This Generator the Size of a Pencil Tip Shakes Up Big Power

Japanese researchers have cooked up a minuscule kinetic battery capable of generating more energy than anything of its kind. Through only the slightest vibrations, the tiny device cranks out 22 milliwatts—20 times more than anything similar before it.

Twenty two milliwatts might not sound like terribly much—certainly a long way from powering your PS3—but could revolutionize the way we use smaller, button-sized batteries—just imagine a tiny way to store and generate power that could be tucked away anywhere. Devices that suck small amounts of juice could power themselves just by being in your pocket.

The secret behind the microgenerator lies in its use of Galfenol, a magnetic material developed by the US Naval Research Laboratory in 1998—it's super tough, and can take temperatures over 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

 

Scosche solBAT II Sun-Powered USB

What if you could charge pretty much any gadget, from iPhones to Blackberries, with a pocketable solar panel? Well, you can now with the solBAT II. It's a small plastic box that's far lighter than any cellphone, the SolBAT II is essentially a solar panel connected to a battery connected to AC and USB ports.

The catch is that the solBAT II takes a long time to charge—4 to 5 days in all, according to the package. After sitting that long in my window, the device still hadn't reached its 1500mA capacity.

Price: $30, but as low as $20 on Amazon.

The Mouse I Would Like to Have

The OM wireless optical mouse is a flat surface the size of a hand, only 10 millimeter thick at its highest point. In theory, it makes your hand relax. In the practice, it's a very cool concept.

Apparently, most of the hand strain comes from the sides of current mouses. Buy getting rid of them, the OM would solve this problem, the designer says. Whatever. I just think it looks great.

Samsung's Big Time, Pocket-Sized Pico Projector

You may not be able to tell from this context-deprived picture, but Samsung's SP-H03 pico projector is small. Really small. Like, hockey puck small. And it puts 854x480 resolution and 1GB of internal memory in the palm of your hand.

The SP-H03 weighs just half a pound, and brings grownup specs to the pico category. In addition to that WVGA resolution, it's got impressive 30 lumen brightness, microSD memory expansion up to 16GB, and an itty bitty 1W stereo for media presentations.

It'll be available this month for $300 and if you end up using it more for putting home movies up on the garage door, well, who's gonna know?

 

 

Fold this iPhone Speaker Out to Increase the Volume

As far as iPhone speakers go, this one looks more like an educational toy from a museum shop than a speaker. It's got a novel twist however, if you can pardon the pun, with each fold making the volume increase/decrease.

A typical Yanko Design concept, it was designed by Chun-Chieh Yang and folds up to a small square-shaped size for easy transporting. 

 

 

Lens Bracelets Are the Ultimate Stocking Stuffer for Your Fave Photog

You could buy your photographer friend a nice new lens this holiday season—and drop several hundred bucks—or you could buy one of these charming lens bracelets. Not exactly, say, functional, but totally more cute!—and cooler than Silly Bandz.

You can pick up the set of two bracelets (in 24-70mm and 50mm models) for $15.

 

 

An Inelegant Solution To an Unserious Drinking Problem

Classic dilemma: you'd like a shot. You'd like a beer. You have limited cabinet space. Never fear! The Shot in a Pint glass holds both beer and liquor better than you ever could.

Sure, it's not the most practical solution, since it can only hold one libation at a time. But in terms of saving space, and adding a touch of whimsy to your crippling dependency, you really can't do much better. Twenty bucks for a set of two, and I'd suggest not putting anything more expensive in them.

 

 

Don't Worry, the Balloon Bench Won't Float Out of Your House

Japanese design firm h220430's whimsical Balloon Bench isn't exactly traditional. But it looks a whole lot more fun to sit on than your average sofa—even if the balloons aren't real. Or, have some drinks and pretend you're floating.

