germany on technabob...

It’s amazing what a difference a couple of decades makes. Back in the 1970s, fiber optic lamps were some of the ugliest, tackiest things you could possibly bring into your home. And as this photo proves, fiber optics can truly be used for evil. Thankfully, tastes have changed, and the dynamic illumination medium has found new life in this modern lighting fixture…

I don’t know if I should really be sharing this dorky tidbit, but back when I was just a pup, I was a serious bad-ass on the miniature golf course. I actually won a couple of shiny plastic trophies, and even an official gold-plated Jack Nicklaus putter from the neighborhood Putt-Putt…

Apple’s iPhone Bluetooth wireless headset revels in its minimal design. But what’s to say that it couldn’t handle a little extra sophistication and elan?

German jewelry designer Andi Monn took the opportunity to dress up the iPhone’s earpiece with these striking metal covers…

Now I’m sympathetic to those who have fallen on hard times, many of us still find people who beg for money to be irritating. So why someone would go through the trouble of building a robot that begs for spare change is anyone’s guess.

Alexander Gurko’s “Bettelbot” (that’s “BeggingBot” in English) has just one mission in mind - to get your money…

Oktoberfest may be months away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start preparing now, does it? If only we could get our grubby little paws on one of these super special Super Mario Brothers 1up ’shroom beer mugs, we’d be ready to belly up to the bar right now…

This interactive art display takes data it collects on passing traffic and displays moving images which react to vehicles as they drive by.

Designed by artist Markus Lerner for lighting company OSRAM, the installation samples traffic patterns and maps them onto seven colorful light towers side of the road, each containing over 110,000 individual LEDs…

This might look like a curtain of randomly assorted lighting fixtures. But it’s actually an interactive video display that can detect movements of passersby and mimic them using light.

Entitled Space Invaders 2008, the light installation uses a grid of 176 unique lighting fixtures to work its magic…

This chunky metal watch displays the time on a pair of side-by-side LCD screens.

The German-designed MF dual LCD watch displays the hours and minutes on the left side, as the seconds scroll by on the right one. The watch has a heavy duty steel case and adjustable band as well as a scratch-resistant mineral glass face. It’s also water resistant to 30 meters (about 98 feet)…

I’m not sure how I missed this amazing interactive display concept when it first surfaced, but it’s cool enough that I thought it deserved a mention, even if it is but a distant memory.

The system used an array of thousands of individual mechanical irises, each designed to react to the amount of light in front of it…