We want to like the Corkicle, really we do… it’s just that we’re not sure whether it actually would work properly. The idea is that you put the thing in the freezer and once you get some wine you need to chill, you insert it in the bottle and let it do its thing. Presumably it’s plastic filled with some type of material that has a high specific heat. And it looks kind of nice in the pictures, so this could be a good addition to your dinner table; the wine chilling while looking nifty. The problem of course is that the Corkicle has volume. And it will displace some wine. How much is the issue… but really, almost any volume will cause the wine to spill over. Perhaps you’re meant to empty the bottle a little before inserting the Corkicle? We don’t really know and aren’t willing to spend $23 to find out.
Seriously. The folks at B-Reel have taken a Mindwave headset from Neurosky, a Scalectrix slot car set, a bunch of other parts and hacked together a way to control the cars with your mind. And it works! Concentrate means go, get distracted means stop.
What if you could run a slot car race using your brain? We did a bit of research on this and it didn’t take long to realise we already have all we need to make these ideas come to life; we just needed to connect the dots and find an easier way to integrate different disciplines to make the magic happen.
These are the steps B-Reel went through:
- researched components and library we could have used
- procured a device that reads mind signals, a Scalextric, Arduino, some tools and electric components
- designed a small electronic circuit to connect Arduino to Scalextric
- wrote the Arduino script to control the Scalextric
- wrote a small Processing application to control the car with the computer mouse
- connected the brain reader device signal to the Scalextric
But the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. So do yourself a favor and watch the above video. It’s mostly towards the end that you start seeing the guy actually voluntarily controlling the car, starting and stopping at will. Awesome stuff.
On to another gravity defying article, this time with a seemingly novelty-like item. Only on closer inspection… it isn’t so banal. The “What? Gravity Mobile Phone Holder” not only has a brilliant name but is able to hold on to a seemingly endless array of objects at a completely improbable angle. Just set pretty much anything on it, and instead of seeing it slide off as you’d expect from it being on a nearly vertical surface… it just stays there. There is no glue, only a “soft touch silicone panel” that is easily cleaned with water and a cloth. It’s meant to hold cellphones, but the promotional video below shows just how much stuff can cling to its surface.
Best of all, it’s dirt cheap, starting out at £3.99($6). There’s a catch however, as this is a bulk price and there seems to be a minimum order of 100 at a slightly higher price (you need to order 5,000 to get the lowest pricepoint). This probably means though that you you’ll be seeing these in stores for not very much money soon.
Insane Clown Posse might have had a point all along. Check out the above video and have fun picking up your jaw off the floor. It shows what the science types are calling quantum levitation, and is allegedly taking place in Tel Aviv, at an ASTC (Association of Science and Technology Centers) event. Now folks, this stuff is nothing new. It involves superconducting magnets, liquid nitrogen and supposedly an effect called flux pinning. It’s now apparently being called quantum levitation because frankly, it’s attention grabbing. But to be honest, no one is really thinking about the science behind this. It’s the video, guys. Just check out the video. And we know what you’re thinking.
Hoverboards.
Right?
Well, we’re not quite there yet but holy crap this looks amazing.
The situations in which we’d find ourselves needing to project images from our iPhones onto some surface are few and far between. Still, we’re not all created equal and we can imagine there are those who would indeed enjoy the ability to do just that. For those people, the Monolith case by Century gives you the ability to project images in 640×360 resolution, with a 1000:1 contrast ratio and 12 lumens of brightness. The largest projection size recommended is 60 inches (not 60cm as others have stated, unless the info in the promotional video is incorrect), although at 12 lumens, you better be in a dark environment. The Monolith also does double duty as an external battery pack, raising your phone’s life by an estimated 50%. It will require 4 hours to fully charge although it shouldn’t impact your phone’s charge time.
Sadly again, it’s Japan only at the moment and costs around $260.
Hit the jump for a couple more pictures and a video with totally not annoying music. At all.
It appears today you can get quite a bit of laptop for not that much money. The dv6 Select Edition is a member of the Pavilion line of laptops from HP and is looking at a sizeable $271 in savings today, leaving the $809 at $538. That’s for the “Sandy Bridge” Core i5 model with 8GB RAM and Beats superior audio, USB 3.0, fingerprint reader, HP Coolsense technology and more. One reviewer described his experience with this laptop like this:
I’ve only had it for a few days and so far it’s lived up to all my expectations. It’s incredibly thin, light, runs as cool and quiet as anything I’ve ever worked with, and is lightning-fast with multitasking and everyday tasks.
Steampunk is a little played out if you ask us, but the attention to detail that seems to have been put in this creation leaves us impressed nonetheless. MorbidStix have gone to work on an Xbox 360 controller and here are some of the highlights:
Custom Antique Burl Wood Finish
Skeleton Key Guild Button
Custom Sticks
Real Leather (Soft to the touch and VERY comfortable!)
Copper Rivet Design
Custom ABXY buttons for an authentic look and feel!
Triggers and bumpers are wood finish as well!!!
Of course the price is going to keep all but the most serious steampunk aficionados away, as the Buy It Now price is a cool $1,000.
Hit the jump for a couple more pictures and links.
Griffin’s Faces Cases are made from silicon and let you customize the look of your iPod touch on a daily basis. They come with three sets of mouths and six different eyes so you can easily swap them out for a total of… well let’s see now. How many configurations does that make? 6 choices for the left eye, say, multiplied by 5 remaining choices for the right. That’s 30. Multiply that by 2, since there are two eyes, so we’re at 60. Finally multiply that by the 3 mouths and you’ve got a total of 180 different configurations.
Of course this whole calculation was unnecessary, but there really isn’t a whole lot to say on this product. It’s quirky and it’s $25.
It goes without saying that getting fit and leading a healthy lifestyle is hard, not only physically but also psychologically. Staying motivated is probably the most difficult aspect of it, so every little bit of help counts. For us geeks, something like the Fitbit Ultra is great since it gives us an easy way to track and graph how we’re doing. It’s a tiny device that you attach to your clothing and which logs your every movement: how many steps you take, how many floors you climb, even how soundly you sleep. It then beams all this information to a server and packages the data in ways that make it fun and interesting and more importantly, useful.
I’ve been using the device for the past week or so and have come away fairly impressed. For all the details, hit the jump.
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