Filed under: Accessories, iPod Family, iPhone

While browsing our Flickr pool, we came across this shot of an iPhone perfectly perched by the toilet. Oh, don’t be squeamish. You would if you could.

In fact, you can. The flexible arm holding the iPhone in place is a Naja King. It’s a 3-foot coil which can pivot to hold your iPhone (or iPod touch) in either a landscape or portrait orientation, and pivot 360 degrees. The coil is made of steel and the grips are scratch-proof. They’re $39.99 each.

Now you can enjoy your movie while keeping your hands free… for other things.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Popularity: 4% [?]

Share This

Filed under: Features, Misc. Gadgets, Robots

Ariel Waldman contributes Movie Gadget Friday, where she highlights the lovable and lame gadgets from the world of cinema.

Last week on Movie Gadget Friday we kicked off our two-part series in honor of the late Arthur C. Clarke with 2001: A Space Odyssey. This week continues our tribute as we look into some of the support systems on board Discovery 1 and the Leonov in 2010: The Year We Make Contact. While we hear Dave Bowman proclaim “My God, it’s full of stars”, we can’t help but dig through this film full of gadgets.

HAL 9000 and SAL 9000
Designed as an artificial emotional intelligence machine, the HAL 9000 and SAL 9000 require human interaction for enhanced performance. Represented by a blue camera eye and female voice, SAL 9000 served as a guide to monitoring potential reactions by the previously disabled HAL 9000. Both machines incorporate keyboard and audio input to communicate with intelligent carbon-based lifeforms (read: us). The HAL 9000 is adept at facial, vocal, and vital sign recognition and makes decisions based on a strict understanding of logic. HAL maintains numerous responsibilities while acting as the brain and central nervous system of Discovery 1. Though HAL appears to be programmed to protect the crew, there are obvious and inherent flaws in his logic programming, resulting in — spoiler alert — in committing homicide to resolve conflicting commands. More after the jump.

Continue reading Movie Gadget Friday: 2010: The Year We Make Contact

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Popularity: 2% [?]

Share This

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Now that Skullphone’s act of purported electronic billboard hackery has been proven to be nothing more than a simple act of forking over some cash, the graffiti artist has apparently decided to try to explain things somewhat, albeit without going so far as to completely fess up. What’s more, as evidenced by the tidbits of the conversion provided by PAPERMAG, Skullphone also didn’t go so far as to make a lot of sense. On the central issue of hacking, Skullphone said that, “once again, it’s a matter of semantics. What does it mean to hack the system. Is getting people to think for themselves hacking?” As if that wasn’t enough profundity, Skullphone also said that “the art of hacking I know nothing about. What is hacking? What is art?,” before going just a tad over the top by saying that “people thought Bob Dylan sold out when he went electric. I guess people weren’t ready for it.” If that’s got you intrigued, you can hit up the link below for some more bits of wisdom.

[Thanks, David]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Popularity: 2% [?]

Share This

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

If OJ made one thing perfectly clear, it’s that the word “reason,” at the root of “reasonable doubt” has lost all meaning in the US court system. So what do you think will be the outcome of a new lawsuit claiming that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is a Doomsday machine? The suit filed in Hawaii’s US District Court by Luis Sancho and a former nuclear safety officer by the name of Walter Wagner, seeks to put the already delayed LHC launch on hold pending a new safety review. It’s worth noting that the same doomsday scenarios of micro black holes and strangelets (think: the Midas Touch of death) have been raised by Wagner previously with the launch of other accelerators — they’ve also been summarily dismissed by the scientific community as “beyond reasonable.” It’s also worth noting that the 27km-long LHC crisscrosses the border between France and Switzerland, not the US. An initial conference on the lawsuit is scheduled for June 16th, a few months before the first collisions are scheduled to begin and well before LHC is capable of its 4 trillion electron-volts maximum power. Peter Higgs, we feel your pain.

[Thanks Aaron, Original Image courtesy of Ute Kraus]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Filed under: iPod Family

Last year, we pointed out this cool campaign for iPods with video in South Africa. Tiny boxes of movie popcorn, posters and even a miniature “trailer” announced the idea of “Movies in your pocket.”

