Archive for November 2007

Now I’ve seen some cheap speakers in my days, but even the chintziest ones I’ve seen were at least made out of plastic. Not these. These ones are fabricated from thick paper stock. Xenics Music Cube M speakers offer up some truly low-fidelity sound thanks to their flimsy cardboard construction.

This simple, clever mug automatically indicates its current state of mind when you pour a hot beverage into it. In its dormant state, the mug offers a black “OFF” display, but once your hot coffee or tea hits the inside, it gradually transforms to read “ON”.

This amazing floor lamp uses strands of brilliant electroluminescent tubes to form into an nearly infinite number of flowing organic shapes. Designed by Jesus Felipe and Silvia Grimaldi of UK-based Nimble Critters, the ETree lamp is more of an interactive sculpture than simply a lamp.

Don’t you find it odd that on one hand, our LCD and Plasma TV screens can never be big enough, but on the other hand, gadgets are getting smaller screens all the time. This new pair of video players are about the size of a credit card, and offer up video on teeny tiny screens.

Looking at its boxy leatherette exterior, you might think this was an old camera from the 1920s or 30s. But you’d be wrong. In fact, it’s a digital webcam that you can hook up to your computer for capturing video. The RetroCam connects to any PC via USB and mini cables (for audio).

The latest watches from renowned French designer Philippe Starck may look incredibly modern at first glance, but their roots are firmly grounded in analog technology. Starck’s new Wrapped watches feature an electroplated face which conceals almost the entirety of the watch hands.

Handmade by eBay seller buttlesscutlass98 (great name, eh?) these milk chocolate bars are cast in the perfect likeness of an NES controller and cartridge. Now I’ll be the first to say that I’d be a little wary of handmade chocolates for sale on eBay (by a guy with buttless in his name especially), but if you’re a real classic Nintendo fan, you might just have to bite into one of these.

If you’ve never bothered to get out of the 80’s and upgrade from that old Commodore 64, it turns out you don’t have to miss out on modern video games. Heck, why shouldn’t you be able to play Guitar Hero on your C64? Toni Westbrook’s Shredz64 project aims to interface a Playstation GH controller with a C64, then to create a rudimentary version of the rhythm matching game that runs on the classic computer.

You’ve gotta hand it to the Etch-A-Sketchist. The stuff he’s able to pull off with his little red sketch toy always blows my mind. One of his latest creations is everyone’s favorite little plumber, Mario. Other recent drawings from the master of metallic filings include such pop icons as Hall and Oates, Master Chief, and the Don’t Tase Me ‘Bro dude.

Don’t expect to crack these fortune cookies open to predict your future. Just like the real deal, they don’t taste very good either. But they will store your files and keep them safe. The latest in the “Freshly Baked” series of USB flash storage devices from Vavolo, the fortune cookies come in both 1GB ($29.99)

For those of us in Northern climates, there’s not much worse than standing outside waiting for the bus in the freezing cold. Sometimes your coat, scarf and gloves just aren’t enough to keep you warm. So I’m pleased to tell you about the latest in portable fireplace technology, the iYule. While it actually won’t keep you toasty, the iYule will get you thinking warm thoughts.

With a name like U27, this all-in-one desktop audio system may sound like some sort of old German submarine, but its looks are clearly inspired more by Apollo 13 than by Das Boot. The system combines both an MP3 player and a compact speaker system in a single conical device.

Every once in a while a company takes a stab at trying to resurrect pinball machines using modern technology. The latest entry into the digital pinball genre replaces the old mechanical table with a large flat screen display and interchangeable digital games. The system offers up the familiar top-down view and flipper controllers you’d find on a traditional pinball machine, but that’s about where the similarities end.

What’s got 8 tentacles and the brains of a Nintendo GameBoy? It’s an 8-bit music maker’s dream, that’s what. Electronic musician Joey Mariano (aka “Animal Style“) took an old GameBoy Color system and built a custom controller for it that uses 8 individual foot pedal controllers to jam out on the device. Using a series of GameBoy audio sequencing hacks, the foot pedals allow for live improvisation with all sorts of electronic beeps and blips.

Need to grab some vid clips on the down low? This tiny spy camera is designed to fit perfectly inside a gum wrapper, and can capture digital audio and video without any external hardware. While the camera’s 176 x 144 capture resolution isn’t sharp enough for than grabbing more than rudimentary moving images, it’s enough to get the general idea of what’s going on.

This has got to be one of my favorite casemods in a while. Guitar geek Ben Lewry had an old laptop lying around and decided to see if he could cram it inside of the body of an electric guitar. The end result is a slick, interactive music device called the LCDetar.