The bench's trick is a little less graceful than actual levitation—the plastic "balloons" would have to be bolted into your ceiling to support your weight. And I'm not so sure how comfortable a bench made from aluminum would be (quick guess: not very). But still—I'll trade comfort for looking a little more awesome the next time I sit down.

Complex $1.2 Million Manufacture Royale Accordion Watch Plays a Simple Tune

Manufacture Royale's Opera $1.2 million watch doesn't just open up for show, there's some functionality built into that unfolding, accordion-like action too. Minute hand repeater plays C#, hour hand plays in A. Your wallet weeps to the tune of "empty."

The watch will be limited to a run of only 12 timepieces, each comprised of 319 gears, springs and other bits of 18k rose and gray gold. The band is unashamedly alligator skin.

Match Your Adidas Shoes With Sennheiser's HD 25 Originals Headphones

I adored my shell-toed Adidas sneakers as a youngster. If only these Sennheiser HD 25 Originals had been around then, I could've matched them with my shoes. If you've got the shoes, the attitude, and $360 spare, step right in.

They've got a frequency response of 16-22000 Hz, a sound pressure level of 120dB, and weighs 162g. Plug into your chosen media player, and hit up some old skool Run DMC.

This Three-Person Bathtub Is Made From a Single Rock Crystal

I love big bathtubs and crazy jacuzzis, but this thing defies imagination. It's an 8.3-feet diameter bathtub made from a single rock crystal. If Superman had a tub in his Fortress of Solitude, this would be it.

And he will use it with Lois Lane and Wonderwoman, because it can fit three people. Made by Italian company Baldi using diamond cutters, the bathtub took six months to carve out of a giant quartz rock. The rock itself was found in the Amazonia rainforest.

I can't decide if the effect of the halogen lighting through the rock is the coolest or the tackiest thing ever in a bathroom. Probably both, and that's why I want to spend an hour inside.

 

 

Monster Vision Max 3D Glasses

3D is a bit of a mess in itself, but to make matters more complicated, a pair of shutter glasses that work with your Samsung TV won't work with your Panasonic TV or not very well. Monster is changing that, almost.

Their Vision Max 3D glasses promise universal compatibility on all 3D TVs—which is fantastic—but you'll need to use Monster's base station to make said TVs work with the glasses.

$250 buys you a base station (transmitting shutter sync information over 2.4GHz) and one pair of glasses. $180 buys you an extra pair of glasses.

It's not a bad idea—not at all. But so long as you can't just bring your glasses to a friend's house to watch a movie, so long as the glasses themselves can't decode every manufacturer's particular 3D timing, so long as you need a intermediary piece of equipment to make it all work, Monster's solution doesn't look much more tempting (or flexible) than that of the original manufacturers.

 

 

Bring Pleasing Visual Conformity to Cabling With the Rigid E-Line Cord

Turn your death-trap of precarious wiring into a design feature with E-Line. By placing a grooved, flexible exo-skin around the inner power cord, E-Line creates a semi-rigid cable you're able to spend hours obsessively tidying into a pleasing shape.

But don't throw out your last-gen floppy cables in a frenzy of excitement—the E-Line Cord is only a design concept at the moment. It'll be several weeks at the least before the Chinese can ship a supertanker full of clones of these out to the US.

 

 

Humans Can Only Walk In Circles and We Don't Know Why

Humans can't walk in straight lines. If there's no fixed point of reference, we just walk in circles and inevitably get lost. Nobody knows why, but researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics have confirmed it in several experiments.

If you walk, drive or sail blindfolded, in the middle of the fog or at night, with no stars in sight, you will not be able to keep a straight line. No matter how hard you try, you will end going in circles because, for some mysterious reason, humans have a tendency to lean to one side more than the other. Some people speculate that this is because one side of the brain is the dominating one. Others point out that the reason may be purely mechanical, because one of our legs is always sightly shorter than the other. But, according to the results of the study, these are not the causes for this unique behavior. At least, there's not one single explanation and it may be a combination of many.

Whatever it is, don't get into a dark forest without a compass—screw the GPS.

