The little magnetic light looks just like an underwater contact mine, except that it’s far less dangerous unless you stuff it full of high explosives, in which case it will only be moderately less dangerous. It’s a pretty neat idea, though: each one of those twelve “spikes” has a neodymium magnet at the tip, and you can use them to stick the light to any metallic surface and orient it just the way you want it. The wide-angle white LED looks like it provides plenty of illumination, and although it’s hard to tell from this picture, the light is tiny, about the size of a golf ball. It takes three watch batteries, but it doesn’t seem to say how long they power the light for or whether or not they are replaceable. My guess is “a while” and “yes,” but I don’t know for sure.
The Striker Magnetic Light Mine costs all of $8 on the Striker website.
It looks like the Star Trek marketing machine is up to full speed again (warp 9?) so besides new toys, games and collectibles, you’ll soon be able to add a set of Trek-themed fragrances to your Captain Kirk shrine. Created by Genki Wear, the trio of scents will be available in department stores come April for about $30-40 a bottle, and will include names like “Tiberius”, “Red Shirt” and “Ponn Farr.”
I really have no idea what to say, except please don’t get any ideas Mr. Lucas. (Though I imagine Yoda would have a pleasing bouquet…)
While it’s not a name-brand phone by any stretch of the imagination, the Cool8800C handset available from Solomobi has a few features that might make the purchase worth the risk. Not only does it support dual-SIM cards that work at the same time, but it’s also got an analog TV tuner and pretty much every other feature you’d expect to find in a modern cellphone like ebook reader, FM radio, MP3/MP4 support etc.
But the most obvious and unique feature is the flip out screen and keypad which reveal another screen underneath and a set of dedicated gaming controls. Now you’re limited to only playing classic NES titles, but it comes with 3 already built-in and you can load other ROMS via a trans-flash memory card. I’m almost tempted to shell out the $140 to pick one up, except for the fact that it only supports GSM 900/1800 frequencies.
What do you get when you combine a couple of DDR dance mats for the PS2, a converter box allowing them to connect to a PC, some custom-written C# code and a set of Windows Media Center themed button graphics? Why the world’s largest Media Center Remote Control of course. Or at least the largest one I’ve ever seen. It’s a bit too physically involved for my liking, as you can see in the video below, but if you’re interested in making your own, the source code is available on the michbex.online website.
Here’s the perfect accessory for those of you using a netbook, particularly with a small SSD hard drive. The diminutive MF-SU2 series of USB flash drives from Elecom are barely visible when connected to one of your laptop’s USB ports, but provide either 4 or 8GB of extra storage. They also come with a piece of security software known as PASS (Password Authentication Security System) that allows you to access the drive’s secure contents without having to type a password on your own PC.
I’m not sure when they’ll be available or for how much, but you’ll have your choice of black, blue, pink and white colors.
The MSI Wind U100 is a pretty decent netbookthe best netbook EVAR. In fact, I’m typing this entry on one right now, can you tell? MSI has been pretty good about providing substantive software upgrades, and now it looks like there are some hardware enhancements on the way in the next generation of the U100 series, although they’ll be just about identical from the outside.
The U100 Plus will have an extra gig of RAM for 2 gigs total, although it’s unclear whether they’re just going to be filling the empty RAM slot found on the original U100. Also, the processor gets a small bump to the 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N280, with an Intel Intel 945GSE graphics chipset.
If you pop in a recent Sci-Fi movie and observe the weaponry, you’ll likely see some very sleek-looking weapons. It seems logical that in the future everything will look far better, right? Well if you go back to the really old Sci-Fi stuff like Buck Rogers, their idea of the future was a bit different. Most notably their guns had almost a steampunk look to them, which in many ways is much cooler than anything we see these days.
If you have a taste for old ray guns and such, you might want to check out these custom creations by Any Hill. He has constructed a variety of weapons that are perfect for interstellar domination from random found and recycled objects. What’s even cooler is that he’s given them all bad-ass names like Buzzkill 5000 and written backstories for each gun. There are still a few of them left for purchase at prices ranging from $300-$350.
My shower is one of those places in my house that I don’t generally care to upgrade or make look any nicer than it already is. It’s one of those tub/shower plastic insert things that you tend to see a lot of these days. I keep it clean and it looks decent, so why would I bother to spend a lot of money on someplace that I only see for about 15 minutes a day? I’ve honestly not seen anything to change my opinion of the matter, that is until I came across these Temperature-Sensitive Glass Tiles.
These awesome glass tiles will change color depending on their current temperature. You just tell the manufacturer what base temperature you want, and every 6-10 degree increment from there activates a different color phase. There are three phases in all, and once you’ve passed the third, it will return to the original color. I wouldn’t recommend installing these in a house with more than one or two people in it. You can bet that the first person in the shower is going to use up all the hot water just messing with the colors on the tiles. Of course you’ll need to rob a bank first, since a single 4” x 4” tile will run you $33, or around $300 per square foot.
You probably keep your old VCR around because of that pile of VHS tapes that you still have. But come on, are you really going to go through all the hassle of rewinding a tape just to watch Labyrinth in lousy quality one more time? Yeah, true, I totally would. Anyway, you should relegate that entire technology system to the garage or the basement and replace it with something that’s relevant in this day and age: a media center PC. And just to make the transition easier for you, it’s a media center PC that looks just like a VCR.
Currently available from Maplin in the UK, this is a barebones system, meaning that you get to stick your own operating system, hard drive, and optical drive into it. But it does come with a Intel motherboard and processor, a wireless card, a bunch of inputs and outputs, and a TV tuner. Only problem is, it’s a European tuner, which means you’re either gonna have to run a really really really long cable, or find some way of swapping it out for something that’s relevant in the civilized part of the world.
The VCR barebones media center PC is $212 plus shipping.
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