By David Ponce

Facetime is great and everything, but having to hold your phone in one hand severely hampers your ability to do pretty much anything else. Put it down somewhere and you can’t really go anyplace outside its field of view. To the rescue comes the Swivl, an accessory which securely holds your phone and tracks your every movement. It pans (left and right movements) and tilts (up and down movements) and will keep you in the frame as long as you are wearing its beacon. It’s not limited to the iPhone of course; as long as it fits in the holder you’re good to go. It’s available for pre-order right now and will ship out in early 2012 with an estimated price of $159.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ UberGizmo ]

By David Ponce

Got $17,000 burning a hole in your wallet? How bout these Rock’em Sock’em inspired “Bionic Bopper Cars”? They are large (400lbs!), manned, motorized cars with “two pneumatic-powered, tire-tread-fisted arms”. The goal? Hit your opponent in the face, of course! Not his actual face mind you, but that of the “robot” he’ll be driving around. To this end, you’re provided with buttons mounted atop two independent joysticks. Each time you score a hit, a front-mounted display in each robot’s mid-section will keep a tally. There’s a protective steel cage to keep the humans inside safe, while a full tank of gas will provide up to 5 hours autonomy. You can use an area as small as 16 square feet and you should place your order by December 1st for Christmas delivery.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Uncrate ]

By David Ponce

Hey, that’s under $400 for an 11 inch laptop. Not too shabby, really. And for that price (down from $529 after $150 rebate) you get an AMD Fusion platform (includes Radeon HD 6310M discrete-class graphics) that weighs 3.5 pounds and is just 0.8″ thick. Also features a 92% full sized keyboard, Wireless-N, webcam, card reader, 3 USB 2.0 ports, HDMI output, up to 9.5 hours battery life.

[ $379 For HP Pavilion dm1 ] VIA [ LogicBuy ]

By David Ponce

To borrow Greg Giraldo’s words, we live during an obesity epidemic. An epidemic! And as some astute readers might have noticed, consumer electronics manufacturers are jumping at the opportunity to help you combat the cheese cakes and fried chicken with a bevy of gadgets. We personally took a look at the FitBit, a small plastic device which tracks your every step and reports online. It was a great little device, but it was only able to tell you how much you walked and how many steps you took. Now, thinking heads at the University of Pittsburgh claim to have developed a similar gadget, but one that one-ups all the others by being able to automatically record what you eat, where you’ve been, how long you sat your bum in front of the TV or a computer, how long you were outside, which restaurants you visited and what you ordered. It’s called the eButton and represents the end of the era of self-accountability. We’re not entirely sure just how it goes about determining your calorie intake automatically, but Mingui Sun, lead investigator and Pitt professor of neurosurgery and electrical and computer engineering, says the eButton uses “cameras, GPS and an array of other sensors” for the task. We bet they’re using Mechanical Turk.

In any case, the eButton is not ready for prime-time as it’s in the middle of a study to determine if it actually, you know, works properly.

[ Press Release ] VIA [ Medgadget ]

By David Ponce

You’re my age and somewhat normal: you played Megaman and loved it. Now go get yourself some cases! Yes, there’s Proto Man, Robot Master, Bass…

$35.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Fark ]

By David Ponce

We’re aware that watches as a time-telling device are pretty much finished. But they carry on as one of the few acceptable bits of male adornments left. We happen to have a soft spot for a few manufactures like Tokyoflash and Nooka. Well, you can add Ziiiro (with three “i”s) to that list. Their latest offering, the Celeste, tells the time elegantly by featuring rotating bands of colored, semi-transparent material. When different layers superpose, the colors change: gray and blue on the Mono models, and green and blue on the Colored models. You’ll get a better idea by watching the video below. They come in matte-finished stainless steel casings in chrome, gunmetal or black with matching bands. Available for pre-order now for €149 ($205), they’ll start shipping November 18.

ZIIIRO Celeste ( gunmetal / mono ) from ZIIIRO on Vimeo.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Engadget ]

By David Ponce

Gadgets get wet. This usually means a death sentence for them. Not always though, so it’s never a bad idea to try to dry them out and see if they escaped un-shorted. The traditional way of doing this is to put the device in a bag of rice and to wait. That does sometimes work. But the Bheestie Bag (pronounced beastie) is a dedicated solution. It claims to draw twice as much water than rice, though it doesn’t speed up the process: it’s recommended to leave the device in for 72 hours.

Wired gave it a look last July and came away impressed with its drying abilities. But the Droid they sacrificed for the review died anyway, though that may have nothing to do with the Bheestie itself. At $20 a bag, it might be cheaper to just use rice. It’s also too small to fit a tablet. But hey, might be worth a try.

[ The Bheestie Bag ] VIA [ Coolest Gadgets ]

By David Ponce

Oh supermodels… It’s well known they don’t eat and really only absorb moisture from the air. Kind of like this air moisture harvester that’s so useful it recently won its inventor, Edward Linnacre, this year’s James Dyson Award. Meant to be used in places where the lack of rain brings devastating droughts, the Airdrop (as it’s called) works in the following way:

With a deceptively modest design, Airdrop filters hot environmental air through a turbine, feeding it through a copper tubing system–with copper wool to maximize surface area–and into the earth where it cools and releases moisture. The dry air is then re-released into the atmosphere and the collected water pumped through semi-porous hoses to the plant roots. In his initial prototype, which was much smaller than the current design, Linnacre was able to produce a liter of water per day.

Currently a prototype that is likely to be much smaller than any production model, the Airdrop is able to harvest 1 liter of water per day. The technology used makes it very simple to install and maintain and it’s hoped it will be used by farmers in drought affected areas.

Linnacre will be receiving £10,000 (and another £10,000 for his university) to further development of the Airdrop. As mostly poor farmers would benefit from this, it’s unlikely he’d be able to get any traction on social funding sites like Kickstarter, which are usually visited by people with easy access to tap water.

[ Project Page ] VIA [ DVice ]

By David Ponce

Alright, there’s no point trying to hammer the nail anymore: flatscreen TV prices are being commoditized. It’s not longer proper to be impressed at a sub-$1k 55 inch LCD when they’ve fallen as low as this Hannspree model. See, for $730 you can take home nearly 5 feet of viewing real estate. Sure, it’s not as well known a brand as Samsung or LG, but for less than three-quarters of a large you’d be getting a 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV that features 1920 x 1080 1080p resolution, 178-degree viewing angles, 120Hz refresh rate, 5ms response, 50,000 to 1 contrast ratio, 4 HDMI inputs, and more.

[ $370 Off Hannspree 55 Inch Flatscreen ] VIA [ LogicBuy ]