The Starship Enterprise's Universal Remote

The Cyclops universal remote would fit in so well in someone's Star Fleet quarters, I'm surprised it doesn't have a replicator button on it. Fortunately, you won't have to wait for the far-flung future to own one.

The Cyclops, from GenosTV, is a wireless universal remote that's meant to be ergonomically superior for two-handed use. One version will be designed for all consumer electronics, while apparently there will be another that's geared more specifically towards gaming systems. They'll also incorporate Bluetooth, meaning you can use this bad boy to send text messages as well.

As for what star date you'll be able to have one of your own: there's no official word yet, but apparently the Cyclops is "ready to go to manufacturing" and should be available in time for the holidays this year. Presumably the instruction manual tells you how to set it to stun.

 

 

Traditional Terracotta Roof That Happens to Harness the Sun

There are plenty of technical hurdles keeping the masses from decking out their roofs withsolar panels, but their general ugliness doesn't help much either. Tegolasolare puts their photovoltaic panels second to the surrounding architecture, not the other way around.

The Italian company's red clay roof tiles look just like traditional terracotta and incorporatephotovoltaic panels, as opposed to merely accommodating them. It's a perfect example of how forward-looking, sustainable technology can exist in harmony with traditional architecture.

Of course, lose the drab solar roof look and you lose your eco-savvy neighbor visibility along with it, and really, what fun is having an Earth-saving roof if it looks just like your regular old one?

Are the Aliens Coming?

NASA and SETI and countless other groups have been searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life for as long as humanity has been looking at the stars. On Thursday, December 2, several NASA astrobiologists will announce results “that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life”.

What does that mean? Judging by the research interests of the scientists involved in the upcoming announcement, this astrobiological discovery will have something to do with water, evolutionary biology, and aquatic bacteria.

The press conference and the discovery will be announced on Thursday after 11AM PST (2PM EST), NASA will also show a video broadcast of the press conference to journalists at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View.

Until then, what do you think this discovery will be? Has extraterrestrial bacterial been discovered preserved in a meteorite? Have we seen evidence of life on a ocean-covered exoplanet?

Toshiba Libretto W100 Is a Full Windows 7 Dual-Screen Curiosity

The Libretto has the specs of a halfway decent ultraportable: a 1.2 GHz Pentium U5400 processor, 2GB DDR3 RAM, 62GB SSD, a USB port and a microSD slot. But that body isn't really like anything else, unfolding to reveal two 7-inch multitouch displays. The screens can either be used together or independently meaning one web page can span the whole device, or be sequestered on top while the bottom is filled with email, documents, or an on-screen keyboard. Pricing has been set at $1,100.

 

 

A Vinyl-CD Hybrid To Keep the Hipster-Yuppies Satisfied

Can't vinyl and CDs get along? That's the reasonable question posed by electronic/techno musician Jeff Mills, who has released his latest album on a two-for-one hybrid format. Thoughtful mediation, or sixth sign of the apocalypse? Check out the flip side:

Personally, I'm always fan of the convergence of analog and digital. The album, called The Occurrence and the latest in a series from Mills called The Sleeper Wakes, is a limited edition release from Axis Records.

Turn a KFC Double Down into Chicken Cordon Bleu

Over at food weblog Slashfood, they've made the observation that the new KFC Double Down (you know, that heavily marketed sandwich that uses fried chicken instead of bread) is actually not that original. In fact, it's barely different from Chicken Cordon Bleu, a popular French dish. In an effort to prove their point (and eat lots of KFC, no doubt), they've shared their recipe for Chicken Cordon Bleu, using only 1 KFC Double Down and some organic French tarragon.

Sure, it sounds silly, but we love KFC so much we've learned how to make it at home—so all logic has already been thrown out the window. Plus, it's a great way to make a great tasting "fancy" dish at the last second, when you've set the duck on fire and your guests are arriving in 20 minutes.