By Chris Scott Barr

Foosball is one of those timeless games that will probably never go away. I mean who doesn’t enjoy batting around a ball with a bunch of plastic guys on sticks? Well if you don’t have room for such a table anymore, you can still decorate your house in honor of the game with one of these Offside Foosball Coat Hangers.

When you think about it, the design is actually rather brilliant. When not in use the men will be standing straight up, and when something is placed on one, the feet lean against the wall to make a nice hanger. The men slide back-and-forth so that you can take full advantage of all hangers when you have a large coat hanging from one. Granted, for the price of just over $100, you could buy a cheap Foosball table.

[ FunktionAlley ] VIA [ GearFuse ]

By Evan Ackerman

There are two places where bomb-proof wallpaper would come in really, really handy: war zones, and college. I guess college is less deadly most of the time, but you also don’t have the US Government offering to step in and pay for replacement drywall after your roommate decides that it would be fun to try and kick his way through to the adjoining room by swinging from your bunk bed. Thanks, Logan.

X-Flex wallpaper is made from a “Kevlar-like material” (Kevlar itself being a trademark of DuPont, in case you were wondering) sandwiched between an elastic polymer wrap. It’s lightweight, portable, and a cinch to install relative to the protection it offers: you just peel off the back, stick it to the wall, and bolt it to the ceiling and floor and you’re done. You can even wallpaper or paint over it if you don’t like the color. Popular Science put X-Flex to the test with a wrecking ball as you’ll see in the video below, but to forestall any objections, you can also see X-Flex withstanding an actual bomb blast on their website.

For those of you who are especially paranoid, it’s certainly worth mentioning that X-Flex is not actually intended to protect against ballistics, like bullets or shrapnel, just blasts and blunt impacts like bombs and drunken roommates. A commercial version of the military grade wallpaper is due out next year.

[ X-Flex ] and [ PopSci ] VIA [ DVICE ]

By Evan Ackerman

Powerzoa is a little cube that sits in between a wall socket and your electronics. It has the magical ability to turn power on and off all by itself while monitoring energy usage, and each Powerzoa cube includes some kind of wireless internet connection that interfaces with a website that lets you track how much power you waste and gives you the option of turning each individual cube’s power off. Powerzoa touts these features as a great way to “save electricity, lower energy costs, and help the environment.” And that’s, you know, great. But for me, the big appeal is the ability to turn individual appliances and lights and stuff on and off over the internet.

Powerzoa is almost identical in principle to the Visible Energy UFO, except at the level of an individual socket as opposed to a power strip. While the Visible Energy UFO is supposed to be ready to go by the end of this year, Powerzoa is still in the prototype phase, but if it’s cheap enough and easy enough to set up, it could be quite a bit handier thanks to a small form factor.

[ Powerzoa ] VIA [ DVICE ]

It may not look like much, but physicists from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany have invented the “perfect” coffee cup. Why “perfect?” It’s all about the temperature: this coffee cup is capable of maintaining your coffee (or any other beverage) at an ideal temperature for a full 20 – 30 minutes. The ideal temperature for coffee, incidentally, is 58 degrees Celsius, but personally I prefer to drink tea (not coffee, tea, thank you) at something closer to 59… Yeah, I like living dangerously.

The cup is constructed of a swirly looking aluminum frame covered with a ceramic material. The spaces around the frame are filled with a PCM, or phase changing material. PCM is super neat stuff that is only happy at a very specific temperature. When you add heat to a PCM, it absorbs it and turns into a liquid, kinda like wax. If things start to cool down, the PCM turns back into a solid, releasing the heat as it does so, doing its best to keep itself (and its surroundings) as close to that happy temperature as possible. So when it comes to coffee, the PCM will first cool the liquid down to the ideal temperature by absorbing heat, and then keep it at that temperature as it releases that heat. Best part is, it’s totally free, in that it’s “powered” by absorbing heat from something that’s too hot. And hey, did I mention that it also works in reverse? A different type of PCM can be used to stabilize cold liquids, too.

