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Now you can service your crazy USB device fetish and ignore the haters at the same time using Thanko's new Sound Lives Stereo Earphones. The USB-powered earphones feature a small external microphone designed to pick up and cancel ambient noise, thus allowing you to rock out in peace. The earphones can last up to fifteen hours on a single USB charge and only cost $18, meaning these are better suited to noise pollution plagued gadget fiends rather than true audiophiles.
Via TechRadar
On the left you've got the Room Tech Beingz Alarm Clock, and its buddy, Mood Lamp, to the right. After a short warning of its feet lighting up, the Alarm Clock will throw its mouth wide open and blare out one of three different noises to wake you up, beating its arms up and down if you aren't roused in time. It isn't all bad, though — it can play music and do a little dance to the tunes, too.
Mood Lamp is Alarm Clock's more chill cousin. It has four different brightness settings depending on how you're feeling. It will also dance to whatever music you're playing, and respond to your touch in an animated way.
Alarm Clock is kind of a bad influence on Mood Lamp, though, as they can communicate with one another if they're less than 15 feet apart. Alarm Clock can get Lamp to turn on as bright as it can and, mixed in with the noise, you've got two culprits to go after if you want to snooze.
RoomTech Beingz Alarm Clock & Mood Lamp, via 7 Gadgets
Just when you thought ice cube-creation technology had peaked, a team of engineering students from San Jose State University has come up an ice maker that has zero carbon footprint. It’s more than an eco-party trick — consider it an electricity-free alternative to refrigeration and air conditioning, which is critical if you happen to be somewhere off of the electrical grid, like in the developing world or in a disaster zone.
It works like this: the solar icemaker uses a refrigerant liquid that evaporates when exposed to the sun. The vapor travels through pipes that come into contact an absorbent material, which cools when the sun goes down. Once the slow-cooling absorbent hits 104°F, the refrigerant turns back into a liquid and its temperature drops like a rock to below freezing because of pressure differences. Put some water next to the evaporator’s exterior and, presto, ice.
A typical icemaker uses electricity to run a compressor to do this work, but the solar icemaker just uses solar energy, with no moving parts. And the systems are sealed, so barring a leak, they'll never need replenishing. The icemaker makes about 14 pounds of ice per day — more than enough for the margaritas at your end-of-summer barbecue. The students' prototype isn't available yet, but maybe next summer….
Here come the three-channel remote control helicopters, giving you more precise control than ever. The best news is that this $30 Black Stealth the cheapest one yet. The Think Geeksters say it’s the easiest one to fly ever, and unlike the numerous tiny choppers that have come before it, this one actually lets you control that crucial third channel — you know, the one that lets you steer the copter forward or backward.
You’d think that sort of thing would be standard, but earlier tiny, low-cost r/c helicopters just went up/down or left/right, depending on you to bend a tail rudder to always tilt it for forward flight. It’s great to see the three-channel flight capability taking hold in the puny-copter market, especially at these prices. This one might find a place in our living room-based flight center. Click Continue to see a video of the little whirlybird in action.
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Solar panels are starting to show up on a few new cars such as the upcoming version of the Prius, but until now there have been no options for upgrading existing cars. Now a company called Sunrise Solar plans to offer a line of drop in replacement sunroof panels, as an easy way to add solar power to any car with a sunroof. While such a small area can't generate a lot of power, it would be enough to keep a charge on the car's battery, or to run a fan that draws cooler air through the car when parked on a hot day. This would make the car less stifling when you first get in, reducing the need to blast the fuel economy sapping air conditioning.
So far, Sunrise Solar's website has only sketchy information with nothing about prices or availability.
Sunrise Solar, via Treehugger.com
Harmonix explained how they're implementing the promised feature of Rock Band 1 owners being able to play that game's song in Rock Band 2: by charging you a fee to cover the complicated licensing issues. Because I'm sure Harmonix wasn't going to make enough money from the actual game sales to cover the cost of porting the songs over. But they promise it's not going to be more than five dollars, so keep those 400 Microsoft points handy. They also point out you could easily do this with a rental copy of the game.
That's pretty cheap of Harmonix (pictured above administering a five-dollar kick to the face) to announce a feature and then later announce that, oh by the way, you have to pay extra for it. Up next: a fee for the new campaign, the new instruments, and the new online features. Also, a fee for the new songs. Because licensing doesn’t pay for itself!
Christened the Signterior by its creator, Shanghai-based architect Nobuhiro Nakamura of A-Asterisk, the name is a blend of the words "signage" and "interior." All of the floors, walls and ceilings on every level within the Chinese structure are painted with helpful markers denoting anything from where the elevator is to various shops. Different colored lines also help people know if they are going they right way, acting as a trail to different parts of the Signterior building.
The Signterior takes up over 47,000 square feet and it is being planned as an office building combined with a shopping mall. It should be finished by September of this year.
Check out the gallery below for more of Nobuhiro Nakamura's Signterior.
Details are sketchy this far, but Microsoft is teasing us about saying “goodbye to laser” on September 9th, and now we have a picture of a product that showed up on Amazon’s Germany site that might have the answer to the mystery. Instead of a laser or conventional optical tracking system, Blue Track allegedly uses a blue LED teamed up with a wide-angle lens for better tracking on more surfaces.
