I’m the type of person who literally feels like they’re in a straightjacket when zipped into a conventional sleeping bag. I can’t stand it. So when camping I’ll usually go to bed with my sleeping back completely unzipped, and more often than not I’ll spend the night feeling cold and equally uncomfortable. But a few years ago when I first saw the original Selk’bag, and realized it summed up all my hopes and dreams in one fell swoop, it immediately found a place in my coveted ‘Greatest Inventions Of All Time’ list. Unfortunately you can get mighty toasty wearing a warm sleeping bag all day, but the company has managed to stay one step ahead of my unreasonable demands and has just announced the latest version of their sleeping bag suits, the 4G Lite, which like the name implies is lighter and easier to wear for longer periods.
In fact the new Selk’bag Lite, which happens to be the 4th generation of their sleepwear system, is about 30% lighter than previous versions. It’s rated to about 45 degrees Fahrenheit so you won’t want to rely on it in situations where the temperature drops below the freezing mark, but it also makes the 4G Lite easier to wear in situations where it’s just cool out, without getting too warm. It’s probably a touch easier to move around in too, so in theory you could roll out of bed and enjoy a day’s worth of activities while camping or cottaging without ever having to change. The Selk’bag 4G Lite is available in 3 different colors and in kid sizes for $79.99, and adult sizes for $99.99.
At CES earlier this year we were reluctantly dragged into a demo of Memjet’s high-speed inkjet printer technology. And while it’s hard to get excited about consumer-level printer technology, we ended up being rather impressed by their hardware which spat out full-color, 1600 dpi prints at a rate of about 12 inches per second. Which equates to 60 x A4 pages every minute. At the show we were told that Lenovo was one of the first companies to license the technology, but it looks like LG is about to beat them to the market with their appropriately named Machjet color printer.
Like the prototypes we saw at CES, the Machjet LPP6010N uses Memjet’s proprietary PSA (page straight array) printhead technology which crams more than 70,000 nozzles onto a single head, allowing it to produce 60 full-color, 1600×800 dpi outputs per minute. And while consuming less power, 32W compared to a color laser printer which uses 600W, and less ink. The Machjet is expected to be available from LG dealers starting this month, but the last real question when it comes to whether or not this technology will catch on, the price, hasn’t been specified yet.
While scuba diving means you don’t have to loiter near the water’s surface in order to breathe like with snorkeling, it also requires you to wear a substantial amount of gear, including an air tank, which can be cumbersome. So the Power Snorkel serves as a compromise between the two underwater activities. It’s basically a floating air pump that not only frees you from having to wear a tank, but also allows you to stay under longer than when snorkeling.
A 20 foot hose leads from the Power Snorkel’s floating air tank to a Y-divider below, which then splits off into 2 additional 20 foot hoses ending in regulators, allowing 2 people to buddy dive while still enjoying some measure of freedom to explore where they want. On a single charge the Power Snorkel allows for dives about 50 to 70 minutes long, and a flag sticking out of the top makes it easy to spot where the divers are if the pump has drifted away from its original location. It does however run $2,495 making it a little expensive for a weekend at the cottage, but ideal for tropical resorts.
Cordless mice certainly have their advantages when it comes to keeping your desk free of tangled cables, but they also require batteries and tend to be a bit heavier than their tethered brethren. So to show that corded mice are still very much alive, well and occasionally even appreciated, Elecom has once again teamed up with Japanese design studio nendo.
If you recall, their last collaboration resulted in the jellyfish-inspired Otokurage earbuds, and this time around it’s the Rinkak mouse which not only still uses a USB cable, but is damned proud of it. So much so that the cord actually appears to be integrated into the mouse’s design. In Japanese, ‘Rinkak’ is a term that “refers to an object’s outline against its background”(silhouette?) so in this case it’s the colored cable that encircles and stands out against the mouse’s white facade. The mice will be available in Japan at the end of June for a yet to be specified price, and internationally sometime after that.
