While we’re stuck waiting for something other than lithium-ion batteries to power our laptops, at least we can quench our alarm clocks’ thirst for power, with water. Ambient Weather has created an alarm clock whose power source is actually tap water. As the water begins to evaporate, just top-it-off. A full tank of water gets you 2-3 months of time, date, and temp.

Just don’t knock it over on your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, it may not wake you up in the morning.

Check it out, here. ($19.99 via UberReview)

It’s a fact that Sprint’s EVDO service is faster than T-Mobile’s EDGE service, but just how much faster is it? To test this out, we used the Mobile Speed Tests @ http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed.

According to the website, the mobile speed tests: attempt to convince your mobile device to download a measured amount of data, compare this to no data, and calculate your effective latency (time for one request) and effective download speed.

Our Setup:
Samsung Upstage (Sprint) w/ 5 bars of signal at the time of the test
Blackberry 8100 (T-Mobile) w/ 5 bars of signal at the time of the test
Powerbook G4 1.25GHz, 512MB RAM
Both phones were connected to the Powerbook via the built-in Bluetooth Connection.

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Similar to our previous post How To: Use Sprint/Samsung A920 as an EVDO Bluetooth Modem with Mac, we have written out the instructions for using Sprint/Samsung’s new Upstage as a Bluetooth Modem with your Mac. If you’ve got an Upstage and a Mac, this really is a great mobility option as Sprint’s EVDO network speeds are more than usable. Some speed tests from (http://www.dslreports.com/mspeed) are included after the jump as well.

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Snapmania has added a unique feature to its online photo sharing offering: Tourist Remover. Tourist Remover is a free (sign-up required) web based tool which automatically removes the tourists, passing cars, or roaming wild animals from your photographs - allowing you to capture that perfect, lifeless, image of the Sydney Opera House you’ve been dreaming about.

You provide the tool with 2 or more images of what you are photographing. The images you provide should, as a whole, contain an unobstructed final image. Tourist Remover then merges the images into one composite image providing you with the ghostly photo you’re seeking.

Included with every free sign-up is 100MB of disk space where all of your breathless images can be stored and shared. Read more about how it works it or give it a spin.

Ambient Technologies, borrowing a bit of technology from its Ambient Orb, is testing out what it aptly calls the Ambient Clock - a clock that can query your Google Calendar and display busy time.  In the above pictured prototype, busy time is depicted by the shaded outer ring of the clock.  The company is looking for feedback, so if this device is for you, let them know and they may manufacture a few.

We can’t say how long this service will remain free - or how long it will even exist - but if you’re looking to free up some storage space on your home LAN MediaFire.com will sure be nice while it lasts. Mediafire.com allows you to upload files of any size to their servers. You can create a free account, so that it’s easy to keep track of what MediaFire is storing for you, or you can upload one-off files without registering and you’ll still get a URL letting you know where your file is stored. Share the file by posting the URL on your blog or emailing the link out to others. You can even upload multiple files at once. While this post is infomercial-esq, we really haven’t found anything bad to say about the ad supported MediaFire.com. Let’s just hope it lasts so we can ditch those other free services.

Google Finance has recently made its debut, and Yahoo Finance has recently taken a leap ahead, beefing up its offering with many new Web 2.0 features, so why do we need another pretty looking financial information hub? Commission-free trades for one. Backed by Morten Lund, one of Skype’s earliest financiers, Zecco will bring commission-free trading to the internet. Basing it’s business model solely on income from advertisements, Zecco hopes to dislodge E*Trade, Charles Schwab, and TD Ameritrade from the top of the internet trading heap while also taking out both Google and Yahoo finance - no small feat.

Zecco is currently in Beta. You can create an account and today which will give you access to stock charts, quotes, financial blogs and forums. Commission-free trades are coming soon.

[via GigaOM]

If you just can’t wait to get your hands on Motorola’s latest incarnation of the RAZR, Exotic Cellular has the MOTOROLA KRZR K1 up on their site for $485.99.

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If you’re at all familiar with home networking, the windows firewall found in Windows XP SP2 is nothing but a nuisance. After you’ve turned it off, you will continue to get annoying pop-up balloons telling you how risky your decision to forgo Microsoft’s protection was. Fear not, after turning off the Windows firewall, you’re just a few extra clicks away from turning off the annoying balloon as well.

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Google’s latest foray into the web based application world brings us Google Spreadsheets - a collaborative web based excel. As was the case with the initial craze surrounding Google’s GMail web based email app, Google Spreadsheets is invite only. You can sign up and wait for Google to send you an invite here, or if you can spare the dollar and just can’t wait, there’s always eBay.