Speculation has the first iteration of the Blue Track system inside an MS Explorer Mini Mouse for road warriors, but we’d like to see it trickle up to full-sized pointing devices. We’re big fans of Microsoft mice, and especially of their associated drivers, which seem to work better than any other, especially on Windows XP and Vista. Better tracking? You have our laser-focused attention.
What happened to the drain on this sink from Italian company Axolute? The water either magically disappears, or it slips away via patented “Horizontal Integrated Siphon” technology. You decide. Okay, all you party poopers, if you lean forward and look under the front rim of this sink, you’ll see the slot through which the water flows, sneaking under the basin and into a pipe in the wall. Mount a faucet and its controls into that wall and the spooky illusion is complete.
Axolute offers this stainless steel model, as well as some great-looking white Corian sinks with red, blue or black trim, all using this little plumbing magic trick. Take a look at the gallery below for shots of those, as well as a clever installation in a vanity with shelves below. Imagine the perplexed looks of your guests as they wonder how it all this fancy plumbing works. Just answer them with a quote from the late, great Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Gaming machines can get pretty loud with how much cooling they require, and the powerful components they are often packed with. Custom case builder NZXT kept sound in mind with its upcoming Whisper case, which is insulated with 10 millimeters of noise dampening foam along its flanks and top. It also has rubber grommets to cut down on noise created by vibrations from the hard drives, and a padded power supply holder.
Besides being quiet, the Whisper can hold nine hard drives, has six expansion slots, and uses a screwless cable management system. It has room for four fans and, unlike most cases, has the power supply unit mounted at the bottom of the case to keep it from adding to your motherboard's heat.
The NZXT Whisper comes out next month for $140.
NZXT, via SlipperyBrick
Here’s the long-anticipated the Nikon D90, the first digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera that can also shoot high-def video. The 12.3 megapixel camera has Live View, letting you see your framing on the 3-inch viewscreen just like a point-and-shoot camera, and its low noise and high light sensitivity (up to 3200 native ISO) approaches the quality of its more expensive big brothers. The D90 will be available in September for $999.95 (body only), or you can get the camera in a kit with an image-stabilized 18-105mm lens for $1299.95.
This is astonishing. The D90 has many of the pro-level features of its $1800 D300 brandmate, which Consumer Reports calls the best camera it’s ever tested. The D90 adds 720p HD video shooting, along with some other fun features, too. It doesn’t have the sophisticated exposure metering of the D300 — and it shoots at a still-quick 4.5 frames per second rather than the D300’s 6 fps — but those high-end features may not be missed by many D300 users, myself included. Anybody want to buy a D300? Take a look at the gallery below, and then hit Continue to read the detailed press release from Nikon.
Now that broadband Internet access is almost ubiquitous in most top tier nations, the race is on to offer the perfect VOIP phone for those ultra-cheap international Skype sessions. The latest entry into the race is the award winning Tatung VOIP Phone designed by Chinese firm Nova Design.
Aside from a decidedly un-VOIP-phone-like spartan design, the phone also offers touch sensor interface and a faux antenna, a non-functional design decision apparently meant to ease new users into VOIP using an old mobile telephone visual metaphor. Although the phone is currently on display via various design shows, the device hasn't been slated for mass production by a major manufacturer, but if the awards keep piling up it's only a matter of time.
Via Yanko
The Shooter is a conceptual fire extinguisher thought up by designers Eunjung Kim, Yangwoo Kim and Junyi Heo. It makes putting out a fire as easy as aiming and pulling the trigger, which will send a cannon round full of CO² at the blaze. If that doesn't put it out, just keep firing — you've got eight shells in there. The idea is that it's far easier to use than your average fire extinguisher, it's able to be reloaded and keeps you away from the blaze. It's got a laser sight (which probably won't help out too much in the event of a large fire), as well as an alarm to warn everyone around you.
If you don't know how to use a conventional fire extinguisher, you may want to brush up on how.
Check out more of the Shooter in the gallery down below.
When you buy a Falter 2D Pen, don't expect to start writing with it immediately. That flat sheet of iron you see pictured above is what you'll start with. The pen under it is the goal. You'll have to fold and bend your way to something that hopefully still writes, and luckily Falter is happy to help you out. They'll include a key for bending and instructions so you don't end up with some lump resembling what some might call "unusable," or "modern art."
Maybe a disfigured sculpture would help you recoup your losses: This pen's about a billion times more expensive than a Bic at $39. Then again, it's also handmade in Italy.
Uncommon Goods, via Random Good Stuff, via SlipperyBrick
The Peugeot 888 is billed as the "personal vehicle for the future Metropolis." For designer Oskar Johansen from Norway, that means a car with space for two with room for luggage, as well as a nifty shape-shifting body. On the highway, the Peugeot 888 stretches itself out flat so that it's stable and aerodynamic. In the city, however, it scrunches up for easier parking and taking up less of the road in general.
Just to make sure it'll fit in with the eco-minded future, the 888 is powered by electric motors in each of its wheels, runs off of an array of lithium-ion batteries stored in the trunk, which, in turn, is covered with solar panels.
Check out the gallery below for more views of the Peugeot 888.
editor@dvice.com
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