While incredibly simple but highly usable, there are still two big issues I have with wooden pencils. 1) The wood basically does nothing more than make holding and writing with a thin piece of graphite easier. And it’s basically wasted every time the pencil is sharpened. 2) The eraser on the end is never big enough to accomodate my constant mistakes.
So I’m 100% behind Deuk Young Lee’s concept of making a pencil out of rubber eraser material instead. It can still be sharpened like a traditional wooden pencil, using the same office gear, but ends up being more comfortable and easier to hold thanks to the softer material. And there’s plenty of eraser for correcting your mistakes. Admittedly the delete key tends to fill the eraser’s role in my life these days, but as long as grade school kids still have to learn penmanship, I think this design has some merit.
Adding an electric or even gas powered motor to your bicycle can help extend its range and make it a truly viable alternative to a car for commuting. But it’s not always an easy, or cheap, conversion. Mechanical Engineering student (and coolest name of the day winner) Maxwell von Stein might have come up with a reasonably simple alternative. His Flywheel Bicycle features a – you guessed it – built-in flywheel that harnesses the bike’s energy that’s usually lost when braking. When coming to a stop the kinetic energy is instead transferred to the 15 pound flywheel as it spins up. Then, at some point while riding, the energy in the flywheel can be transferred back to the bike’s rear wheel giving the rider an extra kick or boost.
Maxwell’s goal is to see flywheel technology adopted into cars, but hopefully something will come of his bicycle design as it’s a relatively uncomplicated way to add the benefits of regenerative braking to a pedal-powered bike.
I’m not sure if ‘bathroom counter aesthetics’ is a real roadblock when it comes to people choosing to use or not use an electric toothbrush. But I have to admit, many of the rechargeable options I’ve seen have base stations that end up needing a good chunk of counter space. Philips’ new DiamondClean electric toothbrush solves this in a unique way.
First of all it can be charged via USB while in its included travel case, making it ideal for use at home or abroad. But what we like most is that the charging base station for home use looks like a regular drinking glass. In fact, it can even be used for drinking or rinsing. So I’m assuming a clever decision to use inductive charging plays a big part in making this possible. And like previous Sonicare models, the new DiamondClean features multiple modes for different levels of cleaning (Clean, White, Polish, Gum Care and Sensitive) as well as timers and indicators helping you develop an effective brushing routine. The downside? You’ll be dropping close to $410(£250) on a toothbrush.
*Update: Sources in the know have told us that the £250 price point we originally reported was incorrect. The DiamondClean will actually sell for $220 in the U.S. A bit more reasonable, but still keeping it on the high end of electric toothbrushes.
RC toys based on the Mario Kart games have been around for a while now. But typically as very tiny versions, most suitable for racing on a desk. ThinkGeek has managed to get their hands on some much larger versions, but I raise an eyebrow when they refer to them as ‘Super Deluxe’.
They’re certainly the most detailed versions of Mario and Yoshi behind the wheel that I’ve ever seen. And you’d expect them to be pretty fast given the size of motor their scale allows for. But I’ve seen misbalanced washing machines make their way across a room faster than these do. Just check out ThinkGeek’s video of them in action.
And while it’s kind of cool to see real-life versions of both of these characters in a kart, racing them just isn’t the same without shells, banana peels and other power-ups. Particularly when they’re $119.99 each.
While a digital facsimile could probably be created in Flash in an afternoon, I like that Jeff Highsmith took a completely (well, almost completely) mechanical approach to his Peak 97 arcade game. It features a couple of articulated climbers with sharp pointy hands and feet that climb a sloped plywood wall covered in carpet. The climbers are controlled by a twin dial remote, and two players can compete to see who gets their mountaineer to the top of the peak first. It’s powered by Arduinos and other cheap electronicy bits, as Jeff’s goal was to build it with as little investment as possible. But it still looks like it would be a great addition to any games room, and since the climbs are timed, there’s plenty of room for competition.
Besides the sharks, and possibly the dolphins, the best part of any large scale aquarium is usually the jellyfish tank. Maybe it’s the special lighting that makes them glow so eerily, maybe it’s man’s deep down desires to spend our days lazily drifting through the water. Whatever it is, they’re mesmerizing. So Alex, an inventor with a background in biology and environmental science, has created a jellyfish tank that anyone can operate and maintain at home.
His company, Jellyfish Art, recently posted their ‘Desktop Jellyfish Tank’ To Kickstarter. After just one day they met their funding goal of $3,000. And at the time of writing, have actually raised more than $28,000. When available, the tank will sell for $350 (plus an additional $50 for a set of 3 jellyfish) which seems like a bargain given jellyfish can’t be tossed into just any old fish tank. This one has been specially designed so that they stay protected from the water intakes, which can of course be deadly to a jelly-based being. There’s even a specially engineered channel so they’re shielded from bubbles as they rise to the surface, as well as built-in filtration keeping the chemicals in the water properly in balance.
With the future of the U.S. space program in question, there’s a pretty good chance that any of you reading this post will not have the opportunity to set foot on the moon in your lifetime. And to be brutally honest here, this giant ‘Full Moon Odyssey’ floor pillow is definitely not ‘the next best thing.’ But if you have a soft spot for the celestial objects that hang in the sky above us, and don’t mind a 5-foot wide circular pillow in the middle of your floor, i3 Labs’ designer Lily Suh has created the perfect room adornment for space enthusiasts.
Created with 26 hi-res images of the moon’s surface, the pillow not only provides a striking view of our lunar companion, but admittedly also looks pretty comfortable. Comfortable enough to justify its $1,970 price tag? Maybe if you have NASA’s budget at your disposal.
Air purifiers are often found in homes and offices as people become more concerned with air impurities. Most of them still use a source of energy but designers Mathieu Lehanneur and David Edwards had a more natural idea: why not use nature’s air purifiers to serve the same purpose in your home and office? Plants are best known for their ability to scrub toxins from the air and release pure, fresh oxygen. The Andrea air purifier combines nature and technology into one eco-looking and effective air-scrubbing product.
Andrea uses nearly any household plant you supply and takes advantage of its purifying properties to absorb and neutralize airborne toxins. The powered fan pushes air over the plant’s leaves and through the roots of the plant and soil to increase the speed of the plant’s filtration process. According to Andrea’s designers, the device removes toxic gases from the air at a rate of over 1000% faster than plants alone without the technology.
Back to the laptops it is, but with a decent deal that would have you save $300 on a configuration of the HP Pavilion dv6z Quad Edition that’s above $999. This would make the laptop $699 with free shipping and it would come with an AMD Quad-Core A8-3500M Accelerated Processor, 512MB GDDR5 Radeon HD Dual Graphics, 6GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm), Bluray, computrace LoJack. Better yet, that $300 off still applies if you stack on the options, of which there are many:
Just 1.23-inch thin and weighing 6.1 lbs, the HP dv6z Quad Edition (dv6zqe) sports aluminum chassis in dark umber color (metal). In addition to upgrade like A8 CPU, up to 16GB RAM, 1080p LCD, the dv6z Quad Edition also features USB 3.0, TrueVision HD webcam, 5-in-1 card reader, Beats Audio, etc.
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