By Andrew Liszewski

Say what you will about George Lucas and his merchandising empire, but I have to give them credit for realizing how important their fans are and not always having a knee-jerk lawsuit reaction to every single Star Wars homage. Like this custom ‘Han Solo frozen in carbonite’ desk created by Tom Spina Designs. While there’s not a terrible amount of information on their site about it, I’m pretty sure it’s not an officially licensed Star Wars product since it was actually created as a custom one-off design for one of their clients.

Oh and FYI, while it’s a nice design and all, I’m not a fan of glass top desks because there’s always the chance of this happening.

[ Tom Spina Designs - Han Solo Frozen In Carbonite Desk ] VIA [ Make ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Whether you’re looking for some calming white noise to help you drift off to sleep at night, or you just moved to the desert and desperately miss the sound of falling rain, this unique piece of vinyl should fill that void in your life. On one side of the endless rain record you’ll find a long track of, you guessed it, falling rain, while the other side features looped grooves that play a continuous stream of more distinct rain drops. $39 from the designboom shop, or free if you just move to a rainforest.

[ Endless Rain Record ] VIA [ Better Living Through Design ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Besides the themed packaging that just screams Disney, the only thing that brands these USB to USB-mini cables as coming from the ‘house of mouse’ is their non-beige/black/grey colors, and a plastic molded Cars/Princess/Mickey/Toy Story/Stich design on one end of the cable. But surprisingly even though they are tied to Disney, they’re each still a rather reasonable $7 from online stores like Brando. So I guess the only branding that leads to unreasonable overpricing is the term ‘Monster.’

[ Disney USB Cables ] VIA [ Chip Chicklets ]

By Evan Ackerman

Powerzoa is a little cube that sits in between a wall socket and your electronics. It has the magical ability to turn power on and off all by itself while monitoring energy usage, and each Powerzoa cube includes some kind of wireless internet connection that interfaces with a website that lets you track how much power you waste and gives you the option of turning each individual cube’s power off. Powerzoa touts these features as a great way to “save electricity, lower energy costs, and help the environment.” And that’s, you know, great. But for me, the big appeal is the ability to turn individual appliances and lights and stuff on and off over the internet.

Powerzoa is almost identical in principle to the Visible Energy UFO, except at the level of an individual socket as opposed to a power strip. While the Visible Energy UFO is supposed to be ready to go by the end of this year, Powerzoa is still in the prototype phase, but if it’s cheap enough and easy enough to set up, it could be quite a bit handier thanks to a small form factor.

[ Powerzoa ] VIA [ DVICE ]

By Evan Ackerman

If I had a shirt like this, I’m sure I’d be happy as this strange looking boy is. Totally Absurd Inventions insists that this is an actual US patent, although I haven’t been able to find it on the USPTO website, so I can’t do much besides relate what they say about it:

The Gerbil Shirt wraps your torso in plastic tube passageways, making your bod a super highway of fun for Binky and Bart. The interior surfaces are textured for traction and have air vents for easy breathing.

The inventor suggests you can clean the Gerbil Shirt by attaching it to a faucet (remove pets first please), and you should avoid collisions and falls that could cause pet panic.

[ Patently Absurd ] VIA [ Neatorama ]

By Andrew Liszewski

So if you thought 2D mandelbrot images were a sight to behold, you should head on over to Skytopia where they’ve got a pretty impressive gallery of 3D mandelbrots including the elusive ‘mandelbulb’ which is sure to make its way onto college dorm walls in poster form very soon.

[ Skytopia - The Unravelling of the Real 3D Mandelbulb ] VIA [ Slashdot ]

By Andrew Liszewski

This USB TV Card Player might be a super easy way to play photos, music or downloaded videos on your big-screen TV, but don’t expect greatness from it. On the plus side it has a built-in card reader for non CF-sized flash card formats as well as a USB port for connecting flash drives or even external card readers, which is the only way it will read an SDHC card. It supports the most common media formats like DIVX, MP3, WMA, JPGs etc. and even comes with a compact IR remote for “long distance operation abilities.” However, on the negative side the fact that it only has a composite video connection means no hi-def for you, which then also makes the $53.99 price tag seem a bit unreasonable.

[ USB TV Card Player ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]

By Andrew Liszewski

At just 1.2 x 0.5 x 0.1 inches in size, and weighing just 1/20 of an ounce, Active Media Products claims their new 16GB USB Wink flash drive is the smallest on the planet. And thanks to the electronics being encapsulated in a waterproof COB unit, which is then covered in a high-impact polymer outer shell, the Wink can survive a dip in the drink, or most of the daily abuse you can throw at it. Just don’t expect it to be the fastest flash drive you’ve ever used. The 16GB version of the Wink has a price tag of $37.95, but the drives are also available in 8, 4 and 2GB capacities for $19.95, $10.95 and $7.95 respectively.

[ PR - Active Media Products Introduces Smallest 16GB USB Drive on the Planet ] VIA [ Gear Diary ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Remember when you were a kid, and you got back to school from Christmas vacation and everyone would try to impress everyone else with all the presents they got? Well whatever kid finds this under their tree would instantly win that debate. The term ‘go-kart’ just doesn’t seem to apply to this 2/3-scale replica of a 1956 Corvette C1. Powered by a 6.9HP, 107cc four-stroke engine the Junior Corvette can reach speeds of up to 35mph and features an automatic transmission with forward, neutral and reverse. It can support 2 riders up to 330lbs making it compatible with kids grown-up kids alike, and is available from none other than Hammacher Schlemmer for $32,000.

[ The Junior 35 MPH Classic Corvette ]