The only catch to this technology is that PCMs are temperature specific. So, you’d need a hot PCM cup for hot beverages and a cold PCM cup for cold beverages. And they’re not likely to be cheap:

In the meantime, it won’t be long before the IBP’s new table products arrive in stores. Their steep price tags should easily give them away. “We don’t know how expensive they’ll be yet,” Sedlbauer says. “We are already talking with different companies. If we can find a partner to work together with, the first mugs could already be on sale by the end of the year.”

I’d imagine that a steep price tag wouldn’t dissuade that many people from a coffee cup that keeps your coffee at the perfect temperature… I mean, you only really need one, right? And if you drink coffee (or tea, which is way better) every day, it’ll easily pay for itself in convenience. As long as they dress it up a little bit first, of course.

[ Spiegel ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]

I’m going to assume this ethanol fueled rolling fireplace from Conmoto isn’t actually designed to be rolled while there’s a roaring fire inside. But even if someone does get the bright idea to send it sailing across a room while there’s a fire burning, a set of glass panels on either side will prevent the worst from happening should it topple over.

[ Conmoto ] VIA [ Trendir ]

Even though the installation will probably require quite a bit of renovation to your bathroom, including the re-routing of water pipes, this ceiling mounted faucet from Signorini is certainly a conversation piece. It’s part of the company’s Bilo line, and also features a stylish single lever hot/cold water mixer. And as for the price, well I’m going to assume it’s one of those ‘if you have to ask, it’s probably not in your budget’ items.

[ Signorini ] VIA [ DigsDigs ]

Instead of fumbling with handles while your hands are dirty, spreading the mess everywhere, Delta’s new Pilar faucets feature the company’s Touch20 Technology which lets you simply tap or touch them to turn the water on or off. The faucets use two capacitive touch sensors in the handle and the spout to detect when you’ve touched them, but are smart enough to know when the handle or spout have been grabbed instead so you can adjust their positions without turning the water on or off. A chrome version of the Pilar faucet will set you back $495 while the stainless steel model is a bit more at $547.

[ Delta Pilar Touch Activated Faucet ] VIA [ Popular Science ]

When I was a kid I always needed a night light and a glass of water next to my bed before I would go to sleep, which unfortunately makes the LiteCup about 25 years too late for me. It’s a dishwasher safe cup that features a built-in nightlight that automatically turns on in low light, as well as a clever circular valve on top that can be easily opened with a “small suck” but prevents the liquids inside from spilling out when the cup is inevitably knocked to the ground in the middle of the night. ~$10 each from And Design.

[ LiteCup ] VIA [ Switched On Set ]

By David Ponce

This one’s pretty simple, and we’re wondering why we’re only seeing this product on the market now. The Brinno Digital Peephole viewer goes into the current peephole found on many doors, but allows you to view your visitor using a 1.3 megapixel display. There’s even a zoom option so you can examine facial features more closely. This is of course not an always-on device: pressing the button gives you 10 seconds to identify who’s there. 2 AA batteries last approximately 1,700 peeps.

Bonus: no one has to know you’re there anymore, since even just looking through regular peepholes kind of gives you away by going dark.

It’s $180 ($160 Australian) but currently out of stock.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Dvice ]

I wouldn’t exactly consider myself part of Diesel’s target demographic, but they’ve definitely won me over with this set of turntables & analog audio gear print bedding. I mean look at it, the pillow shams even line up to form a mixer between the two turntables. All I have to say is goodbye Hannibal, Murdock, Faceman and B.A. because Andrew has finally found some new bed sheets.

The Turntable bedding is part of the company’s ‘Diesel Lifestyle Home Textile Collection’ and is apparently available from Diesel retail stores, though I have no idea for how much.

[ Diesel Turntable & Audio Gear Bedding ] VIA [ Freshome ]