By Luke Anderson

Have you ever wanted to lock yourself out of a cabinet full of sweets, or perhaps a lockbox full of emergency money? Sure, you can slap any old lock on there, but if you have the key, then what’s to stop you from just opening it up? Well what if your lock took more effort to open than just inserting a key and turning it? That’s exactly the idea behind the Impossible lock.

This brass padlock is a little more complex than your average locking device. Think of it more as a puzzle that just so happens to also be a padlock. With it you get both a key and a small implement with a point on one end. Apparently with these two tools you should be able to open the lock, if you figure out how. The lock does come with a set of instructions, so you’re welcome to solve it, then lock up stuff that you want other people to stay out of. Just leave the key somewhere obvious and laugh when they wonder why it won’t open. Of course for around $200 you could just by a regular lock and hide the key really well.

[ Grand-Illusions ] VIA [ RedFerret ]

By Luke Anderson

Over the past couple of years I’ve noticed more retailers offering reusable shopping bags for around a buck apiece. Every time I walk past a rack of these I think to myself how they’re a good idea, and that they are much better for then environment than plastic bags. Of course I haven’t actually bothered to pick up any such bags to use myself. I’ll admit, the main reason is sheer laziness and the desire to not carry in bags every time I go shopping. I imagine that I’m not the only one doing this, mostly because I’ve only seen a handful of people actually using those fancy bags.

I won’t say that the reusable bags aren’t working, but I think that a good many people are resistant to them simply because it requires extra effort. Thankfully there are companies making cool disposable alternatives like the 60BAGs. These are made from flax-viscose non-woven fabric which will biodegrade in just 60 days. That seems pretty quick, especially since some of your average grocery bags can take up to 500 years to biodegrade. These 60BAGs are currently only available in Poland, so we might not see them here in the US for a while. Until then, your best bet is the reusable bags, or at least doing what I do and recycle the plastic bags that you do use.

[ 60BAG ] VIA [ BoingBoing ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Dear hardware manufacturers and industrial designers. Adding an integrated carrying handle to your product does not necessarily make it portable. Now the fact that this media center includes everything from an 8-inch 16:9 LCD display, to a DVD player that supports most of today’s popular video file formats, to an NES emulator is all well and good, but it’s not like you’re going to carry this thing on the subway, or using it to watch a movie on your next flight. So maybe we should start reserving the term ‘portable’ for devices that are at least small enough to stash in a backpack, and terms like transportable or haulable for larger items like this. Thank-you once again Chinavasion. (~ $175)

[ Portable Digital Media Center ] VIA [ 7Gadgets ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While I’m familiar with the concept of vibrating football games, I have to admit they’re nothing more than a pop-culture footnote to me. I understand football (not soccer) the game, but I have no idea how the randomly moving and spinning figurines on the game board correlate to running plays or any kind of strategy at all. In fact I’m pretty sure there’s an old vibrating football game kicking around my parent’s home, but it was easily trumped by the C64 when I was a kid.

But with Father’s Day coming up, I’m sure this would make for a nice nostalgia trip for most dads past the age of 40. And who knows, those updated graphics and official NFL branding might just convince me to give it a second chance. If I could find it for a bit cheaper than $79.50 that is.

[ NFL 2008 Vibrating Football Game ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Remember the Brush & Rinse Toothbrush I first wrote about back in August of 2007? It looked like a standard toothbrush except for the back of the head which was specially engineered to “effectively redirect water from a faucet to your mouth for easy rinsing.” Well at that time you could order 1 one of the 27 original working prototypes for just $1,750, so odds are none of you picked one up.

But there’s good news! The Brush & Rinse Toothbrush is now available for pre-order from Moq7 for just $1.18, which is considerably more affordable than the prototypes were. The only catch is that they have to pre-sell 50,000 units by the end of the year in order to meet the production run requirements. At the moment they’ve managed to sell just over 10,000 brushes, so I think there’s a good chance you might actually get your hands on one should you choose to place an early order. But if they don’t meet the minimal number, all orders will be fully refunded.

[ Brush & Rinse Toothbrush ] VIA [ Wired Gadget Lab ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I’m not in the market for a portable DVD player, nor will I ever be, but were I forced to choose one I might lean towards the DCP951/37 (what’s with the slash?) from Philips. On one hand, the 640×220 resolution is pretty crappy, but on the other hand I really like the slide out dock that’s compatible with the iPod Touch, iPod Nano and the standard ‘big on storage, low on features’ iPod Classic. While the DCP951/37 has a DVD slot that can play almost every kind of standard-def video disc in existence, as well as an SD card slot for those all-important Divx files, being able to watch your iTunes video purchases on a larger 9-inch screen is a nice option.

Other features include MP3 support, 2 x 3.5mm stereo headphone jacks for sharing with a friend and a built-in LI-Polymer battery that’s rated for about 2.5 hours of playback. And you can pick one up from Amazon right now for a very reasonable $139.98.

[ Philips DCP951/37 Docking Entertainment System ] VIA [ GadgetGrid ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Imagine if the windows in your home or business could be used as motion detectors to sense a potential intruder before they even attempted to break in. Well that’s the idea behind the ‘Vigilant windows’ being developed at the Fraunhofer Institutes for Applied Polymer Research. The glass is coated with a special nanoparticle material that converts light into fluorescent radiation. As UV light hits the glass, the fluorescent radiation is then channeled to sensors along the edge of the window, and all is well.

But when someone or something passes by the window they block the amount of light hitting it, which reduces the amount of fluorescent radiation being produced, which can be measured by the sensors and used to trigger an alarm. In fact, with sensors installed on all four sides of a window frame the system can even extrapolate the size of the object, which direction it’s moving and how fast it’s going.

At the moment the Vigilant window system is still in development, but demo systems already exist and the researchers claim the special nanoparticle coating can be easily applied as a spray-on finish or as a glued on film.

[ Fraunhofer Institute - Vigilant windows ]

By Evan Ackerman

Fans of space history will immediately notice that the MIR alarm clock looks nothing like Mir. We’ll tackle that in due course. Meantime, it’s a solar powered radio alarm clock, and it’s painted gold, and it looks altogether too pretty and too fragile to wake me up in the morning lest I sleepily (and violently) attempt to silence it.

Now, on to the relevant issue: the MIR clock doesn’t look like Mir. After much research, I have concluded that this should be called the Resurs clock, after the Resurs 500 capsule launched by the Russians in 1992 to promote the 500th anniversary of the voyage of Christopher Columbus. See for yourself:

The MIR alarm clock is currently just a concept, probably because they don’t have the name right.

[ Behance ] VIA [ NewLaunches ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Looking for a way to spice up daily life in your meticulously constructed LEGO town? How about introducing a zombie infestation? Or why not let the Joker and Two-Face from The Dark Knight run amok for a couple of days? That should keep the local fire department, police station and The Watchmen’s Rorschach busy for a while right?

Over at The Big Toy Hut they’ve got a pretty large collection of LEGO minifigs you can buy to populate your town, but it’s the hand-customized figures that really stand out. The attention to detail is perfect, and the custom figures could easily pass as real LEGO minifigs which is important since I’m pretty sure you’re never going to find an official Watchmen LEGO collection at your local Toys”R”Us.

And like anything that’s custom and awesome these figures aren’t cheap at $11.99 a piece, but they’re well worth it if you’re a serious LEGO collector.

[ The Big Toy Hut - Custom LEGO Minifigs ] VIA [ YoKiddo! ]