By David Ponce

Going forward with the much less fun to say Optical Illusion Friday (comparing this to Fishtank Friday, which rolled wight off the tongue…), here’s another illusion. We’re big fans of these false movement images and this particular one seems to have it down pat. For a really fun time, try it with one eye at a time.

Have a good weekend, y’all.

VIA [ Brainbashers ]

By David Ponce

This is an accident waiting to happen. Which is entertaining when the accident involves the idiot and a tree. It’s less fun however when an innocent, non texting-while-driving person gets hit by one of the types of people who will want to buy the above product. Sure, there may be those who will get the Satechi SCH-121 Cup Holder Mount (which accommodates tablets and phones alike) in order to use the devices while the car is stationary. Like waiting for the missus while she shops. But let’s be honest, a bunch of others will get this with every intention of driving while playing Angry Birds. You know who you are.

At $30, it’s easy to be tempted. But like drinking and driving, it’s not because it’s easy that it’s right…

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Product Page ]

By David Ponce

One of the highlights at this past CES was seeing Bob Marley’s son pitching products for the House Of Marley. Yes, Bob Marley had a son. Who knew?! Turns out they have a bunch of audio products that share an eco-friendly vision. The Bag Of Rhythm is the Marley interpretation of a boombox, with green components.

Essentially everything about this monster is recycled or recyclable – not that you’d ever want to recycle such a lovely amalgamation – and is made to give you a unique experience as well as vision. The wood you’ve got here is FSC certified Birch, the canvas is durable and will bring you back to your army days, and the plastic throughout the setup is entirely recyclable as well. The packaging is recycled as well, so you’ll have nothing you need to throw away when you get the device in the mail; you get to recycle it instead.

The speakers you see here are both 4.5-inch high-definition woofers, but there’s also two 1-inch tweeters and 32 watts of power and DSP Sound Processing.

The music is fed to the machine via an iPod/iPhone dock (or an AUX line in for anything else), which recharges the device, presumably when plugged in. It’ll ship later this month for $349.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Slashgear ]

By David Ponce

If you buy this case and some accident damages your iPhone 4/4S while being protected with the case, the company will try to fix it. If it doesn’t manage, it’ll send you a new phone. We’re not sure what’s to stop someone from buying this once their phone has broken and claiming it happened after. The only precaution taken seems to be a requirement to register the Cellhelmet within 30 days of purchase, but we’re not sure just what that’s supposed to stop. At $40 a pop, it’s a lot cheaper than buying a new phone. And even if there is some way to prevent fraud that we’re not seeing, the idea is pretty neat nonetheless. It’s not everyone who has carrier issue insurance, so for one year of peace of mind, $40 is not a lot of cash.

The Cellhelmet is a Kickstarter project that has already been funded. The cases look alright, but lets face it, the real product here is the insurance.

[ Product Page ]

By David Ponce

As you may know, a certain day is just around the corner. And while most of us geeks might be spending it “forever alone”, those who aren’t are probably looking for little trinket to buy… Oh who am I kidding? You’re going to pick that stuff up from the gas station on the way home from work, aren’t you? Good on you! If romance is still part of the equation though, here’s the HeartPart. It’s a little plastic heart that breaks apart into two fork-like eating utensils. *Cue cheezy music here* Perfect for sharing a plate of fruit, each one of you holding one half of your heart, staring lovingly into one another’s eyes.

And while I vomit a little over here, you can go buy them for $9 for a 10-pack. They come in 5 colors.

[ Product Page (caution: auto-playing music) ] VIA [ CoolHunting ]

By David Ponce

People still read paper books and it’s likely to stay that way for a while. Nostalgia and all that. So until then, why not store and display them in a visually (and organizationally) appealing manner?

“REK is a bookcase that grows with your book collection,” writes Reinier De Jong Design on its official website. “The more books the bigger the bookcase gets. The zigzag shaped parts slide in and out to accomodate books in the resulting voids. REK will always be full, regardless of the quantity of books. Also the books can be arranged according to their sizes. The narrow spaces are excellent for magazines.”

Sadly the REK bookcase is one of those items for which you have to ask the price. And we all know what this means.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ BoingBoing ]

By David Ponce

If you’ve ever strayed into the household section of a bookstore, you might have seen those little zen gardens with the rake and the sand and the claims to inner peace and all that jive. The Zen Table you see above is centered around a similar concepts, but adds a fair bit of technology that simply makes it awesome instead of kitschy. See, it contains special sculpting sand, a robotic arm and a sculpting tip. This enables the device to create stunning images in the sand. What’s best is you decide what these images are. You can load the table with any bitmap and specialized software will convert this into a sculpting file. You’re then free to watch as the magic happens. If you watch the below video, you can see how this could be a crowd pleaser.

By the same token, if you’re buying this, you’re probably going to want to put it in the sort of the establishment that has crowds to begin with as it’s quite pricey. There’s a small-ish desktop version which comes as a kit or pre-assembled. This is $500 or $750 respectively. But the real coffee table… adds a zero to these figures, although it comes assembled in both cases. The $7,499 version might have been a Kickstarter only affair with special perks for early backers. Still, at $5,000, we see this in the waiting area of a fancy restaurant rather than someone’s living room.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ UberGizmo ]

By David Ponce

Remote controlled cars are really old tech. But what’s relatively new is the replacing of the controller with an iPhone. These little HotWheels iNitro SpeedCars use an application that gives you a total of 5 different ways to control them. The first is using regular on-screen analog sticks. According to CNet, this causes the car to be herky jerky, with fine tuned control being difficult. Another one uses the iPhone accelerometer and does allow for a little bit more finesse. A third option involves a trackpad like operation, where dragging your finger on screen will cause the little car to move accordingly. A fourth is a set of predefined shapes, like a figure 8, that the car is able to reproduce. The final option is the most interesting, as it lets you draw a pattern (any pattern) and the HotWheel will follow it.

You should know that the iPhone connects to the cars via an IR adapter which is cumbersome to setup but works well once it is. The cars come in 8 different models and will set you back a modest $40. For what looks like tons of fun at any age (even if it’s squarely aimed at 8 year olds…), it’s not a whole lot of money.

[ Product Page (Careful, auto-playing sounds) ] VIA [ CNet ]

By David Ponce

Being off the grid is fun, but unless you’re really special, you never go full-off. Most people like to bring at least a cellphone with them, be it only for emergency calls. What better way to charge these then, than with a BioLight campstove. It’s a small device in which you are meant to burn wood or other combustible biodegradables (leaves, pine cones, etc.). While you place your pot of beans atop to heat, a thermoelectric element inside provides power which outputs through a USB port.

It’s $129 and should be ready to ship for “camping season 2012″.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Uncrate ]