
By Andrew Liszewski
Designed by BERU f1 systems, the Factor 001 training bike is chock full of Formula One racing technology which makes it one of the most advanced bikes ever built. Besides the requisite made-to-measure one piece carbon fiber frame and ceramic brakes, the Factor 001’s real secret weapon is its built-in accelerometers that monitor the bike’s lean and other physical factors like wheel speed, torque levels and crank cadence. It will even have a biometric monitoring system for keeping tabs on the rider’s physical condition like body temp, respiration rate and even ECG data. All that for roughly $30,000, depending on the options you order. (That’s the starting price.)
But all that information the bike is gathering is no good if you can’t study it later on. So for an additional $8-10,000 you’ll be able to buy the Factor 001’s custom software package that allows the data to be uploaded to a PC and analyzed in order to improve your performance. Needless to say you have to really want to wear that yellow jersey to be shelling out this kind of money for a bike.
[ BikeRadar.com - Formula One experts use car technology to build bike ] VIA [ Wired Gadget Lab ]

By Jonathan Kimak
I used to play the trumpet in high school, at least until I got braces and ended up shredding my lips anytime I tried to play. This would have been a good thing for me to keep the training for the few years before I took my braces off(I instead switched to the saxophone).
The Yamaha EZ-TP Electronic Teaching Trumpet, which is sadly, only available in Japan, is an electronic way to learn the trumpet. Instead of blowing into the trumpet, you just hum into the device while pressing the proper keys on the trumpet. The keys can light up to help you learn the proper fingerings.
The trumpet can play 22 different sounds in case you get bored of hearing the regular trumpet sound. But most importantly(especially for parents) the trumpet comes with a volume control. This means the trumpet has a far lower chance of being thrown into the lake.
The trumpet also comes with MIDI support and some pre-programmed songs to play along with.
[ EZ TP Electronic Trumpet ] VIA [ Slippery Brick ]
Thursday, September 25, 2008

By Jonathan Kimak
You may have heard the myth that goldfish have an attention span of 3 seconds. Researchers and even the MythBusters have proved that to be wrong. Golfish have been shown to have a memory that can last at least 3 months.
And now you can use that knowledge to teach your goldfish some tricks. The R2 Fish Training School Kit from ThinkGeek allows you to train your little pet to perform 10 different tricks. Tricks include teaching it to score a goal in soccer, zig zag in between poles(like in dog competitions), shoot a basketball and play fetch.
The kit comes with an instructional DVD. You can buy it for $40.
Video of a trained goldfish in action after the jump.
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