Columbia's Electro Amp jacket is arguably as teched out as a jacket can get really. Designed by a former Intel engineer, the jacket warms itself through the carbon-fiber threads woven into the coat. And even it recharges via USB.
According to GearJunkie, the carbon fiber threads feel like yarn, and they can keep your warm for five hours straight on it's lowest heat setting. But slick tech such as this comes at a premium, and that premium is $1200 dollars. So, how cold are you?
Ifyour grandmother's Facebook account wasn't a tell-tale sign that the internet has come of age, here's another: after this week, the internet will run out of new IPv4 addresses. But don't fret, because we're moving on up to IPv6!
For those unfamiliar with what IP addresses do, they serve as the internet's navigation system in many ways. When you type in a URL/domain name to visit a site, it's attached to an IP address which handles all the dirty work of connecting you to the server the website is stored on. Just like the Wall Street Journal says, this is a lot like the moment when phone companies in the U.S. switched to 10-digit numbers.
The IPv4 addresses theoretically range between 4 and 12 digits, have a size of 32-bits and have 4.3 billion possible address combinations. I'm fairly certain all of you have dealt with IPv4 addresses, which look something like this:
68.127.78.247
(or http://68.127.78.247, when entering them into a browser)
With the change to IPv6, addresses will be 128-bits in size and up to 32 digits long, allowing for 340 trillion trillion trillion unique addresses. When it is finally implemented, it will look something like this:
2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334
(or http://[2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334] in a browser)
And with a whole gang of other notation rules, configuring your router is going to be a bitch in the future. Oh, ALSO, we'll all have to get new routers! (Naturally)
But IPv6 is still in its infancy and is still a few years from being put into use on any sort of widespread level. Until then, the Internet will get by on a diet of repurposed and recycled IP addresses. But for a single day in June, Google, Facebook, Yahoo and a couple of other internet giants will switch over to IPv6-compatible servers to test out the new protocol and find out if there are any major kinks in the system.
You're really into MMORPGs when you spend hours repeating the same tasks over and over again to acquire gold. You're way, way too into MMORPGs when you create a custom six-computer setup to do it that much faster.
Zhek Kromtor's "Frankenstein" setup lets him play several EVE Online accounts at the same time so he can farm for gold and minerals more efficiently. Just look at those janky six-way keyboards and mice that let him control everything at once!
You see, he was temporarily banned for running multiple accounts on one computer at the same time. It's against the rules! But doing this, apparently, is not. Probably because they never thought anyone would be crazy enough to do it. But never underestimate the desire of an addict to get that sweet, sweet gold.
Look, maybe you've had your pocket picked a few times and are really paranoid about losing your wallet. But you're not Julian Assange and I doubt anyone is coming after you, so you probably don't need this biometrically secured wallet.
The Dunhill Biometroc Wallet combines a biometric finger reader with a bluetooth alarm and carbon fiber frame to ensure noone can crack into it without destroying it. If you have the Bluetooth alarm activated, the wallet will sound an alert anytime it is more than five feet from your phone.But the damn thing costs $825 and it's not even that great looking.
How can you listen to music as loud as you want without headphones and without annoying people around you? Consider Klang's ultrasonic speakers, which use a 30,000hz frequency to beam an audible wave to a single point.
Designed as part of a project hosted by Bang & Olufsen, the Klang speakers use a satellite dish design and sound physics to focus the beam to one specific point. As Dvice points out, the soundwave is above the threshold of human hearing range, but ultrasonic waves split in three, producing an audible wave encapsulated by two inaudible ones. Sound is only noticeable when it hits an obstruction. And because of this, the left ear can only hear sound coming from the left speaker and the right ear can only hear sound from the right speaker, creating an intense stereo experience.
But what does this mean for you, the user? Well, if these speakers were more than a prototype, you could enjoy porn and/or Justin Bieber as loud as you want without your parents and/or roommates ever knowing. Obviously.
The collapsible camping chair has been a staple of camping sites and tailgating parties for as long as I can remember, but this battery-powered seat warming one from Chaheati is the first I've seen that thaws your keester.
The adjustable heater keeps your nether region toasty at approximately 100 degrees for up six hours. Crank it up to 145 degrees for about 1.8 hours of warmth for more extreme camping.
A tad pricey at $90, with extra batteries costing $35 apiece.
Those ridiculous-miraculous-awesome-awful Vibrams shoes are growing up over the bodies of their fanboys like a symbiotic organism. Their cold-weather boots—FiveFingers Cervinia—now reach half up your leg. I can't wait for them to create a full-body Dune stillsuit. The boots are $160, which is not bad for boots.
