round on technabob...

The guys over at Yanko Design came across this mysterious miniature vehicle called ROCK.

Created by Mexico City industrial designer Alberico J. Camacho, the ROCK dons a tiny Nissan logo, and looks something like an oversize bowling ball on wheels. Or maybe the Dark Helmet that Rick Moranis wore in Spaceballs.

Yanko thinks ROCK might be some kind of interactive…

This diminutive race car from Japan does one thing really well – it drives around in a circle, over and over again.

While it’s not quite as exciting as watching hillbillies turning left a NASCAR race (sarcasm), at least you get a front-row seat to this tiny little race whenever you want.

Just load the Gakken MM Circuit race car…

Nope, this isn’t some crazy whitewall tire for your car. It’s actually a high-end wireless outdoor speaker which can be rolled around anywhere you want.

Designed by Ron Arad and Frances Pellisari for Austria’s Viteo, the Freewheeler produces high quality stereo sound indoors or out. The speaker measures in at about 22.8″ tall x 9.8″ wide, making it just about…

I’ve seen some offbeat casemods in my travels, but I haven’t seen one quite this odd in a while.

Apparently, some guy from Holland came across this cheese display prop and said to himself, “I’ve always wanted a PC that looked like a wheel of cheese”. So he got to crackin’ it open, and loaded its guts with electronics.

As…

This odd little speaker for your portable media player distinguishes itself by its spherical shape.

ZumReed’s Sound Ball speaker hangs on your key chain or a book bag, and plugs into the audio jack on your iPod or other media player when your ready to play your tunes.

The little plastic ball comes in pink, lime green and purple, and…

Why print on boring old paper, when you can get your message across on some nice bouncy ping pong balls? The appropriately named PingPongPrinter can print dot-matrix messages directly onto the spherical surface of ping pong balls.

Builders Vern Graner and Rick Abbott of The Robot Group used a Parallax inkjet print head kit and the EFX-TEK Prop-2 controller board…

I just love the clean, minimal design of this white-on-white LED clock from Japan. The simple dot-matrix display is powered by bright white LEDs layered beneath a clear and white acrylic shell.

The clock offers alarm capability, and can be automatically set via a radio signal (although it’s possible this feature only works in Japan). Measuring in at about 4-inches…

I see so many modern watch designs cross my desk, and while I think lots of them are really cool, it’s rare that I see one that I just must have for myself. This is one of those times. This gorgeous watch uses a bright OLED screen to display a field of “stars” when it’s not telling the time.

But…

This new display technology from Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Co., Ltd. has created a full-color LCD that’s truly unique. It’s round.

The panels are designed for use in vehicular instrument panels. The initial module measures in at about 75mm (2.95″) diameter and 11mm (0.43″) thick, including all electronics and backlighting. Viewable area is 62mm (2.44″) in diameter, and the screen…

One of the latest trends in the interior design world is fireplaces which use modern ethanol-based fuels. While they don’t give off a tremendous amount of heat, they look amazing, are virtually odorless, and don’t require external ventilation. The latest standalone fireplace from Blomus really caught my eye.

The Blomus Chimo cylinder fireplace is designed to be placed in the…

Industrial designer Pieter Maes, one of the artists responsible for developing LaCie’s cool golden hard drive created this design for a cluster of speakers which are formed into a near perfect sphere.

By joining a number of individual speaker cones to a single central spider-like structure, the orb can project sound in every direction. Unfortunately, this is only a conceptual…

Does your closet smell like old gym socks? Is Fido stinking up the place and making you sneeze? Does somebody like onions and runny French cheese? If this sounds like your house, perhaps you could us one of these.

The Antibac2k Magic Ball kills unpleasant odors, as well as removes allergens and contaminants from the air around you. The spherical…

Cool LED clocks keep popping up on the radar lately, and this week I came across these nifty round LED alarm clocks out of Japan.

Designed for I.D.E.A., the clocks feature round LED pixel dots instead of traditional segments, and look great in either brilliant blue or green variants (they also come in traditional red if you prefer.)
For those…

The Sony VAIO TP1 reinvents the wheel (literally,) by placing the latest in media center PCs in a case that’s shaped like a wheel. The TP1 features all of the requisite media PC bells and whistles, such as an HDMI port, a DVD burner, memory card slots and built-in Wi-Fi.

The round PC comes loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium…