Here's a competition for students and teachers that challenges them to create something interesting and helpful with LEDs. Teams get kits of parts to work with. If you know students or teachers, encourage them to enter.

Enter the Renesas Electronics America RX Design Contest, get a free RX62N demo kit, and compete for a $US 5000 top prize, or one of many other prizes from Renesas and its Alliance Partners.

The "community-supported" BeagleBoard project includes a new member, BeagleBoard-xM that uses a new Sitara ARM Cortex-A8 processor from Texas Instruments. TI also offers its own boards and kits, but at about 10 times the cost. The Cortex-A8 processor looks like a good one for high-end applications, so I dare not call it a microcontroller. Find out more about TI's latest Sitara chips and the new BeagleBoard-xM.

Many parents face ordeals related to their children wandering around the house at night.  A young mother in Tennessee recently experienced a harrowing night when she woke up to find her 4-year-old son missing only to learn that the boy had stolen a beer, gotten drunk, ransacked a neighbor’s Christmas presents (donning one which was a little brown dress), and was brought home by police.  Luckily, most parents don’t have to worry about more than a living room covered in soap after their child’s wanderings, but it’s still a scary issue nonetheless.