When a person buys a new lamp, the last thing they want is for it to get broken. Here’s an interesting twist, what if there was a lamp that you were supposed to break as soon as you take it out of the box? That’s exactly what the Less Lamp wants you to do.
When you unbox the Less Lamp, you’ll find that it’s the absolute worst excuse for a lighting fixture, as it’s basically just a solid black egg. The idea is that you’ll use the included pick to poke holes in it. Heck, you can even break off the bottom portion of the egg to let out more light. As you can imagine, nothing this artsy-sounding ever comes cheap. This particular lamp will set you back $800. That’s right, eight hundred smackeroos for a lamp that you’re going to break immediately.
Alright, hypothetical situation. It’s cold outside, so cold that you don’t want to remove your gloves. You get an important text on your iPhone and need to respond immediately. You’re also in a huge hurry, thus you can’t stop anywhere warm to shoot off a quick response to your text. What do you do?
Obviously, you’re going to use one of the individually-wrapped sausages that you have in your coat pocket. Everyone knows that such meaty products are perfect substitutes for your own digits, so why not keep one in your pocket for emergency texting? I can’t seem to think of a single reason why that would be weird. Obviously the citizens of South Korea can’t either.
Do you do a lot of eating in your car? If so, then you probably grow tired of digging around in the McDonald’s bag for those last few french fries. What you need is some sort of handy tray to set all of your food on before driving away. Well my friend, such a tray exists and it’s called the Swivel Car Tray.
First, I would never trust this thing to hold a juice box in place, regardless of what you see in the picture. Other than that, it probably is rather handy to have around, even if it does look a bit silly. I suppose you could simply take it out of the cup holder when you aren’t planning on stuffing your face on the freeway. If this sounds like something you could use, then pick one up for just $11.
As if having to wave your arms around while playing Nintendo Wii games wasn’t hard enough, those Riiflex Wii weights that we heard about nearly a year ago are finally up for sale. Each weight adds two pounds to the already hefty burdens of the Wiimote and nunchuk, which last time I checked, was a lot for someone who’s used to stationary gaming and looks forward to games that don’t require any movement at all.
The Riiflex cases are ergonomic and are made of soft rubber (which sadly doesn’t make them any lighter), and you can get a set on Amazon in that ugly green color for $30.
Welcome to the future, where your fly swatters and insect repellent have been replaced by auto-targeting laser systems. The “Photonic Fence,” designed by Intellectual Ventures Lab, is capable of detecting, tracking, and destroying mosquitoes in flight using basic components harvested from laser printers, Blu-ray disc writers, camcorders, and video game consoles. From the website:
The system would create a virtual fence made out of light— we call it a “Photonic Fence.” Light Emitting Diode (LED) lamps on each fence post would beam infrared light at adjacent fence posts up to 100 feet (30 meters) away; the light would then hit strips of retroreflective material (similar to that used on highway signs) and bounce straight back toward the illuminator. A camera on each fence post monitors the reflected light for shadows cast by a hapless insect flying through the vertical plane of light.
When an invading insect is detected, our software identifies it by training a nonlethal laser beam on the bug and using that illumination to estimate the insect’s size and also to measure how fast its wings are beating. Using this method, the system can not only distinguish among mosquitoes, butterflies, and bumblebees, but it can even determine whether a mosquito is male or female! (Females are significantly larger than males and have slower wingbeats.) This is useful because only female mosquitoes bite humans.
Our software is able to track a mosquito in flight once it establishes that it is a valid target. After running safety checks to ensure no unintended object is in view, the system activates a second, more powerful laser that zaps the mosquito, causing death either by damage to its DNA (an unconfirmed hypothesis) or by overheating.
So why lasers and not something more conventional like mosquito netting? Well, people in developing countries often end up using the netting to fish with, and anyway, a mosquito net doesn’t solve the problem, it just makes the problem go look for someone else to munch on. Pesticides can be damaging to local ecosystems and can harm humans as well. The absolute ideal way of controlling the spread of malaria is to target the mosquitoes and only the mosquitoes, and the Photonic Fence does a brilliant job of that.
By now, you’re probably spotted a few major hurdles… At this point, anti-mosquito laser cannons are a.) complicated, b.) expensive, and c.) in need of electricity. So obviously it’s not going to be a stand-alone solution, and it’s going to require some clever engineering to get it ready for field deployment. It required some pretty damn clever engineering to get this far, though, so I for one am optimistic. And I want one.
Somewhat old news here, but you should know that Apple has removed all restrictions that prohibited making Video VoIP calls on 3G networks using the iPhone. The iPhone SDK has also been modified in order to give developers access to the Video VoIP APIs. This means you can use either iCall or Fring (which supports Skype) to make Video VoIP calls on your device and the only catch is that your carrier must allow VoIP calls to work on 3G in addition to WiFi (good luck). While stability of video is an issue with both these apps, it’s still a welcome move by Apple.
Video calls are fun, make sure you try it out on your iPhone!
The trickiest part of this Superplexus 36 inch spherical puzzle isn’t getting the 5/8 inch wooden marble through the immensely complex maze, it’s convincing myself that $30,000 isn’t too much to spend for an over-sized mindgame. The majority of the track is handmade from Finnish birch (it apparently takes over 400 hours to build just one) though some sections require you to navigate the ball on 1/16-inch stainless steel wire, and if laid out in a straight line the whole course would end up being about 31 feet longer than a football field.
The labyrinth is held inside a giant acrylic sphere mounted to a stainless steel gimbaled mount allowing you to tilt it in any direction, and successfully getting the marble from the start to the finish through obstacles like stairs, sprirals and hairpin turns requires at least 425 turns (or plane changes) and a good amount of creative swearing I imagine. You can order one from Hammacher Schlemmer of course, if you’ve got 30g’s burning a hole in your pocket.
It’s sad when a gadget won’t embrace it’s techy side, like the Hercules Golf-Master watch from Reconvilier which uses an overly-complicated ‘Rotar’ mechanism to flip the classic analog watch face over, revealing a digital range finder display underneath. In addition to a digital time display, so you don’t have to keep flipping the watch face over, the LCD also shows you the exact distance to the green or the flag. A base station called the ‘Caddie’ attached to your golf bag is used to obtain data about the course you’re playing before you start your round, as well as your location via GPS, and during play the distance information is automatically sent to the watch as you move about.
‘Mad props’ to Japanese LEGO artists Sachiko who created this scale, color accurate version of a McDonald’s Big Mac combo meal complete with french fries and a pop. The only thing that’s not LEGO is the cardboard box holding the Big Mac, and for the record I do believe this holds just about as much nutritional value as the real thing. (I kid, I kid!)
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By Gaurav Kheterpal
