A foldable mountain bike with 26″ standard wheels. It can be folded or unfolded within 30 seconds, and even fits inside the trunk of a MINI (a definite plus for me). It’s got a front suspension fork, 27 speeds and disk brakes to boot. Total weight is 27 lbs, but the price stings at just under $2,300.
This well-designed aluminum and steel work desk has a bevy of features that set it apart from others. It has, among other things, cable channels, a built-in all-in-one computer or display stand, a built-in iPod dock, USB and audio hub, speaker grilles with integrated speakers, and a built-in power strip. Very nice indeed!
A water-power LED light for your shower. It’s powered by the water flow itself, so it needs no batteries. It has a built-in temperature sensor, so it turns blue if the water is cold, or red if the water is hot. Cool stuff!
It looks like a paper bag, but it’s made out of leather. The design is very nice and useful too, but I worry about the suede finish, which could get stained as you start carrying stuff around in the bag.
Apple released an updated Mac Pro recently. The specs make it the most powerful Mac Pro ever — possibly the best desktop on the market — while the Apple design cinches the deal. It uses the new Intel Nehalem series quad-core processors. You can put two quad-core chips in the Mac Pro, each capable of speeds at up to 2.93GHz, and that gives you eight processors in all. It’ll take up to 32GB of RAM, and it comes with two fast graphics cards that each have a built-in Mini DisplayPort connector. There are finally more connectors on the front panel, which is something users have wanted for a long time.
Images used courtesy of Apple.
Toshiba TG01
Toshiba has released a touchscreen smartphone that is thinner than the iPhone, has a larger display, more memory, usable Bluetooth (not just for headsets) and a better camera. The specs are as follows:
4.1 inch WVGA display (800 x 480 pixels)
3.2 megapixel camera
Bluetooth
GSM and 3G HSDPA
WiFi
GPS and A-GPS
1GHz mobile CPU
512 MB RAM
Up to 32 GB of storage space via microSDHC card
Interestingly enough, the device uses Windows Mobile 6.1. I’d like to know how it stacks up with the iPhone in terms of ease of use and reliability. From my experience, previous versions of Windows Mobile were terrible, slow, and prone to crash or lock up. Perhaps Microsoft have managed to improve the OS — we’ll see.
It’s a multi-purpose sofa designed for laptop users. The armrests fold inward and turn into laptop shelves, while the back rests can be folded and configured to face the same way, in the traditional sofa configuration, or in opposite directions, like a love seat. The back rests can even be folded down, turning the sofa into a coffee table. There’s storage space underneath the seats as well.
Another wonderfully designed multi-purpose furniture piece comes from Germany and was made by Marius Goetze. It can be turned over and used as a desk and chair piece, like the kind found in classrooms, or as a standalone table, or even as a lectern.
Another clever bookshelf design. This one mounts on the wall and resembles a bird’s nest. Instead of using a booksign, you place the book you’re reading upside down on its top. You can store more books in its base.
A Flash app from ZeFrank that lets you draw on the screen using your voice to move the brush. Change the pitch of your voice to change the direction of the brush.
The Spotlight is a small, rechargeable flashlight that plugs right into your car’s 12V outlet, and stays there, ready when you need it. I got a chance to use these little flashlights first hand, and I love them. They come pre-charged, so they’re ready right out of the package. They’re small, lightweight, easy to carry in your pocket, and they pack a mighty light in their tiny package.
They come with accessories as well, like a two outlet splitter that lets you share the 12V plug with some other gadget, or to charge a second spotlight. There’s also a lanyard with a rubber cap that snaps right onto the end of the flashlight. There’s also a small adapter that clips onto the end of the flashlights, just in case your car’s 12V socket is a bit different than usual.
The Spotlight costs $19.95, and the 12V socket splitter, called the Super Socket, is $12.95.
Shure X2u XLR-to-USB Microphone Adapter
The X2u adapter from Shure, which will become available in Spring 2009, will let you use any XLR microphone with your computer, via USB. Until now, we had either USB-connected microphones — whose gamut ranged from the very cheap to those made by Blue — or regular XLR microphones, which needed to be connected through mixing boards.
Shure has made it possible to bypass the mixing board and connect the XLR microphone directly to a computer, allowing us to have much greater choice when it comes to the microphone we want to use for podcasts or other audio recordings. And who’s to stop you from using a professional microphone for audio or video chats via Skype or iChat? I’m sure the sound would be much better than if you used your computer’s built-in microphone.