Today, Creative Bits describes another iPod campaign from South Africa. It features a set of earbuds that lead not to an iPod, but a pocket full of music, if you will. In one ad, a rock band does its thing in a woman’s purse. In another, a boy band croons on a desk and a hip-hop act features a microphone wire that leads to the wearer’s earbuds.

The images are great, and quite different from the silhouette ads we see in the US. Have you seen an interesting campaign or ad in your neck of the woods?

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

The first “completely integrated, extremely bendable circuit” was just demonstrated to the world. The team behind the research is led by John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The process bonds circuit sheets measuring just 1.5 micrometers (50 times thinner than human hair) to a piece of pre-stretched rubber. That allows the circuits to buckle like an accordion when pulled or twisted without losing their electrical properties. Unfortunately, the materials used thus far are not compatible with human tissue. In other words, no X-ray vision implant for you. X-ray contacts perhaps… quantum-computers now, please Mr. Scientists? Watch a circuit buckle in the video after the break.

[Via BBC, thanks YoJIMbo]

Continue reading Stretchy silicon circuits wrap around complex shapes, like your wife

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We knew the Army’s supposedly-dead Land Warrior high-tech uniform program still had some life in it, but now it appears that good marks from tests in the field might mean it’s going to make a full recovery. The Army sent the 4/9 Infantry (aka the “Manchus”) off to war loaded down with the 16-pound Land Warrior kit, and after some on-the-fly adjustments that made the gear lighter and more functional, the soldiers had talked Land Warrior up to the point where the 2nd Infantry Division’s 5th Combat Brigade Team has now officially requested 1,000 more Land Warrior rigs. The main change is the removal of six pounds of inessential gear, but the crew in the 4/9 also requested and added in a “digital chem light,” which allows buildings and waypoints to be marked in green on an electronic map, and restricted Land Warrior deployment to team leaders and above. There’s still some tricky funding problems to solve — some $102M needs to be set aside for the request — but the Land Warrior project managers say it’s looking promising. Now if we could only get some of that HUD monocle action on the civilian side, our morning coffee run would be a lot more interesting.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

In what’s become an increasingly familiar tune, a startup company has announced that it’s just pulled in a significant haul of funding based on its promises of better, cheaper solar power. In this case, the company in question is 1366 Technologies, which was spun out of research from MIT and is headed by MIT professor Ely Sachs (who is taking a leave of absence to focus on the company). According to the company, it’s found a way to make solar cells from multicrystalline silicon that are just as efficient as ones from single-crystal silicon, which is normally much more expensive to produce. In terms of hard numbers, that translates to solar cells that are 27 percent more efficient than your average solar cell, and (in its current state) a cost a $2.10 per watt. Sachs says that cost will come down to $1.65 per watt when manufacturered on a commercial scale, however, and will eventually drop to $1.30 a watt with some “planned improvements.” That’s still short of the $1 a watt goal they’re aiming for (which is roughly the cost of coal), but the company seems confident they can hit that mark by 2012 with some “anticipated advances.”

[Via Physorg]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We’ve seen a few massive solar farms pop up out west, but it looks like Southern California Edison is taking a different approach: instead of cluttering up the desert, the company plans to build a distributed solar array on the rooftops of commercial buildings throughout SoCal. The plan is to spend $875M over five years to cover about two square miles of rooftop with the panels, which will alleviate stress on the grid by generating around 250 megawatts of juice, as much as a small power plant. That’s enough to light up 162,000 homes, but it’s still a little short of the record 280-megawatt Solana installation planned in Arizona — come on, Cali, let’s see a little fight.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Popularity: 2% [?]

Share This

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

The whole claim of a product sell-out is a bit dubious without any numbers to back up the boast. Was it 100 or 100,000 units sold? Nevertheless, Bug Labs has depleted its initial stock of Bugs. Those of you looking to get your hands on the open-source, modular hardware platform will have to wait until the next shipment in May. While most of the purchases went the way of tinkerers, about a third of the devices were surprisingly scooped up by corporations looking at Bug to possibly replace expensive, custom devices. At least that’s how Bug Labs’ founder, Peter Semmelhack spins it. Could be, or perhaps it’s just the same compelling curiosity we all feel about Bug with a desire (read: R&D budget) to keep abreast of industry change? Regardless, good on ya Pete.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Popularity: 3% [?]

Share This