If you’d like to get your hands on a shrunken head without harming a hair on anyone’s head, then check out this oddity – a shrunken head U.S. Quarter.

These quarters have been zapped with 6,000 volts and 100,000 amps using a high energy electromagnetic field.  The intense energy forces whatever is used as a conductor between its repelling magnetic fields to be compressed in about 1/100th of a second. The result of placing a quarter in this evil contraption is a smooshed coin like the ones shown in the pics here. While the center details are somewhat distorted, the edge, letters and numbers are pretty much intact, making of one weird looking coin.

You can get your hands on one of these shrunken quarters over at ThinkGeek for $24.99(USD). That’s right, it may be about 1/3rd smaller, but it costs 100 times as much – and you can’t use it in any vending machine.

For being the world’s smallest .45 it is surprisingly affordable at just $500(USD) for the aluminum version and $700 for the titanium version. But are your hands small enough to use it effectively?

[via Geekologie via Uberreview]

Modder Dablio started out with a Dynacom MegaBoy, which is a small, illegal Atari 2600 clone system. He reverse-engineered the circuit board from the MegaBoy to produce his own custom PCB, then added a cartridge port, and a VGA connector which provides power, controller and video signals to and from the console. In all fairness, though, the VGA breakout box is almost as big as the console itself.

He originally tried to build it into an Atari 2600 controller, but Dablio ultimately managed to fit the system into the plastic tube from a package of M&Ms, so the console is appropriately named the “Atari 2600MM.”

While some may say that you can buy an Atari 2600 built into a joystick, that’s not really fair, since those systems only play a limited number of games, and cannot accept an actual 2600 cartridge.

But no matter how much effort Dablio put into building his 2600 mini system, the games pretty much still suck. If you want to play games on a retro system, you should probably start off with an NES – many of those games still have replay value today. Or just buy a pack of M&Ms and eat them for even more fun.

Still, it’s impressive that Dablio managed to cram this entire system into such a small package. You can check out more pics and info (in Portuguese) on the build over at Dablio’s website, and in the video clip below:

[via Hack A Day]

According to its specs, the “One Eye” can capture high quality still images, as well as HD video – albeit only at 720p/30fps resolution, but a few years ago that would have been good enough to satisfy most of us. Of course with a lens this small, there’s no optical zoom, just a 4x digital mode. On the back of the camera is a tiny 1.5″ TFT viewfinder with 480×240 resolution you can use for framing shots. Images are stored on a microSD card (up to 64GB).

In addition to working as a pocket-sized point-and-shoot, the camera can be used as one of those vehicle recorder cameras, and even comes with a suction cup mounting bracket and cigarette socket adapter for your car. It’s also got a motion-detection mode which will trigger only when someone passes in front of its tiny lens.

The Kun “One Eye” pocket camera is available from Japanese gadget shop Thanko, and sells for ¥9,980 (~$120 USD).

This incredible model was made by a guy in Poland named Rafał Ż, and it measures just over 2 inches long. He made it based on a miniaturized version of papercraft model template he found over on Paper Replika, though he had to tweak it a little bit to get it to fit.

I cannot imagine the amount of patience and dexterity that it took to make this tiny thing, but it really is an amazing bit of work.

The only thing better would be if it actually lit up when screwed into a socket.

[via Paper Replika]

These 1/19th scale R/C carts are perfect for racing around hardwood or tile floors, and even able to carry a small payload while carting around too. They’ll each hold up to 500g of cargo (that’s over a pound), which means you can load them up with some dollhouse sized groceries without a problem. Then you can have cart demolition derbies, and the last one with any groceries left in their cart wins.

They’re also great for messing with your cat, as is evidenced from the video clip below:

I’d fill mine with a bag of catnip and see what happens then.

You can grab either the blue or the red remote-controlled shopping carts (each operates on its own frequency) over at Amazon for $21 (USD) each – though you’ll spend another $18 on shipping to get each one shipped from Japan.

[via GeekAlerts]

The Kiddy Mini Speaker is just what it sounds like – a speaker for cats a tiny, brightly colored speaker you can take with you and fit in your pocket. The tiny speaker plugs into your mobile device’s 3.5mm audio jack, and outputs sound through a little bitty speaker. It measures just 1.61″ (W) x 0.98″(H) x 0.67″(D), and its little amplifier pumps out a whopping 0.8W of power.

I do like the idea of the 3.5mm plug which folds into the case when not in use. There’s also a MiniUSB port on its side for charging its built-in battery – which lasts for about 6 hours on a charge. While I’m not sure I completely buy the picture below, they do look a vaguely like miniature Tivoli PAL radios – minus the radio dial (and the price tag).

