Admittedly, it might seem a bit strange to see a bean bag being talked about here on TNW Gadgets, but youll have to humor me for a few minutes. Believe me, its worth your time.

The pitch went like any other product that we review. Sumo Lounge dropped us an email and asked if wed like to review one of their products. We could pick any one that we wanted, so I of course opted for being a bit over the top and requested that they send over their biggest model, known as the Gigantor.

Long ago I had stated that my office was going to be as much of a relaxed atmosphere as I could make it. Ive shopped around quite a bit for furniture to accomplish that and I had finally decdied to give the bags a try. Most of what Ive found though were prohibitively expensive and didnt offer much in the way of accessories in case something were to happen to them. If you got a rip, you were just out a few hundred bucks.

So lets look at the Sumo Lounge stuff. First off, Ill say that if you order a Gigantor, be prepared. Its freaking huge. By way of measurement it is 86 inches in circumference by 60 inches across and 40 inches high. So yes, its a large, roughly-cylindrical poof that will be sitting in your floor.

When it arrives, it will be vacuum-packed inside of a plastic bag, then the bag is in a box.

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The latest portable camcorders from Sony dubbed DCR-SR21E and DCR-SX21E handycams boast of an ultra-powerful 67x extended zoom. The huge 80GB built-in hard disk drive of the DCR-SR21E handycam allows storing videos of up to 61 hours whereas the DCR-SX21E supports memory sticks or SD cards for data storage.

The 57x optical zoom and 67x extended zoom help capturing close-ups without compromising on the image quality. Besides face detection, the Auto mode selects scene combinations while these handycams adjust color, exposure and focus automatically. The SteadyShot feature eliminates camera shake when shooting videos.

Fitted with a 6.7cm clear photo LCD, the compact handycams are embedded with an LED-light for illumination and a joystick to select settings. The PMB Portable software helps users to upload videos on websites like YouTube from handycams through a PC. Direct Copy transfers data to an external hard drive and optional DVDirect Express burns a DVD without the need to connect handycams to a PC.

Both handycams feature 2.25mm CCD image sensor and capture videos at a resolution of about 800K.

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The complete virtualization, unification and management of storage, networking and compute resources is a concept that has found many takers. Cisco calls it Unified Computing System (UCS), while HP calls it Converged Infrastructure. In addition, the industry also has other players such as Zenith Infotech and Liquid Computing who have launched their own initiatives.

While many call this the datacenter of the future, the current adoption of this concept shows that this concept is slowly but surely taking roots. The reason is simple – converging server, storage and network equipment mean significant savings on hardware, maintenance and management.

And if you look at HP’s wins in the past one year in the area of Converged Infrastructure, it does show that the concept is finding adoption. HP is using its Superdome platform as a central piece of its Converged Infrastructure strategy.

“India is a big Superdome market. Unlike other regions, Unix is not facing a lack of growth in India,” reveals Anant Sharma, Server Marketing Manager, Business Critical Systems, HP (APJ). Sharma

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Google has announced that it is “winding down” Labs, its system of introducing new features as experimental prototypes While I don’t imagine that means the end of innovation from Google, it does mark an unfortunate change in the way we get to experience those innovations.

Picture via Muppet Wiki

In a post on its official blog, Google explained that its decision to stop using Labs as a testing ground was so that it could focus on larger changes (an obvious if unmentioned example being the recent rollout of Google+):

We’ve decided to wind down Google Labs. While we’ve learned a huge amount by launching very early prototypes in Labs, we believe that greater focus is crucial if we’re to make the most of the extraordinary opportunities ahead.

The simpler interpretation of this: Google is having to marshal its resources to face increasing competitive pressures. The most obvious of these is Facebook, which despite its various privacy scandals remains the standout candidate for taking over from Google as the site most people begin and end their browsing experience with. It also represents the most visible competitor to Google for advertising dominance. (In the US,

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Test pack: GM has wired a Volt battery to electronics from ABB to study how used EV batteries could provide backup power for the electrical grid.
Credit: GM

GM and Nissan tout systems to reuse the expensive battery packs.

At $10,000 a piece, electric-car batteries are too expensive to throw out or recycle into scrap materials. And even after a decade of use, when they can’t perform well enough to meet the vehicle’s demands, they could still be valuable for other uses. Nissan and GM have both recently announced ways they might make some money from them.

Many issues remain unresolved, not the least of which is whether the automakers would need to buy back the batteries from car owners, or whether dealers would simply lease the battery rather than sell it, which would allow the car company to reclaim it for secondary uses later on.

This week, GM announced a new system that came from its partnership with power electronics and automation giant ABB. The system pairs a battery designed for the Chevrolet Volt with a commercial inverter for interfacing with the power grid. The system employs five to 10 used batteries and could provide a few hours of backup power for homes or small businesses.

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We all know that a new iPhone 5 might be coming out in autumn. We also know that Apple may be gearing up to update the iPad.

Everyone’s been talking and arguing over the upcoming new models, their features, design, prices etc. No one knows for sure, though. Apple has left us waiting and is yet to come out with an official announcement regarding either of these two products. The rumors over the iPhone 5 launch just don’t seem to stop!

Now, however, some voices have arisen and started spreading rumors regarding the third brother in the Apple mobile family, the little iPod. And it’s not good news, as apparently the music player is on its way to the recycle bin. The same voices go further to say that this is an insiders job and that the ones to blame for the decline of the iPod are Apple themselves. On the below graph we can see that iPod sales have started to decline even since early 2009.

Some 10 years ago, Apple launched the first generation of this highly sought after media player. At the time, it became an instant hit and saw skyrocketing success and sales. In time, the iPod grew, both in size and in features. A few

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