If you’ve been feeling like you didn’t already have enough zany and / or pointless Department of Transportation rules to abide by, you’re in luck! Starting January 1st, 2008, you can no longer pack “loose lithium batteries” into your checked luggage on flights. If your battery is attached to a device — or is packed into a plastic bag — you’re okay. According to the report, “Common consumer electronics such as travel cameras, cell phones, and most laptop computers are still allowed in carry-on and checked luggage,” though, “The rule limits individuals to bringing only two extended-life spare rechargeable lithium batteries, such as laptop and professional audio/video/camera equipment lithium batteries in carry-on baggage.” The new ban is related to lithium batteries’ propensity to explode, and not due to any terrorism concerns. We’re not sure what they’re getting at with that plastic bag rule, but this should make everyone’s already complicated travel plans just slightly more annoying.

[Via Gadling, image by rbrwr]

This one looks to still be a good deal away from showing up at a store near you, but if a group of designers have their way, their so-called MPillow could one day be working its magic to lull you to sleep (although it will have quite a bit of competition on the high-tech pillow front). Helping it stand out are some built-in wireless capabilities that’ll let you stream MP3s from your PC or pull some presumably relaxing sounds off the MPillow servers, as well as some soothing lighting that changes color and intensity along with the music. As you can no doubt guess, however, there’s no indication that the pillow is actually headed for commercialization, so you’ll just have to make do with some of the current music-playing pillows for the time being, or not.

Look, the LCD monitor market is hot. How hot, you ask? Well let’s just say that panel manufacturer Chunghwa Picture Tubes (or CPT) has decided to circumvent the battle for ultimate supremacy in the 19-inch market by creating a totally new size of monitor: an 18.4-inch widescreen display. The new size will feature a 16:9 aspect ratio, 1366 x 768 resolution, a contrast ratio of 1000:1, and a response time of 5ms. The benefit of the slightly smaller size is that the cost to consumers will be lower than its 19-inch brethren, thereby giving CPT a cleaner shot a some market share. The first company to bite on the new size is Acer, which will be using the new panels in a Quanta-made laptop set to hit Europe in the second half of 2008.