Shrink wrap might be the bane of anyone eagerly trying to open a new purchase, but it turns out it’s also a handy material for making furniture! This Transparent Chair from Japanese design firm Nendo is made from three metal loops wrapped in polyurethane film that ends up supporting someone kind of a like a hammock. It certainly looks pretty comfortable, and creates the clever illusion of someone just floating in the air, but on the flipside given the film doesn’t breathe, it’s probably a real sweat factory on a hot Summer day. Thankfully though cleaning is probably as easy as just re-wrapping the frame in a fresh layer.
I’m a big fan of Quirky, and like that it gives amateur inventors the real opportunity to bring their creations to life. But at the same time it can be really frustrating to stumble across an innovative new product you really like, only to discover it’s a Quirky project still waiting for enough commitments to become a reality. Such is the case with the Ventu. It’s a combination serving/straining bowl that uses a unique pivoting armature to seal up a built-in colander once you’ve drained foods like freshly cooked pasta.
Made from brushed stainless steel with acacia wood handles the Ventu also looks as good as it functions, and the pivoting part can be removed for easy cleaning. At the moment it’s even on pre-sale for just $49.99, but unfortunately it’s only received 55 of the 1800 commitments needed for it to move into production, which could mean it’s going to be a long time before this sees the light of day.
Instead of exploding and decapitating you if you attempt to escape a prisoner work camp like in the film The Running Man, this slightly more pleasant collar from The Sharper Image ($49.99) promises to serve as a personal air conditioner on those days when the sun’s working a little too well.
The inner part of the collar that touches your neck is made from anodized aluminum, and when combined with a built-in 2-speed fan and a small reservoir that holds 2oz. of water, it creates a cooling sensation that supposedly “refreshes” your entire body. It’s powered by a single AA battery and needs to be refilled every 2 to 4 hours depending on how heavily you’re using it, but if it works as promised it’s probably a better way to endure the Summer than sitting on a block of ice in your boxer shorts. I sure do miss those Summer afternoons at the mall…
Razer is well-known in the world of PC gaming, mostly for their keyboard and mouse offerings. You can’t hardly have a conversation about such peripherals without the company’s name being brought up. Well today we’re going to take a look at their latest keyboard offering, the Anansi. This particular keyboard is aimed specifically at the MMO player.
Features
At first glance, you’re going to see two of the features that set the Anansi apart from most other keyboards. These would be the five function keys on the left-hand side of the keyboard, and seven more just below the spacebar. You’ll also see the backlit keys, which by default, cycle through the color spectrum. What really makes this device stand out is that you’re not limited to customizing the 12 extra function keys. Rather, every single key is mappable. Also, it has a “gaming mode” which disables the Windows key. A handy feature for anyone that’s had the misfortune of hitting that button by accident during a raid.
Strangely enough, there were no audio jacks or USB ports on this keyboard. I don’t often use them myself, but if you have a short headset, it’s much easier to just jack into the keyboard instead of finding an extension cable.
Instead of dropping $1,000+ on a dedicated oscilloscope, a new app/hardware combo from a company called Oscium promises to provide the same functionality via your iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad for just $297.99. Not exactly dirt cheap, but the solution appears to be far more affordable and flexible than a standalone unit.
In addition to the company’s free iMSO app, which you can download and try out for free before buying, the iMSO-104 basically consists of a breakout cable that attaches to your idevice’s dock connector and allows you to attach various leads and probes for doing whatever one uses an oscilloscope for. The first batch of iMSO-104s has already sold out apparently, so if you want one you’d better order soon to get in on the second batch which will ship on May 20 now.
Sometimes things are just too good to be true, and looking at the photos of Inventionland I can’t help but think that what looks like the perfect place to work for creative types actually harbors some terrible, terrible secret. Created by George Davison, Inventionland’s employees are responsible for over 2,000 inventions every year, and in order to keep their creative juices flowing he created this 70,000 square foot office amusement park complete with 16 different themed areas including a pirate ship, tree house, castle and a giant robot.
There’s about 90 photos of their offices on the Inventionland’s Flickr photostream if you really want to check out their digs, and while it really does look like a fun place to work, I can’t help but feel it could get a little maddening after a while. And the fact that most of the employees walk around and work in white labcoats is a little unsettling.
We’re not here to fuel the debate over whether toilet humor is low-brow or comic gold, but we can’t help but chuckle at this novelty roll of toilet paper from Spinning Hat featuring comic book like illustrated sound effects. Like the Measuring Tape Toilet Paper from a few weeks ago, it lightens the mood in what can be one of the more serious rooms of your home with expressions like Splash! Pop! Parp! and Flush! Now I have no clue as to what makes a ‘Parp!’ sound effect in the bathroom, but for ~$6.50(£3.99) you’re welcome to find out for yourself.
Notebooks win over desktop PCs on every almost activity save very specific areas. The biggest of which are gaming and sound, both for pretty much the same reason. Sacrifices must be made for the sake of portability and while 3D gaming on the go is a nice-to-have travel tunes is a must-have. Thankfully, Logitech and other manufacturers continue to try new things to get volume and quality out of a portable speaker without adding too much weight. The Logitech Z305 is a very travel-friendly USB speaker that mates very well with netbooks and workstations that are missing something in the sound department.
The small well-built sound bar attaches quite nicely to your laptop screen. At almost 13″ wide, it fits perfectly behind any 14″ or larger laptops and adds an appreciable oomph to your PC or Mac. Techno and other styles of music with wide dynamic ranges are all greatly enhanced by the Logitech Z305. Unfortunately, it still has some limitations in sound reproduction and design. Bass is the weakness of this tiny sound-bar which may fail to give you the kick you are missing. Also, the laptop can no longer be closed properly while the Z305 is installed. Overall, the balance of sound price and size all seem to come out in favor of Logitech’s mighty mini. Full details available at Everything USB.
Harkening back to the good old days of the first personal computers when young’ns like yours truly would spend 3 hours entering endless lines of code just to spit out a fancy serif letter ‘S’ on his dot-matrix printer, Microsoft Research has just released a new coding app allowing Windows Phone 7 users to hack away directly on their phones. TouchStudio, which is now available as a beta version in the Zune marketplace, is “a fully functional development environment” according to Nikolai Tillmann who announced its availability on his blog.
At the moment though complete access to all of the phone’s functionality isn’t available from within the TouchStudio environment, but the developers have included several sample scripts showing off what it’s capable of in its current state, and have eluded that it will become considerably more capable in future versions of the app.
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