Like many fun gadgets, I don’t even know how readily you can get them outside of Asia. I stumbled onto these funky little speakers over at a Korean outfit called the Early Adopter Shop[KR], where they sell for 12,800 Korean Won (~$11 USD) each. I also found them available in wholesale quantities over at Alibaba, if you own a shop and want to see about ordering a whole mess of ‘em.

As a result, residential units are also getting smaller and smaller. I think that’s one of the things designers Adriano Conti, Corrado Galzio and Alex Innamorati considered when they designed the Minikitchen, which is roughly the size of a washing machine.

The Minikitchen concept has everything that you’d need to cook, prepare, and store your food. Specifically, it has a vegetable washer, dishwasher, refrigerator, prep surface, small pantry, oven, and two other cooking systems so you can cook up most of your food without taking a lot of space at all. It’s perfect for a bachelor pad and would fit into tiny apartments with ease so you could have more space for all of your other stuff.

It’s a very neat idea, although I think the hard part lies in implementation, of course. It’s hard to imagine how the plumbing, refrigeration, food storage and heating systems could possibly fit into such a small container.

[via Yanko Design]

The Sanwa digital toy camera 400-CAM007 [JP] has a 5MP sensor and accepts microSD cards up to 8GB. It records video at 1280×960 pixels at 30 fps. It even has a voice recording function. The whole thing only weighs ½ an ounce. Talk about small!

The 400-CAM007, which makes me think of James Bond, comes in black or white and sells for ¥2890 (~$38 USD) only in Japan. You’ll probably be able to find it at one of  those Japanese tech import stores before long, or you can try and order one through White Rabbit Express’ “Order anything from Japan” service.

[via Fareastgizmos]

Sony has announced that it has a new screen that will find its way into future cameras that has much great resolution and is slightly larger than the old screen. The new screen is an OLED measuring 0.7-inches and called the ECX332A (Japanese PDF). The coolest part is that the screen has 720p (1280×720) resolution.

That means the tiny little OLED shows HD images giving you a lot more resolution to decide if what you are seeing in the photo you want. The new screen uses the same white OLED and color filters as the old one. Sony has offered no word on when the new screen will land inside a camera, but these appear to be the same displays found in their HMZ-T1 720p 3D head-mounted display.

[via OLED-Info]

At this size, it’s obviously not a fully functioning computer, but there are a lot of ways that this video could be faked. It could be a video playing on an iPod Nano screen, or something like that.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

All I know is that it comes from Japan, of that much I am sure. As for the authenticity of this tiny desktop? I am somewhat dubious, but it’s still pretty awesome even if it is fake.

[via TDW Geek via DVice]

Unlike its predecessor, which can only take pictures at 1600 x 1200 and videos at 640 x 480, this upgraded version snaps photos at 3264 x 2448 resolution and records 1280 x 720 videos at 30fps. The trade off? An increase in size… by about 0.1 to 0.3 inches on each side. Whip out a magnifying glass and inspect the two Chobi Cam Ones side-by-side:

The Chobi Cam One HD even offers add-on zoom, wide-angle and fish-eye lenses. The tiny camera has a microSDHC slot that supports cards up to 32GB in storage, and can transfer data over USB. Its battery can be fully charged in an hour, after which it’s good for about 25 minutes of shooting videos.

Here’s a more jarring comparison of the Chobi Cam One HD. I know DSLRs are chunky, but it’s a building next to this bugger.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The Chobi Cam One HD sells for appx. $185 (USD) at GeekStuff4U. Unfortunately the accessory lenses are not bundled even at that steep price; you can get those from JTT Online for about $30-$60 each.

The pocket-size speaker has a built-in rechargeable battery which takes 2 hours to charge up via USB cable, and it will last you 5 hours of playing time. It comes in three color variations: silver, gold, and black. It looks extremely simple, yet well put together.

You can get this portable speaker for around $65 (USD). Since they’re a Japanese import, it’s not too easy to find them, but you can head over here for a few different shops that stock these. Whether or not they’ll ship to the US is another problem.

[via NotCot]

The CLAP has a 2-megapixel F2.8 (3.2mm) lens. It can shoot images at 1280 x 1024 resolution, saving them as JPEG files, and video at 720 x 480, which are saved as AVI files. As you can see it has a built-in USB 2.0 connector that is used both to export files as well as recharge the camera’s internal Li-ion battery. It also has a microSD slot (supports up to 16GB) for saving stills and videos on the go. No, it doesn’t have a viewfinder, but even if it had one it wouldn’t be of much use anyway.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The CLAP digital camera is available on Amazon in six different colors for $49.95 (USD) each. If you’re going to get one I strongly recommend that you get hold of a 1mm piece of string, rope or cord and make use of the camera’s strap hole.

