwise, the company hopes) everywhere on November 15th.

[Thanks, Dmitry]

A few Samsung laptops have managed to make it over here in the past under the guise of other manufacturers, but it looks like the company's new Q310 model here is now officially the first bearing the company's name to show up at a US retailer actually ready to ship, and, as we had heard, only the first of more to come. There's actually two versions of this particular model available (at Newegg, at least), the $1,049 Q310-34G and the $1,249 Q310-34P, the former of which packs a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T5800 CPU and a 250GB hard drive, while the latter ups things a bit to a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo P8400 and a 320GB hard drive. Otherwise, you can expect 3GB of DDR2 RAM and integrated Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics on each, plus the usual DVD burner, built-in webcam, 802.11n WiFi, and a 1280 x 800, 13.3-inch display -- not to mention some of that snazzy red touch of color detailing.

[Via Crave]