What you’re staring at here is a giant Scrabble board, which measures in at nearly 49 square feet. It’s made by artist John Kahn, using Russian birch plywood, covered with galvanized steel and vinyl game graphics. Each one of the game’s 100 tiles is made from wood with a strong magnet inside, and measures a whopping 4-3/8″ square. The board also comes with two wall-mounted tile holders, and a pair of tile racks for game play – though it would have been nice for them to include two more – in case you want to play a four-player game.

Only nine of this gigantic Scrabble set are being made, and with a price tag of $12,000(USD), I can’t imagine they’ll all be snapped up quickly. But if you have enough enough capital to afford one, you can check it out over at Hammacher Schlemmer now.

[via SUATMM]

Steelie was crated by Frank Vogel and Paul Turner. The great thing about Steelie is that it allows you to easily tilt your tablet to just the right angle. It basically reminds me of one of those cook book stands. It has a magnetic socket, which attaches to the back of your tablet, and snaps easily onto the tabletop ball head stand.

You can also use the magnet to attach your tablet to any steel or other magnet-compatible surface, including many refrigerators.

They also make a smaller version for smartphones, which look like would work well for dashboards or desktop surfaces.

The Steelie magnet adheres to the back of your device with a strong adhesive pad, as does the smaller ball mount for phones. It’s unclear, though if the tabletop stand holds in place under its own weight or if it must be glued down as well. Also, you’ll want to make sure you keep the strong magnet away from credit cards and hard drives, so don’t dare try using one on an older hard-drive based media player.

The tablet version, with both the Steelie magnet and tabletop stand sells for $60(USD) while the smaller version for phones sells for $30.

[via Make:]

Each Duct Tape Magnetic Jacket incorporates a durable, lightweight plywood core, wrapped in ample layers of duct tape. The inside of each case is lined in felt to protect your precious tablet, and the case even self-aligns like the Smart Cover, thanks to its built-in magnets, and even auto-wakes and sleeps. It also can be propped up for easy typing or movie watching.

Unlike the original grey design, the updated iPad 2 duct tape case comes in a variety of cool designs, including such favorites as the Nintendo Game Boy, Doctor Who’s TARDIS, and my personal favorite, delicious smoky bacon (bacon scent not included.)

A pledge of $40(USD) or more will get you one of these Duct Tape Magnetic Jackets in one of serveral basic colors, while $45 buys you patterns like leopard, zebra, or digital camo. But if you really want to travel in style, drop 60 bucks and go for the Game Boy, TARDIS or bacon versions. If you’re feeling like really splurging, Coregeek says he’ll make you a custom design (within reason) for $80.

The entire black border around the Big Big Cursors is made of conductive foam, i.e. the thing that makes the stylus work with capacitive touchscreens, so you don’t have to “point” them on the touchscreen the normal way like you would on a desktop computer. Don’t be fooled by their comically large size too, because as the video below proves, they can be used to click, draw and point precisely.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The only thing I don’t buy in the vid is the dirt-free part. Sure, if you use a stylus all the time your device won’t get fingerprints, but if you use your hand to pick up food you can bet some of that will still find its way on the screen even if you use a stylus. You can order the Big Big Arrow and Big Big Pointer for $13 (USD) each at the Big Big Cursor website. Mike should also release a Big Big Hourglass and a Big Big Ball of Death.

[via Oh Gizmo!]

Designed by Jake Frey, the switch cover has a silver bottom section that is magnetized. Assuming you have a metal keyring, all you need to do when you come in the door is stick the keys to the light switch cover. That is pretty cool, and you probably won’t forget your keys there. The cover comes in a standard single switch size.

I wonder what effect the magnet in the cover would have the newer “intelligent” car keys that have RFID chips in them  – hopefully nothing. You can order one of these right now for $24.95 (USD) over at Fancy.

It’s almost straight out of science-fiction, but this thing actually works. This coilgun is no toy. Using a large electromagnet, made from 10-gauge magnet wire, it delivers more kinetic energy than a .45 handgun, but less than an M16 rifle, according to Jason. If Jason was able to do this in his backyard with off-the-shelf components, you can just imagine what proper defense contractors should be able to do with a few billion dollars.

Check out the video of the coilgun carnage below. You’ll have to fast forward to 2:50 to see all of the action.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via Hacked Gadgets]

Inspired by the 19th-century designs of Valdemar Poulsen’s wire recorder, this kit from Gakken Japan looks like it could be fun to play with. Once you put it together, you set the recording head on top of any metal surface that will hold a magnetic charge, drag the control across the surface and speak into the microphone. You can use anything from a metal tabletop to a common kitchen knife to store your secret messages. Once recorded, flip the playback switch and you’ll hear your scratchy voice played back as you move the magnetic head. The video below shows how it works. Feel free to jump ahead to around 50 seconds in to get to the interesting bits.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Keep in mind that the instructions for assembling this kit are entirely in Japanese. But they do seem to have enough visual detail that you should be able to build the wire recorder successfully. Want one? You can order the wire recorder kit over at the Maker Shed for $38.99 (USD). Just don’t try putting this anywhere near your old VHS tape collection.

Using a modified Magna Doodle as the basis for their display, the Clock-a-Doodle-Doo is the brainchild of a recent UCLA mechanical engineering class.

The clock uses a XY plotter-like mechanism to “draw” the current time by neatly arranging the magnetic particles with a mechanical pen. When it’s ready to change time, another mechanism pulls the “eraser” mechanism to release the particles and clear the magnetophoretic display. Each minute, it does the whole thing all over again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Ever wonder how a Magna Doodle really works? HowStuffWorks has deconstructed the gory innards of the mysterious magnetic device for your personal enrichment.

That’s exactly what the guys over at Transparent House are doing with their cassettes. The designers make each lamp from dozens of individual cassette tapes, arranged into visually appealing patterns. Not only do they look cool as a sculptural piece, they cast dramatic shadows onto surrounding surfaces.

Each lamp uses a bright, cool-burning neon light source to keep the plastic cassettes from melting. Of course, they left each tape in its original transparent case so they could be together glued neatly.

And if you have a fond place in your heart for the old micro-cassette, you don’t have to feel left out. They’ve got a lamp just for you, made from 140 of the mini tapes.

Now the guys over at Transparent House don’t say if they’ll be producing these en masse, or if they’re just one-of-a-kind design pieces. Personally, I’d love a couple of these in my media room.

[via geeksugar]

The Abacus series of watches has no hands at all. Instead, there’s just a single steel sphere that rolls around inside the watch as you move your wrist around. But as soon as you level out to a horizontal position, a magnet behind the dial stops the ball at the current time. Since there’s no second hand, you won’t be able to tell exactly what time it is, but who cares. You’ll look so cool wearing this watch, that nobody will care if you’re a few minutes late.

Each Abacus watch features a stainless steel case, with a leather strap and either mineral or sapphire glass face. They’re also water resistant to about 100 feet. You can find a wide variety of Abacus magnetic watches from QuestoDesign, ranging from about $150 to $230 depending on the style.