What’s also cool is that they’ve come up with a couple of USB microphones that connect directly to a computer, the PG27 and PG42 models. These are both cardioid condenser microphones with large diaphragm capsules. The PG27 is geared for voice and instruments, and the PG42 is for voice recordings. The PG42 comes with an additional shock mount along with carrying case. The PG27 comes with a stand and zippered carrying pouch.
This backpack is made from Cyclotex100, a material made 100% recycled matter. It will not only fit your books and other gear, but will also fit most laptops up to 17″ in size. You can order it blank for $47.80, or you can put a logo or some other design on it, which will bring the price up to $57.36 per item. The price is right for a backpack with such green credentials.
This is one cool bicycle! It’s made of carbon and flax fiber composites and hydroformed aluminum, so it’s very light for its size: only 11-12 kg, or under 24 lbs. It has built-in LED lights for the front and rear, powered by a roof-top solar panel, and built-in rearview mirrors. All of the cables and the chain are hidden inside the frame, which means you won’t snag your clothes onto anything as you ride it. For simplicity, there’s a single brake lever that operates both front and rear disc brakes. The gears shift automatically into high and low settings, allowing you to tackle most roads.
It has a luggage connector in the back. The same connector can be used to plug in a battery pack for a planned hybrid version, which can assist you as you pedal uphill.
This car design made the rounds very quickly after it was first published, and I figured so many people knew about it already that it didn’t need to be covered here. However, I couldn’t resist it. It’s so beautiful and functional that I really do hope it becomes a reality in the very near future.
It’s a detachable motor home that can sleep a family of four. The cockpit, which also seats four, can be fully detached from the caravan and driven around town. The back can be configured to have a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and seating area, and can be re-configured on the fly through foldable and pull-out shelves and units to fit your daily needs.
I should stress that this is just a design. All we’ve seen so far are computer-generated images. Not even a prototype exists. But if a working prototype were to be built, I’m sure the demand would be great for such a wonderful design.
The Samsung Show (W7900) cellphone includes a built-in projector that displays bright, colorful 10-lumen video at up to 50 inches in diagonal. (Yes, you read that right.) The video resolution is 480 x 320 pixels. It also has a 320 x 240 pixel OLED display, a 5-megapixel camera, a digital TV tuner, and works on 3G HSDPA networks at up to 7.2 megabits bandwidth. There’s a demo video of the phone on the Pop-Sci website.
Unfortunately, it’s only going to be available in Korea for now, as is to be expected with all the cool new cellphones…
This neat chair doubles up as a room divider when folded. The mesh is made from mosaic tiles embedded in silicon, the frame is aluminum, and it’s designed to fold into a thin vertical surface.I love multi-purpose furniture. It means less clutter, particularly in smaller spaces.
This new furniture design features a laptop pad built into a chair. No word on what the material is — I don’t know if it’s wood, or foam-coated wood, or plastic, but I think the design is really neat. As you can see below, there’s a chair built into a cabinet as well, which means you’ll have an all-in-one unit where you can sit, use your computer, and store your books and other stackable media.
The Sanyo eneloop batteries have a very low discharge rate, unlike other rechargeable batteries, which means they’ll still retain up to 85% of their charge, even after 1 year. They also come pre-charged from the factory, which means they’re ready to use, right away. And they can be recharged 1,000 times or more.
Sounds like I need to get some of these batteries myself. My Energizer rechargeables have no charge left at all after they’ve spent a 2-3 weeks in their storage case.
The eneloop batteries come in AA and AAA sizes, and should you need them, they have adaptors for C and D sizes as well.
The concept is so simple, and yet that’s what makes it cool. These are mini-candles packaged in a small matchbook. There are ten of them in each book. Carry them with you for any special occasions. They can be stood up inside the package or placed on a cake. A pack of 4 matchbooks at 10 candles each (40 candles total) sells for $6 from Pokito.
Verbatim has a new keyboard that will work with both Macs and PCs. The neat thing about it is that it has built-in speakers and backlit keys. The built-in speakers will reduce the clutter on your desk, and the backlighting will let you type accurately at night.
The levitating light bulb is a project that uses Nikolas Tesla’s wireless power transfer technology, invented in the 1890s. The bulb and the casing contain hidden circuitry that uses electromagnetic feedback to keep the lightbulb in the air, approximately 2.5″ from the lower surface, while also transferring electric power to it wirelessly. As you can see from the demo video on YouTube, the technology isn’t perfect, and the light isn’t constant, but it’s still a wonderful step forward, and as a science project, it’s very interesting.