I have this TV. And it’s gorgeous. I bought it 18 months ago (though this one is the new 2011 model). I didn’t use money. I used debt. Yeah… quite a bit of debt to be honest, since at the time the thing was a cool $3k! But when I saw it in person, I couldn’t resist. I’m still paying for it every month and will for some time too and don’t mind so much. Though to be honest, patience really is a virtue since you can now own this for all of $1,499 with a Blu-Ray player thrown in. That’s after a 36%, $830 rebate.
Let me tell you, the UN55D6000 (sexy name) is slim like you wouldn’t believe. You can actually hang it like a painting, without needing one of those bulky metal mounts. The image is sharp and the contrast and color just take your breath away. True story. The fact that this post is sponsored has nothing to do with it. So get on it, only a few days left on this deal.
It’s still a while away before you can officially install it on your iPhone, but the iOS 5 update will finally bring the much anticipated ability to take a photo with your iPhone using the volume button. Making a lot of third party-accessories that promise to add this ability somewhat obsolete. Unless they avoid those one-trick-pony trappings like the Kapok case from Canopy manages to do. Besides added protection and even very useful tripod mounts, the case interfaces with your iPhone’s dock connector providing additional functionality when taking photos.
A set of two dedicated shutter buttons let you do half-presses for setting focus and auto-exposure like with a P&S camera, and when used with the accompanying free Canopy Camera Tools app you can even use the second shutter button to capture stills while recording videos. Or, if you’re a developer type, there’s even an open source SDK for the case letting you write your own app and take advantage of those dual buttons however you’d like. At $69.95, available for pre-order now, the Kapok case is a bit on the expensive side, but it does include a free mini ball head that can even be used as a makeshift tripod with the packaging.
Beyblades came along well after my trips to the store started with a stroll down the toy aisles. But I get the idea. You spin them up real good like, launch them into a plastic bowl and let physics and gravity do their thing until a ‘last top standing’ winner is declared. But now, Takara Tomy has found a way to take some of the randomness out of who wins a Beyblade battle. Their new Super Control Beyblades can actually be controlled via an IR remote, letting combatants accelerate, reverse and even stop their Beyblades in the middle of the arena. It’s all accomplished by an electric motor inside the top which increases, decreases or even cancels out their spin, making them move and react more like they do in the anime TV series.
Today Nokia announced a new smartphone, the N9, which quite frankly is probably not going to make much of a dent in the marketplace, as sleek and svelte as it looks. But they also announced a few new accessories for the phone, like the Nokia Play 360° wireless speaker, which is a bit more exciting. It’s yet another Bluetooth equipped speaker that lets you wirelessly stream music from your smartphone, but manages to stand out in a crowded market with a few notable features.
Unlike the way Microsoft uses it, ’360′ here refers to the speakers omnidirectional sound that is better suited to filling an entire room in all directions. And thanks to a built-in NFC (near field communication) chip all you have to do is tap an NFC-equipped phone with it to automatically initiate Bluetooth pairing. If you’ve got a second Nokia Play 360° on hand, the two will even work together to play stereo sound. Like all wireless speakers there’s a 3.5mm line-in port for connecting any audio source, but unlike most it has an impressive 20 hours of battery life. And it’s expected to ship sometime in the 3rd quarter for ~$214(€149).
Forget that monstrousity that came with the original Xbox, the crown for ‘Most Uncomfortable Controller’ will now sit atop the creepy skull molded into this Warrior Monster PC gamepad. Its samurai-like motif certainly has a distinct charm about it, but I can’t see myself holding this thing for more than five minutes without being in agony from those pointy corners on its red armor plating. If that skull is too much for you it also comes with a faceplate that helps cover its hideous visage, but be warned, there are green LEDs in its eyes that light up when this thing is plugged into your PC via USB. $26.05 available from Amazon.
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