Originally designed for boating applications, these SeaSucker vacuum mounts have been adapted for cars that can’t be retrofitted with a bike rack either due to their size, or the fact that rack manufacturers haven’t adapted their product to the latest models. Each 6-inch suction cup can support up to 210lbs, and working in tandem they should provide more than enough support for even the heaviest of bikes. They also feature an integrated pump so it’s not just a case of jamming one of these onto a smooth surface of your car and hoping for the best. In fact they even have a built-in gauge showing you just how strong the vacuum seal is.
Now given that auto shops use a similar tool for removing dents in a car you might want to be careful when using them on certain body work, but if you’re careful they seem like a pretty great alternative to a permanently mounted rack. And they range in price from $234.99 for a single bike up to $629.99 for a set that can hold three.
Being a photographer isn’t easy, especially if you don’t actually have a studio to shoot in. Yes, you can do wonderful things with outdoor shots, and maybe find a place in your house that will work, but those aren’t always the most ideal places. So what if you had a portable studio that you could setup anywhere that you had a large open space? That might come in handy.
That’s the idea behind this IPS (Inflatable Portable Studio). These studios come in two sizes (12x7x10ft, or 20x12x10ft) and can be set up in just three minutes. The enclosure is made from a thin plastic that is guaranteed to block out any external light. The contraption will cost you $330 or $350 if you order it sans fans. If you want those (which you’ll need to inflate it, unless you have a large fan lying around) it will set you back $70 or $150 depending on which size you get. It may be expensive, but it sure beats paying for a studio every month.
The Xbox 360 Slim is a much nicer console than the original. It’s not only slimmer (duh!) but quieter and comes with integrated WiFi. There’s even a 4GB version for the more casual gamer for $200. Then there’s the Kinect motion-based accessory that a certain crowd is impatiently waiting for. This usually sells for $150 alone. And finally, there’s Xbox Live Gold membership for 1 year. This is $45. Taken separately all these items would retail $395, though they are sometimes bundled, but at $359. With today’s discount, you’ll only pay $319, $40 off the bundle price and $76 off buying these items one by one.
I’m not entirely sure if this was a real display created for Coca-Cola given the video’s watermarked with an ‘internal use only’ warning, but if it wasn’t it should’ve been since it’s cool enough to make me want to drink sugar water again. The video mostly demonstrates the potential behind the Dreamoc 3D Holographic Display system, created by a company called Realfiction, which combines a real product like a Coke bottle with 3D animations that are viewable from 200 degrees. Like with most holographic technology these days it kind of sucks that the bottle is trapped inside the glass pyramid which facilitates the effect, but at least it looks like it’s light years beyond that old holographic Time Traveler arcade game.
I don’t know, I think I’d have a pretty hard time not rooting for the animals if I saw a bunch of ‘hunters’ heading out into the wild in one of these. It’s kind of like a mobile hunting blind, with 64-inch wheels powered by a 8.2L V8 engine, which is the perfect thing for sneaking up on a herd of timid deer. Optional accessories for these custom-made vehicles include built-in dog kennels, barb wire fencing for ‘user’ safety and 30-feet high scissor lifts. But for some reason they don’t offer a roof-mounted mini gun so you can just mow down a forest’s worth of prey in one pass. $340,000 for this particular monstrosity, according to Uncrate.
The one thing the brick-sized cellphones of the 90′s had going for them was that they could easily survive a fall from a 100-storey building and inflict more damage on the sidewalk than they received. For some reason though, today certain manufacturers think that it’s wiser to cover the front and back of certain phones with glass… have we learned nothing from our past?
And this is where the Grip-Ez enters the picture. It looks like a pair of completely ineffective brass knuckles made out of plastic, but it’s actually designed to ’3M’ to the back of your phone making it easier to grip, and harder to drop. The Grip-Ez folds down when not in use so your phone is still pocket-friendly, and they’re thankfully just $10 making them the next thing you’ll probably see cluttering up checkout counters.
Sampling a color from a digital photo is as easy as using Photoshop’s eyedropper tool, which is a good analogy for PANTONE’s CAPSURE device, except that it works in the real world. Using three multi-directional sources of illumination, the sensor on the CAPSURE is able to eliminate shadows and other interference allowing you to use it on almost any surface, whether it’s flat and smooth like a photo, or textured like a piece of fabric. It can also grab a single color, or in the case of intricate patterns, it can actually extract the four most dominant colors.
Now ideally it would be awesome if the CAPSURE displayed HEX color values or the RGB numbers, but since it is a PANTONE product it will actually match the identified sample to one of 8,000 colors in the PANTONE library. It’s got a smidgen of on-board memory allowing you to store up to 100 captures with an included audio note so you can remember where it was samples, but it also syncs to your PC and Adobe’s suite of apps among others. $649 available directly from PANTONE.
If your kids have been jonesing for a cellphone, but you’re not quite ready to deal with yet another monthly bill, these Electronic Text Messengers from Scholastic are kind of like walkie talkies for texting.
They have a wireless range of up to 600 feet and even work through walls so they’re not line-of-sight IR, and you can create a network of up to 24 of the handsets, though I’m not entirely sure if you can send a message to only a single device specifically. In the great tradition of Twitter, though taking things to a new extreme, the messengers can only send texts up to 40 characters in length, guaranteeing your kids will have to learn ‘text speak’ in order to squeeze as many ‘OMGs’ in there as they can.
A set of 2 is available from Amazon for just $16.99, no contract necessary.
Being able to charge electronics from your computer’s USB port is a handy convenience, but even on a desktop machine, they can run out pretty quickly. But I promise you that running out won’t be an issue with Thanko’s charging board which features 80 ports letting you charge pretty much every single USB device you own at the same time.
Looking at Thanko’s website the board obviously needs its own power supply to juice every port, though I’m not sure if it actually comes with one, or the photos are just there to remind you that you probably don’t want to tie this into your PC’s existing power supply. It’s not wired for data though, lest you think you’d be able to attach 80 flash drives and use it as some kind of hackney RAID. ~$182 (¥14,800) available from Thanko’s website, or cough up $249.99 from AudioCubes and save yourself the import headaches.
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By Andrew Liszewski