A Japanese-style hot tub that looks like a cooking pot. It’ll set you back a pretty penny with its $20,000 price tag, but if you’re a spender with a lot of money, what’s $20K… On the plus side, it’s built of a 14-gauge steel and chromium alloy, and has insulation built into its walls, so it retains the water temperature. I like the design, but it’s too much for my wallet.
This rolling duffel bag is actually made of two parts: a regular duffel bag, and a lower part, which contains the bag frame and rolling wheels. You zip them together when you enter the airport, and when you reach your seat on the plane, you zip apart the top, which can be stowed under the seat, and put the bottom part in the overhead bin. This allows you easy access to the various items you may need during the flight, such as snacks, a pillow, or a book. It’s a great idea.
Here are this week’s seven cool gadgets. Did you see last week’s edition of Gadget Monday?
Parans luminaires
A company called Parans has come up with a way to bottle sunlight and deliver it inside office spaces or homes as natural lighting.
The concept is remarkably simple yet works wonderfully. They have sunlight collectors sitting on the roof or exterior walls of a building. They look like this.
The light then gets concentrated and carried through special fiber optic cables created to preserve all of the light’s characteristics.
These cables are then connected to special light fixtures that diffuse the natural light indoors. They can be panel lights or floodlights.
With this new lighting method, employees or home owners get all of the benefits of natural sunlight in rooms where they normally can’t get it and don’t need to spend money on electricity or electric lighting appliances. I’m not sure what the cost is, but I’d love to see companies take up this new lighting method. Just think, all those employees sitting in tiny cubicles under fluorescent lighting, not seeing the light of day, all day long, all week long, could instead be bathed in natural light, which would cheer them up and boost their productivity.
Someone has come up with this world clock, built in Flash. It shows the time of day where you are in the world, but it also lists all sorts of important statistics, like world population, births, population grown, divorces, cancer incidence, forest lost, species extinct, and deaths. The death statistics are interesting because they’re broken down by reason, such as TB, AIDS, malaria, cancer and others. You can click on buttons that re-calculate the statistics per year, month, day or now. It’s definitely worth a look.
Altec Lansing expressionist CLASSIC speakers
These speakers would go great with an iMac or an all-in-one PC. They have a clear, square face that holds the cylindrical enclosure for the speakers. They connect to your computer through a regular 3.5mm audio cable, and they have an auxiliary input for iPods or other MP3 players as well. The output is 7.5 Watts per channel.
This little device, slightly bigger than a C battery, will turn any USB external drive into a network drive. You simply plug the USB cable into the Addonics NAS Adapter, and you connect the adapter to your router with a standard network cable. Its USB port is powered, which means you can even plug in a small portable USB drive, and you won’t need to worry about connecting it to a separate power supply.
The adapter is compatible with any version of Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (2.6.x and higher). It supports the Samba protocol for up to 64 clients, has a built-in FTP server for up to 8 clients, and can be used as a print server or Bit Torrent client. You can manage it through its built-in web interface. The best part is that it retails for only $55. At that price, it’s a must-have.
This new turbine, created by Massachussetts-based FloDesign, uses jet engine aerodynamics to extract more energy from the wind. It is still a horizontal axis turbine, but its patent-pending design focuses air flow and speeds it up, which means its blades can rotate at lower wind speeds. Because it uses jet engine technology, which is an enclosed design, this means it can also rotate at much higher speeds, and is also safer to be around. The blades orient themselves to the wind automatically because the turbine is equipped with a fin that acts as a windvane. The product hasn’t launched yet, nor is the company taking orders yet, but I for one look forward to seeing this on the market.
There’s also a demo video on YouTube, which explains the technology in more detail.
This neat gadget has rechargeable batteries inside. You plug it into an outlet while you’re at home to recharge its batteries, then take it with you while you travel. If you run out of juice for your iPhone or iPod, you simply plug those devices into the musicPower Encore, and they recharge using the energy stored inside. It’s a neat way to transport the energy you need to keep your toys working. It sells for $20 at ThinkGeek.
The next-generation SD cards, called SDXC (Xtended Capacity), will have increased storage capacity, up to 2 TB, and will have increased read/write speeds as well, anywhere from 104-300 MB/sec. The official specs are due to be released by the SD Association in Q1 of this year, 2009.
A 2TB SDXC card will be able to store about 480 hours of full HD recording, or about 136,000 high-quality photos. Keep in mind the USB 3.0 spec has also been released recently, which means we’ll have USB 3.0 card readers. We’ll be able to store and transfer more data than ever before. I for one wonder if CF cards will continue to be the staple storage device for DSLRs, or whether SDXC cards will replace them altogether.
Raoul Pop 