When you replaced the old iPhone 3G cover with a transparent case, it revealed a fugly side. But with the iPhone 4, the inner workings and hidden guts are surprisingly good lookin'. Here's how to turn your iPhone 4 transparent.
The mod was simply done by taking the glass panels off the phone and applying paint thinner to remove the paint. That's all. What you're left with are two clear panes that reveal the innards of the phone.
Hide your cables, hide your plugs! This elegant concept, the Plug Hub, can become real if enough people buy it. Think of the $24 you spend as an investment towards a lifetime of peace, serenity and organization.
Rapper T-Pain introduced this new tattoo he got in Hawaii with a tweet: "I think this ones pretty sweet, unless facebook shuts down soon 0_o". That's what the guy who tattooed MySpace's Tom on his back said in 2002.
It kind of makes sense, this "like" button tattoo, if you consider the phenomenon of bad-tattoo-as-meme (and meme-as-bad-tattoo): Maybe T-Pain is trying to embody the viral success of his music. But it's also sort of dumb, because of the fact that he ruined his body and will be forced to spend his 70s and 80s explaining to young people what his tattoo means, after Facebook is replaced with cranial implants.
According to a new study, overweight people have "far heightened" senses of smell for food compared with people who aren't overweight—in particular after eating a full meal. Science: Making the mean joke so you don't have to!
We were trying to determine what Lady Gaga's forthcoming fragrance should smell like, but rumor has it she's decided. It will supposedly smell like blood and semen. Nasty, but I guess that's exactly what a bad romance smells like.
This itty bitty plastic rifle was recently declared a "firearm" by airport security officials at Gatwick Airport. Which I guess makes the toy soldier it had been attached to an enemy combatant?
Ken Lloyd and his wife were transporting the figurine across country lines after having purchased it at the Royal Signals Museum at Blandford Garrison. Officials removed the rifle but let the soldier pass:
Lloyd said his wife had demanded "a reality check".
"The antenna was individually scanned as suspect and as the figurine's SA80 rifle was pulled from the box, the security search officer contacted her supervisor," he said.
The security personnel gave the three-inch bit of plastic back to Mrs. Lloyd, who promptly stuffed it in an envelope and mailed it back home—but not before the airport's customer service department X-rayed the package to make sure there were no very tiny bullets along for the ride.
This spiffy watch is called La Clé du Time—the key of time. They should have called it Le Watch Batman.
It seems that Mathias Buttet—the designer for Swiss watch manufacturer Hublot—has found a stash of kryptonite and is decided to use it all in these new watches. Nothing is known about them except that its price will be on the high six and it will be officially presented this March.
Just like you shouldn't kickflip your skateboard grip-taped iPhone case, please don't whack balls with these cases. But, in traditional red, green, blue and black color options, you can at least display your team-colors for $30 here.
Milk jugs, useless. Milk comes in containers, sillies! But this jug is different: Usingscience—a pH sensor—it detects if the milk inside is sour. Which would've saved my granola this morning, truth.
I love stupid single-purpose kitchen gadgets. Inserted into a turkey or chicken, this timer's legs pop up like a boner when the inside reaches 165 degrees—not 180, like most—for perfectly roasted bird. It's $13.
I think I'll judge a book by it's cover on this one. And right now, MeatWater—a protein-rich drink flavored like various meats—sounds like the liquid equivalent of a Dane Cook autobiography.
I mean, I guess we can congratulate Till Krautkraemer for creating liquids that taste like a poached salmon salad, thai beef salad, cheeseburger or Hungarian goulash (best seller!). But doesn't half the appeal of eating meat lie in its physical properties?
The communication components in smartphones and satellites aren't all that different, except that satellite guts are better rated for external factors like temperature and impact. But one British aerospace firm wants to see how well a smartphone fares in space.
Wired says that the University of Surrey and Surrey Satellite Technology Limited are working together to create a satellite, dubbed the STRAND-1, which uses the internals from a commercial Android smartphone to handle all the communication and control, transmitting photos of Earth while it's in orbit.
The researchers are excited by the possibility of using smartphone internals because they cost a fraction of what aerospace-grade components would cost. The satellite, which is 11.8 inches long and weighs under 10 pounds, will initially have an on-board computer that monitors the smartphone components and make sure everything is functioning as it should. If all goes to plan, the satellite will go into orbit sometime this year.
A Best in Show winner at this year's Outdoor Retailer show, the MAKO is a multitool designed specifically for bikes. Which is good! Because I've never been able to figure out what I'm supposed to fix with my regular multitool.
Made of aerospace titanium, the MAKO comes with four 1/4" driver bits, 5 metric box wrench sizes, 2 spoke wrench sizes, and a bottle opener. Because it's not a mulittool if it doesn't have a bottle opener.
