Speaking of light, now that ICFF has ended, German designer Ingo Maurer is await the really big, big money as he's just unveiled the first-ever OLED lamp. Running at a price, quoted by The Canadian Press news service as "if you have to ask, you can't afford it," the simple, tiny lamp uses those incredible OLED panels, which are sort of like LCDs, except they're super thin, use hardly any power, and, oh yeah, they're alive. It'll be the next big thing in about five years in almost any kind of anything that uses light and if you haven't seen the tiny, tiny $2500 television they're selling at the Sony store yet, it's worth a visit to check it out (even if just to wonder who in their right minds would buy such a thing). But back to absurdly-expensive, neat-looking lamps:

Called "Early Future," the lamp uses 10 OLED panels from Osram Opto Semiconductors, a subsidiary of German industrial company Siemens AG. Each panel measures about 15 centimetres by five centimetres by about three millimetres thick. One side has a thin layer of organic compounds, which glow when current is applied.

"It's so thin, so delicate, but you can do a lot of different things with it," said Bernhard Dessecker, who works for Maurer. They're particularly interested in transparent OLEDs that Osram has said it can make, which could mean lights can be built into windows and turn them into light sources when night falls.