[via Superheadz & SlamXHype]

While I’m not sure the guys who make this tiny camera have actually checked with the Guinness Book or World Records, I do have to say this is the smallest standalone HD camera I’ve seen.

We’ve written about a couple of other tiny cameras before, but this one definitely looks smaller than either the already miniscule Chobi Cam or the MAME-CAM DX. At just about 1.25″ wide, ChinaVasion’s DV59 micro-camera is definitely small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, and even looks a little bit like a miniature DSLR. Trust me when I say it’s not a DSLR, though.

Despite its size, ChinaVasion claims the camera can shoot 720p (1280×720) video at 30fps. Still images can be captured at up to 8 megapixels, but that’s upsampled from its 2 megapixel CMOS sensor. I don’t get why anyone still quotes upsampled megapixel resolutions anymore. Heck, with Photoshop, I could turn a VGA image into a 20 megapixel image, and it’ll still look like crap.

Still, priced at only $44.49 (USD), it looks like a fun little novelty item, if for nothing else you want to tell your friends that you have the world’s smallest HD camera – except for that one that’s built into every smartphone on the market these days. Oh yeah.

The detail in these little guns is very impressive. They look exactly like the real thing. The crazy thing about them to me is that the man built these tiny weapons from schematics and descriptions of the real guns. Some of these were built as far back as 1970 without the aid of modern tools.

Over the years, Alexander Perfiliev has created 50 different gun models and still has them. A single rifle took him a full year to make and most are made from steel. Some used whatever materials he had nearby though. I like the AK and the big machine gun with the bi-pod myself.

[via Lesnyanskiy (RU) via English Russia]

I am going to assume they mean one of the larger milk cartons that are somewhat rare in the US now. The 3D printer is cheap as well; the team says that it can be built for about 1200 Euro (~$1700  USD). The finished product weighs about 1.5kg and uses a tank of resin for printing.

Another cool fact about the printer is that its intense light (I assume they mean LED laser diodes) can harden layers of the resin only 1/20th of a millimeter thick. That means that the printer can be used to print items that require extreme precision. The team is working on making the printer cheaper and smaller yet, and they are working to get it to use other print materials like ceramic.

[via TGDaily]

The tiny camera measures just 1.37″ (h) x 2.75″ (w) x 0.59″(d) and weighs under an ounce. It captures stills at 1280 x 1024 resolution (1.3 megapixels), and can shoot video at 720 x 480 at 30fps. Its tiny F2.8 lens shoots only at ISO 100, but if you’re using this thing for your pictures, I’m assuming you’re not expecting museum-quality images. The very fact that they call these things a “toy digital camera” should have tipped you off.

The coolest thing about the Fuuvi is the end of the camera pops off just like a flash drive, and the camera will dock and charge when plugged into your computer’s USB port. The camera’s storage (a Micro SD card up to 16GB) will be immediately recognized as a drive on your PC, just like a flash drive.

Audiocubes just started carrying the Fuuvi Pick mini digital camera, where it sells for $59.99 (USD). While the camera is made in several colors, it’s not clear if they stock them in anything but black. You’ll want to contact them to confirm.

The camera is about 1 mm³ in size – about “the size of a coarsely ground grain of salt,” and that’s pretty small. It’s got 62,500 pixel resolution, so the images it captures inside your body should be pretty sharp. The developer is the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany and they say that the camera should be cheap enough to be disposable by 2012.

There could be a lot of uses for this type of tiny camera, from a Big Brother-like surveillance scenario, to better rear view mirrors for your SUV. Fraunhofer expects these cameras to become available next year. I wonder when they will make a wireless version.

[via Gizmag]

Since the Linux-based DreamPlug doesn’t have a video card, it can’t drive an external monitor, which means that it’s best used as a web or application server. It has a 1.2GHz Marvell Sheeva processor, 1GB of RAM, and a bunch of ports including 2 Ethernet, 2 USB, 1 eSATA 2.0, 1 SD slot. It also has 802.11b/g WiFi, and Bluetooth 2.1 built in. It’s also got analog and digital audio outputs if you want to use it as a tiny music server.

The DreamPlug will cost $149 (USD) and it looks like something pretty cool for specialized applications, but has limited uses for the everyday user.

[via Ubergizmo]