It’s definitely a first world problem: being forced into an uncomfortable reading position on your bed due to your iPhone’s charging cable being too short. Pedestrian as it is, it’s a small problem that can easily be solved with the purchase of this $15 Curly Cable, which extends from 8 inches to 70 inches (20cm to 180cm).
The cable is currently on Kickstarter and had easily passed its funding threshold. And the $15 price will bump up to $30 if you wait to purchase this elsewhere.
Tamagotchis were so annoying, much like receiving endless Farmville requests on Facebook is still annoying; this editor had no interest in seeing how much poop your virtual pet had produced. And it appears that neither of these distractions are going away. To celebrate the toy’s 15th anniversary, Bandai is releasing the Tamagotchi iD L. As you can imagine, it’s gotten quite the technological makeover:
features full color, and tons of different scenes as you explore the digital world with your pet. There are 32 different characters to choose from, with 11 of those being exclusive to the iD series. You can also connect to other Tamagotchi owners wirelessly. You can swap items with other pets, or, if there’s a love connection, join the two pets in marriage (after a proper courting period, of course).
Yes… marrying pets. And the worst part of all this is the price: $113 plus $20 for shipping. Just pray your kids don’t see this post.
You may just be old enough to remember the “mood ring” fad of the 80s and 90s. Yes, this editor had one and yes, they were junk. But Affectiva’s Q-Sensor 2.0 is in another mood-sensing ballpark altogether. On the underside of the device is a pair of sensors measuring the galvanic skin response, which is an indicator of physiological or psychological arousal. The device just measures your skin’s electrical conductance, which varies with changing levels of moisture. Since the sympathetic nervous system controls sweat glands, it gives insight into whether you’re stressed/excited or not. Galvanic skin response sensors are one component of polygraph tests and have been in use for quite some time. The Q-Sensor 2.0 also measures temperature and movement, puts all the data together into its software and determines your mood. And yes, it can then Tweet about it if you want.
The thing is, the device costs $2,000. That’s a lot of cash for personal use. It is being marketed for professional use, where there might be an advantage in accurately determining a person’s mood.
Corsair’s Flash Voyager GT line used to be the bee’s knees of ultra performant flash drives. Their SLC based 8GB Voyager GT from 5 years ago sat at the top of the USB 2.0 food chain for a long time. Sullied only by releasing an MLC based successor in 16GB (much slower than the 8GB) Voyager GT owned the land speed record nearly maxing out USB 2.0′s 40MB/s bus speeds. Fast forward to present day with USB 3.0 well at hand and the latest Corsair Flash Voyager GT 3.0 arrives, not with a roar but with a whimper. Boasting almost only above average read and write speeds for placing it just above the middle of the road at 135MB/s and 83MB/s respectively.
While this is certainly faster than most of the junk flash drives you will find on most shelves, Corsair is an enthusiast drive maker and has to be held to higher standards. They are currently leading the pack with their Force SSD and Revo drives, they should show flash drives some more love. Mediocre USB 3.0 speeds aside, all the other time tested features of the Corsair Voyager line remain. The durable rubber coating still seems protective enough to survive multiple trips through the dryer without a glitch. It’s still too big to share close quarters with other USB devices but it’s not supposed to be compact and cheap, it’s supposed to be big, fast and spacious for very demanding users. To get a full report on where its speed compares to other market devices as well as form and function head to Everything USB.
While we wouldn’t recommend wearing these for a trip to airport security, pretty much any other occasion can be enlivened by wearing cufflinks that are also tiny functional knifes. Measuring 7/8 in. closed, the blade itself is 9/16 in. in length and features a little notch to open them. They’re perfect for opening letters, boxes and stabbing people once you get into a drunken fight over whether Chuck Norris could take on Kimbo Slice, blindfolded (he could). The company even thought of including a tiny diamond dust sharpener so you can do it all over again as soon as you get out of jail.
The Traxxas X0-1 remote controlled car isn’t a toy. At least, it’s not the kind of toy you’re going to want to give someone very young. This 1/7th scale machine carries two large Lithium-Ion Polymer (LiPo) batteries rated at 5,000 mAh and combined with a capacitor bank and a large, finned, brushless motor, this car is capable of doing 0-60mph in 2.3 seconds. 0-100 in 4.92 seconds. It’s able to do this right out of the box, provided you have an iPhone and download the related application (otherwise you’re limited to 50mph). See, the remote features an iPhone dock, and once paired, you can see live telemetry data right on your device’s screen. You can also tweak a number of settings, from throttle and steering response, to their respective end-points.
The X0-1 is four wheel drive and is 27 inches long, while weighing about 10 lbs with batteries. There’s… just so much going on with this car that it would take too long to list it all here. So check out the link below for more. You should just prepare for sticker shock, as this little baby is $1,100 and will be available on December 30th.
If we’re in an improbable future, and the Mario Bros. franchise has taken a penchant for the slightly macabre and gritty, then this is what the player selection screen looks like. It’s the creation of one Jonathan Fletcher, and it’s “made in UDK, characters modeled in 3ds Max/Zbrush and textured in Photoshop.”
Oh, but that picture doesn’t do it justice. Do yourself a favor and watch the short video below. Only don’t expect anyone to press “Start” like we did; it can be disappointing.
There’s a range of ways in which you can prepare your morning brew, from the powdered, instant bottom-of-the-rung stuff to the now much higher end: a coffee tap that integrates with your iDevices. Built directly into any kitchen counter top, Scanomat’s Top Brewer is a coffee lover’s dream come true. At the push of a button (still in the comfort of your bed, from your iPhone, say) and in as little as 15 seconds, your drip coffee is ready to pour out of a spigot. The machine will grind your beans and heat the water on the spot, giving you the freshest cup possible. Want more than drip coffee? Whatever the drink, it can make it. Best part: it’s self cleaning! It performs a daily 1 minute routine that cleans all the pipes, including the milk ducts. It even has a longer routine in case of heavy use, so you don’t have to worry about spoilage or foul tastes. There’s even, get this, an optional juice dispenser accessory.
The price hasn’t been announced, but like most finer things in life, chances are that if you have to ask you can’t afford it.
The battle against oligarchic cable companies continues on several fronts, with more people joining the ranks of the cable cutters daily. Apple’s offering to the fray is the Apple TV, where you can rent movies on demand and stream content from a variety of providers. And today you can get yourself the latest generation model for $78, after a $22 rebate. “Apple TV has built-in HDMI, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Ethernet, built-in IR receiver, Optical Audio and Micro-USB. ”
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