Oh! Gizmo

By Evan Ackerman

See this bracelet? It’s telling you not to do drugs. Well, not you, since you’re mature enough and intelligent enough to make those kinds of decisions for yourself. But the youth of America are a bunch of clueless and impressionable… You know… Youth… and they only really pay attention to social messages they can turn into bling.

The Sound Advice Project wants you to talk to your kids about drugs, and to make it easier on you, they’re offering you a bracelet to bribe them with. The bracelets are custom made, and the arrangement of beads represents a sound wave that you record. The Project wants you to say something positive and about drugs. Er, yeah. But you don’t have to, as far as I can tell, and you can use the six seconds to make up a physical, wearable incarnation of whatever phrase you’d like.

At only $18, it’s not a bad little geeky gift idea.

[ Sound Advice Project ] VIA [ BBG ]

By Evan Ackerman

Keeping your eyes open all day can be such a painful chore, and you deserve some relief. The Eye Vibrato is a mask that provides heat, vibration, and four different intensities of pressurized air to relax your eyeballs. Plus, the mask blocks out ambient light, meaning that you don’t have to spend the time and effort actually closing your eyes at all. It’s $64 on Amazon Japan.

[ Ever Sweet ] VIA [ DVICE ]

By Evan Ackerman

Two pairs of shoes is two shoes too many with this pair of convertible high tops that unzip into flip-flops. Seen at the “Bread & Butter” fashion trade show in Barcelona.

[ Reuters ] VIA [ Neatorama ]

Dear David,

For next year’s CES, I have some demands. First, a suite at the Wynn. Near the top, with a good view and an open bar. Second, one of those Hummer stretch limos to drive me to the LVCC with a license plate that says OG4EVR. Third, a bulletproof vest that I can wear on the show floor. The Jack Ellis press vest is “designed to provide media representatives with distinctive and comprehensive protection” and is “ideal for extended use in higher risk environments,” and will (hopefully) protect me from being stabbed by PR crazies with USB drives as well as from the impacts of out of control toys. There’s no price listed, and I’m sure it’s not cheap, but I’m worth it, right?

…Right?

Your faithful editor,

-Evan

[ Jack Ellis ] VIA [ RFJ ]

By Evan Ackerman

No word on how many stuffed bears gave their lives to make this coat, or how your children will react if you wear it, or how much it costs. But, damn… Who comes up with this stuff?

The same people who brought you the headless chicken duck lamp, apparently:

Um, can I have some of whatever you guys are on? Please?

[ Sebastian Errazuriz ] VIA [ Neatorama ]

By Evan Ackerman

Humans are tropical animals. We really aren’t designed for cold weather, and we have to wear impractical amounts of clothing to go outdoors in the winter when you get much beyond the 23 degrees of latitude. So instead of wearing five extra layers, it makes a lot more sense to just wear one extra layer that provides all the heat you need. Venture’s line of self-heating fleece jackets and pants contain integrated single-sided heat pads that’ll keep you toasty warm, even in ridiculously cold places like Canada.

Venture jackets have a heating pad in the back, and two across the chest. The heating units themselves are barely noticeable in the fabric of the jacket, but from what I could tell when I tried it out, they’re quite powerful. Although you do have to carry a battery pack, it’s lithium and doesn’t weigh much, and there’s a remote control that lets you select the temperature for each heating zone individually. You should get 5-10 hours per charge, and you can recharge the jacket from a standard wall outlet. Venture also makes fleece-lined heated cargo pants if you need a head to toe solution.

The jackets are all high quality outerwear, and it shows in the price. Expect to pay $150 - $200 for one.

[ VentureHeat ]

By Evan Ackerman

We saw prototypes of LG’s wristwatch cellphone at CES last year, and believe it or not, these are actually going into production this year. The design is finalized and the software is nearly ready to go, and it’ll hit Europe in Q2 of this year for an unspecified price. It’s going to Europe first because LG doesn’t have to worry about carrier monopoly there, but they say it’ll get to the US sometime this year for sure. It’s got quad band GSM, 3G, a touchscreen, Bluetooth, voice recognition, text to speech, and basically everything you’d expect and want in a functional phone that you can wear on your wrist. If I didn’t already have an iPhone, I’d go nuts for one of these.

Pressy, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

By Evan Ackerman

This little piece of spy equipment is something that could possibly make that Bond James Bond guy a little jealous, if his watches weren’t consistently endowed with badass weaponry. If you’re more the passive surveillance type as opposed to the lasers and sonic disintegrators and garrote wires and kicking ass and ordering pretentious drinks and getting the girl type, then I pity you, but the Secret Agent Camcorder Watch may be right up your nonthreatening alley. It has a pinhole camera hidden in the number 2 on the face of the watch, with a little mic on the side. The camera captures 352 x 288 full color AVIs for up to 2 hours nonstop before the battery goes dead, and a USB port on the side of the watch allows convenient offloads. The camera can also take VGA (640 x 480) still pics, and the 2 gigs of onboard memory can be used as data storage. And it even works as a watch!

The trick to this is going to be getting the camera and the microphone pointing in a relevant direction without snapping your wrist in half, and I imagine it takes quite a bit of practice to pull it off while simultaneously not looking like someone trying to slyly point their wrist at something.

The Secret Agent Camcorder Watch costs a nickle under $200.

[ BrickHouse Security ] VIA [ Neatorama ]

By Evan Ackerman

Back on April 1st (that would be, April Fool’s Day) we posted about a Personal Soundtrack Shirt from Thinkgeek.com. The shirt had a speaker embedded in the front, and would play music and sound effects as you went about your daily business, making your boring life that much more exciting.

It was, of course, a joke.

Or maybe not.

Thinkgeek got such a crazy response to the joke that they’ve decided to make an actual product out of it, and it’ll be on sale in limited quantities starting on Friday. Just like the April Fool’s Day prank, the shirt has a big speaker embedded in the front. A wired remote control allows you to choose the appropriate soundtrack or sound effect to play. If you don’t like the included sounds, you can add your own on an SD card, or even wire an MP3 player directly into the speaker. The electronics are removable so you can wash the shirt if you’re into that sort of thing.

The Personal Soundtrack Shirt is only $40 and is guaranteed to make you awesome forever. Or as long as you’re wearing it, anyway. Video after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »