Billed as the “World’s only Apple-certified solar charger carrying case” the new Solar Surge from Novothink for the iPhone 3G/3GS and the iPod Touch lets you harvest the sun’s energy to replenish your device’s less than epic battery. According to the Novothink website, “2 hours of direct solar exposure provides about 30 minutes of talk time on a 3G network or 60 minutes of talk time on a 2G network”, but if the sun hasn’t made an appearance you can always fall back to the included USB cable for charging its built-in lithium-ion polymer battery.
A series of 4 multi-colored LEDs on the back of the case lets you see the battery’s remaining charge, and they’ll also let you know if there’s enough light available to actually take advantage of the built-in solar cell. In fact Novothink has even gone above and beyond the call of duty by providing their free Solar Planner app for either device, which provides an estimate of how long you’ll have to leave the Surge in the sun to maintain your iPhone or Touch’s battery level, depending on the current weather conditions and your location.
Eventually available in 6 different colors, the Surge for the iPhone runs $79.95, while the single colored iPod Touch model is currently on sale for $52.95.
Since the movie’s release date is still something ridiculous like 15 years away, these images are just Photoshop mockups at the moment, but eventually Disney World in Orlando will be promoting the upcoming Tron Legacy sequel by converting their monorails into light cycles. And by ‘converting’ I of course mean just covering them in light cycle graphics, but if you have a Disney vacation planned in the very near future, make sure to include Epcot where the upgraded monorails could be running as early as sometime this month.
I know those little yellow sponges you cram in your ears aren’t the most advanced way to protect your hearing, but these Sonic Defenders make them look like they date back to the age of cavemen. When worn the SureFire EP-3 ear plugs let you hear safe and routine sounds like normal conversation, but potentially harmful sounds above 80dB are safely reduced via the company’s special design that incorporates the patented ‘Hocks Noise Braker’ filter. They also feature a small removable stopper that will block out nearly all sounds when you want some real peace and quiet, and they’re available for a mere $12.95 directly from SureFire.
Yep, we’ve already brought you insanely expensive watches constructed with remnants of the Titanic, or specks of moon dust, but the Jurassic Tourbillon from Louis Moinet trumps them both with one simple yet awesome addition. Dinosaurs!… Or at least their bones.
The Jurassic Tourbillon, whose dial contains fragments of authentic fossilised dinosaur bones, takes us on a journey into the past, around 130 million years ago. Qualified as exceptional by experts, the colour and veining of these precious witnesses to our past underwent a meticulous process of preservation.
Of course it’s not like they’ve just pried open the case on your average Timex and crammed some bone fragments in there, the watch is still a luxury item made from 18K white gold with 56 Top Wesselton VVS baguette 3.46ct diamonds, and while it’s water-resistant to 30 meters, I highly doubt, like the dinosaurs, that it’s giant asteroid resistant. As for the price, I’ve no idea, but I assume it will be comparable to the aforementioned Titanic and moon dust models to give you a rough idea.
One of the biggest announcements at this year’s Game Developers Conference here in San Francisco is the Move, Sony’s new motion control system for the PlayStation. It’s generally similar to the Nintendo Wii, in that you hold a thingy, and something attached to the game console watches that thingy (in this case, it’s the PS Eye camera), and can tell where the thingy is being moved and translate that motion into in-game actions. Here’s the thingy in question:
Guitar Hero and Rock Band are fun games, but after you master them, you’re left with little more than a staggeringly useless talent for pushing little plastic buttons. Game developer Seven45 Studios is aiming to change all that by partnering up with instrument manufacturer First Act to create a music game for the Xbox 360 and PS3 that uses a real, playable six string guitar as a controller. Plug it into a console, and it’s a control. Plug it into an amp, and it’s a guitar.
The game is called Power Gig: Rise of the SixString. I got a brief demo at GDC yesterday, and while they wouldn’t discuss the game itself in a ton of detail, we did get a good look at the hardware. The big draw, of course, is that it’s a real guitar that you get to play with. The only difference between the controller and a normal guitar are the additional buttons on the body (to duplicate the full functionality of a game controller) and a special string dampener that pops up to keep the strings from vibrating too much when you’re playing the game, since it would confuse the sensors. Otherwise, all of the clever stuff is internal, and the guitar can sense both string movement and finger position.
Seven45 stresses that this is not an education game: it’s not designed to teach you how to play the guitar. That said, as you get comfortable with the game, you do slowly learn the fundamentals of playing the instrument, and as you crank up the difficulty, the game will demand more real world skill from you. And it’s not just about playing the guitar, either: the game is somehow adventure based, and part of the storyline includes teaching you how to tune yourself and change your own guitar strings (spare strings will be included).
There are a lot of things still to be finalized, including song content, but as far as pricing and availability goes, look for Power Gig sometime this fall at a price that will be “competitive with other game band packages.” If the gameplay stands up to similar titles as well, the choice is going to be an easy one: why get a game that includes a fake guitar and teaches you to push plastic buttons, when you could get a game that includes a real guitar and teaches you how to play it, instead.
Remember that really cool MindFlex game from Mattel that we showed you last year? It’s been out for a little while now, and has given some modders a few creative ideas. Since it can provide a reaction to brain activity, the possibilities are endless. One group decided to use a modded version of the device as something to promote relaxation of the mind.
Okay, so they probably had no real intentions of using this thing for any real beneficial reason. They just wanted to shock the crap out of people. Essentially they hooked up an electroshock unit up to the device. When someone used more than low frequency brainwaves, they’d receive a painful shock. As you can see in the video, it’s hard to not concentrate when people are standing there heckling you.
In general I find cuckoo clocks to be kind of creepy and disturbing, with that little obsessive compulsive bird that has to pop out every hour on the hour, but this one takes it to a whole new level. It’s a miniature diorama of the famous “Heeere’s Johnny!” scene from The Shining, but instead of a little bird making an appearance every hour, it’s a little Jack Nicholson who breaks through the door with his famous catch line. And if that’s not creepy enough, there’s also a miniature terrorized Shelly Duvall there for good measure, who follows up with a blood-curdling scream… every hour.
The clock was created by Chris Dimino, who thankfully doesn’t seem to have any intentions of mass producing it.
Remember the Canon zoom lens thermos we brought you last week that was exclusively given out to members of the press at the Olympic Press Center in Vancouver? Well it turns out in the very near future they’re not going to be so exclusive. You can actually pre-order one now from Canadian photography store Vistek for $29.99 (Canadian dollars of course) and they’re expected to be available around mid-April. Quantities will be limited though, so if you saw my post last week and were kicking yourself for missing out on getting one at the Olympics, you’ll want to act fast.
Related Tags: Eco-friendly, iPhone, iPod
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