If you’re convinced it’s “the wood that makes it good” when it comes to cooking, your kitchen won’t be complete without this cleverly named infuser called ‘The Smoking Gun’. Instead of a giant smoking oven in your backyard that requires a constant supply of chopped wood and a heaping helping of patience, the Smoking Gun has a compact anodized aluminum smoking chamber that only requires a small pinch of whatever wood flavor you’re trying to infuse. The smoke that’s emitted is apparently ‘cool’ so that it doesn’t affect the texture or temperature of the food you’re smoking, and while it can easily be used with one hand, it also comes with an 18-inch extender hose so you can infuse an entire pot of food for longer periods. $99.95 from Williams-Sonoma.
The last time we brought you an ‘innovation’ from New Potato Technologies it was an iPhone ‘appcessory’ known as the Jackpot Dock which basically turned your phone into a one-armed bandit slot machine. This time around they’ve got something a bit more useful, particularly for pedal pushers. The LiveRider bike computer is a combination of a dual-mode sealed sensor that mounts near the bike’s rear tire and measures wheel speed and pedal cadence, and an “aerodynamic shock-absorbing handlebar mounted cradle” with a 2.4 GHz wireless receiver.
Data from the sensor is sent to the receiver which is then fed to an iPhone (3G or 3GS) or an iPod Touch via the dock connector, and used to calculate and display various stats including elapsed time, distance traveled, cadence speed, watts, pace, calories burned, average and max speeds and even ghost data so you can race yourself from a previous ride. It can even access GPS data from an iPhone, and inclination info using the tilt sensor. And if you’re a real number cruncher, all of your ride data can be emailed and imported into a spreadsheet or database application. The LiveRider app is of course free to download from the App Store, but the hardware that makes it usable will set you back $99.
MONOPOLY is still the king of board games, but it unfortunately requires a hefty time investment to play a single game. And while no one likes to see companies tampering with the classics, I like what Hasbro has done with this U-Build version of the game. From what I can tell the gameplay is mostly the same, but the board has been replaced with a series of configurable tiles letting you build a classic 60-minute version of MONOPOLY, or leave out certain properties so it takes half that time. It also appears to include a few updates to MONOPOLY’s houses and hotels with skyscrapers and factories, but the original concepts appear to hold true. $19.99, available at probably any store with a healthy stock of board games.
Since ‘densha otaku’ or ‘train spotters’ are very popular in Japan, the Washington Hotel located in Akihabara, Tokyo has a special room featuring a 2×3 meter L-shaped model railroad diorama complete with replicas of the local surroundings. It’s fully working too, with two separate controllers for you and another guest and if you don’t want to rent the trains from the hotel (that’s how they ‘get’ you on the final bill) you’re apparently welcome to bring your own. Definitely the first thing I always throw in my suitcase. The room runs about $265 a night, but you’ll have to book at least a month in advance since it’s apparently very, very popular.
It’s an issue that’s plagued old-timey wild west theme towns for years. You want to keep the saloon looking authentic, with an upright piany in the corner, but at the same time you want to appeal to today’s tech-savvy tourists. Well an Italian company called Craft Line has come up with the perfect solution with this upright piano called the Mediano that features a hidden mechanism to hide and raise or lower an LCD TV.
Unfortunately the engineering bits that make it possible mean the piano bits have to go, so it’s no longer playable unless you swap out the keys with an electronic Casio or Korg or something. There’s also ample storage for other multimedia gear like DVD players or game consoles, and even a box of Kleenex for when your musician friends come over and see what monstrosity you had created from an innocent piano.
There’s nothing quite like going to a city where you’re going to need a cab. Sure, if you’ve lived in one of these areas and dealt with the cab fares, you probably know what you’re getting yourself into. However, if such things are a rarity, you can get surprised by your fare, and spend more money than you had originally planned. If you want to be a smart traveler, Bing can actually help you out with this.
A new feature recently added to Bing Maps is the ability to roughly calculate taxi fares. All you need to do is search for directions as usual, then use the Taxi Fare Calculator tool. It takes into account the initial charge, mileage and even projected wait times. I rarely have a desire to use anything besides Google Maps, but this feature certainly makes Bing Maps look rather appealing.
Forget building a fort or a rocket ship, the next time I buy a fridge I’m using my new found cardboard fortune to build an awesome interactive race course like these sputnic guys did. Using an old arcade driving cabinet you get behind the wheel of a small RC car that’s equipped with a wireless video camera allowing you to drive from a first perspective perspective directly on the track. On the downside there’s no opponents, banana peels or other power-ups to make things more exciting, but on the plus side there’s no freakin’ blue shells either to ruin your record lap!
Based on the video below the car looks a bit tricky to drive, but I do like that the arcade cabinet pivots to provide somewhat of a realistic driving experience. Ok, not at all, but the setup does give the traditional slot car track a run for its money.
Governing bodies have tried many different ways to discourage smoking including dramatically increasing the price of cigarettes through taxes, by forcing tobacco companies to include graphic and disturbing imagery and warnings on the packaging to even requiring them to be hidden away behind closed doors at stores. And while this brilliant redesign of cigarette packaging isn’t the end all solution to the problem, it’s another step that will hopefully discourage more people from smoking.
The flip-top cigarette box is actually incredibly well designed when it comes to portability, accessibility and even marketing. So Eric Askin figured that by breaking the rules of design it could actually discourage people from using a harmful product, and that’s what led to the creation of his diamond-shaped packaging concept. It fits terribly in a pocket, the cigarettes are harder to access or share, less of them can be stacked on a shelf and when they are, the branding is obscured, they’re more difficult to ship and they’re more expensive for tobacco companies to make and manufacture. Of course the new packaging would have to be mandated the same way the current warning labels are, but I think it’s a brilliantly simple way to make the terrible habit even more of an inconvenience.
Collapsible strollers and cribs are truly modern marvels of engineering, but at the same time they often need someone with an engineering degree to set up or break down. Not the GoCrib from a company called Guava Family though. If you can blow up a balloon then you’ve got the necessary skills to set up this crib. Now any kid who had a blow-up house or fort knows they’re as stable as a house of cards, but the GoCrib apparently has special “rigid inflation technology” and a wide stance so that when inflated it’s sturdy and pretty much impossible to tip over. It comes with a manual air pump and a pressure gauge so you know when you’ve filled it enough, and when deflated the whole kit weighs just 11 lbs and can be crammed into a very compact backpack carrying case. $249.99 available directly from the Guava Family website.
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