Archive for September, 2008
Thursday, September 25th, 2008
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No more than a couple of months elapsed from the day I received my MP3 player and ever since that day it became my best friend. I’m being laughed at in almost any circumstances because I just can’t let it go. It’s not something I’ve wanted to happen, but it did and I couldn’t be happier that I’m in the possession of a great distraction from the noisy environment.
I’ve always enjoyed the sound of music, but now I’m totally addicted. The only problem is with my mother who doesn’t waste any opportunity to tell me that those headsets do nothing else but helping me lose all contacts with reality. Moreover, she’s afraid that someday an accident will happen to me and it will be all my fault.
Although I don’t really like to admit she is right, I can’t disagree. Wearing headphones can block out too much of the world sometimes and might lead to undesirable accidents. Most of these devices are designed to filter the noise from the surrounding area, featuring the noise-cancellation function, meant to reduce unwanted ambient sounds. This isn’t very safe, as far as bicyclists wearing these headphones are concerned, because they need to hear what’s going on around them. There’s nothing more frustrating than to quietly cycle or jog outdoors and to be furiously honked, not giving you enough time to get out of harm’s way.
The main issue is that people wear these in-ear headphones or even common ones in order to entertain themselves with their favorite songs, but they tend to neglect facts and people surrounding them.
Therefore, the Semicircle Headphones, a piece of special design head gear, were created by Seohyun Baek and are thought to be a necessity. The semicircle shape is meant to fit in your ear without blocking out background noise and produces less fatigue during long stretches of music-listening. You can enjoy your music, but in the meantime you are acoustically connected to the environment. All you have to do is plug in a transmitter into your PMP’s headphone jack and the Bluetooth receiver in the earbuds will pick up the signal. In addition, the wireless connection ensures a wire-free experience.
There is no information about price and availability, since the concept hasn’t seen the mass production yet.
(Source Yanko)
Posted in Sound Gadgets | 14 Comments »
Thursday, September 25th, 2008
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Great inventions such as telephone, radio, television and computer have always been a subject of controversy, as many inventors who did pioneer experimental work on voice transmission over a wire credited themselves with the paternity of those devices. Their contribution could never be questioned, there’s no doubt about it, and every discovery they’ve made was one step forward, an improvement on each other’s ideas.
When it comes to the history of telephone, the scenario looks exactly the same and it’s a confusing morass of claim and counterclaim. From Innocenzo Manzetti who first mooted the idea of a “speaking telegraph†(id est the telephone) to the first successful telephone transmission of clear speech, when Alexander Graham Bell said “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you†and Watson heard each and every word, the telephone has gone through some important changes, evolving to digital telephony and IP telephony.
We witness today more and more innovations concerning not only the technology and the network behind the telephone, but also the instrument itself which changed a lot after the touch tone replaced the dial in the 1960s.
We see ingenious devices which seem to have landed from future outer universes, being pink-high-heel shaped or featuring bright and shiny colored quartz crystals instead of the traditional button pad.
In a world of outstanding wacky devices, the Pappa Phone, Hulger’s first new phone design for almost three years, it’s also the world’s first wooden VoIP phone. You might raise your eyebrow, sign of the difficulty you come up against in understanding how a piece of wood could ever help you hear your mother’s voice. It spreads simplicity all over the place, as there are no buttons, no dials, not even a display. The Hulger phone is as sleek as it gets and the functions of the computer interface can replace the buttons and the phone-screen menu.
These luxury phones are handcrafted by Furni, in Montreal, Canada, from a single piece of sustainable American walnut, so that the grain of the wood flows from the handset to the base. In addition, the Pappa Phone features a piece of solid hand-polished bras. On Hulger’s official website, they give you information on how the brass should be taken care of. If you want to restore the phone’s lustre, you can use high quality furniture polish or Danish oil to the wooden parts. As a matter of fact, when it was manufactured, the same Danish oil finished the execution of the phone, which was designed to naturally “wear in†with age.
The Pappa Phone works with any VoIP service on both Macs and PCs (therefore, works on Windows and OS X platforms) such as iChat, GoogleTalk, Vonage, Yahoo and Skype and there is no software installation required. The device isn’t wireless and features a handset cord which is 1,5 meters long.
A disadvantage consists of the fact that, being handmade, it takes from 6 to 8 weeks for the phone to be built and delivered. Anyways, the Pappa Phone is available to order at Fulger’s online shop and it’s priced at $300.
(Source gizmodo.com)
Posted in Phone Gadgets | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
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Imagination has no boundaries, I’ve said it before, and I could say it over and over again. Whether we’re fully aware of the development of mankind or not, we witness the immeasurable creativity of the human mind on a regular basis. It’s like an explosion that can’t be stopped, whatsoever, the primordial Big Bang that created the universe and reinvents it day by day.
Maybe I wasn’t born to be an inventor, I’m pretty sure about that, but I can’t explain myself how people come up with all sorts of unbelievable concepts. I, for example, have always thought that food has one purpose and one purpose only: to be eaten. It’s the tragic destiny of fruits and vegetables and I’m mildly sympathetic. It’s hard to be one, when you are not left alone and your life comes to an end earlier than expected. But what’s better: a sudden end or a bunch of ingenious people having you sculptured according to their imagination?
In this context, toast printers shouldn’t take us by surprise. They are not something new, but one of the finalists in the design competition run by the appliance manufacturer Electrolux brought a novelty which made everyone talk about it. It’s a scanner designed to print out any graphic or text onto a slice of bread and it’s said to be the first internet-enabled toasting printing appliance. I don’t know where this fascination with burning images into toast comes from, but one thing is for sure: you can read your RSS feeds or the latest headlines at breakfast, from your slices of bread and then eat them.
The Scan Toaster was created by industrial designer Sung Bae Chang, student of Sejong University in South Korea, and submitted it in the 2008 Electrolux Design Lab contest which ends October 9 in Zurich, Switzerland.
The small printer is about the size of a CD case and connects to a computer via USB cable. Once you’ve plugged in the toaster to a free USB port and the slice of bread is in its place, pictures, logos, news and weather are downloaded and the software will start burning what you want.
The toaster features a network of toasting “modulesâ€, meaning hot wires that rotate within a 30 degree radius and help burn the image or text onto the slice of bread. As far as printing elements are concerned, they are small enough to toast pixels at a fairly high resolution and with varying brightness (burnt-ness, in this case) and allow recognizable brownscale images.
The Scan Toaster is undoubtedly a very interesting concept, but it’s still in its design stage, so there are no plans to manufacture it on a mass scale. Although it’s fun to see what level technology can attain, I’m not sure I’d like my boyfriend to eat at breakfast a slice of bread with my face on it. For the only reason that having such a piece of art destroyed would be the greatest sin of them all.
(Source engadget.com)
Posted in Funny Gadgets, USB Gadgets | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
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You just got out of one of the most annoying days of your entire life and you yearn for a quiet evening. Your boss reminded you of how much he loved making your life a living nightmare and of how much you used to hate him. But those were your good days, when you still had the energy to express your anger. You’ve become such a blasé human being that you lack any trace of attitude whatsoever.
It’s a one-way situation: you’re not in the position to take your stand and tell him what you think, so you’ll have to abide him. In other words, you should relax, take it easy.
But when you come home, even the most ordinary bath before going to bed continues your daily nightmare. Getting the right temperature might turn into a scalding experience, as you have to dip a toe in the water in order to approximate the moment when you can duck your exhausted body.
Taiwan based designer Kai Yi Chen has devised an interesting concept, the Bath Safeguard which helps you avoid sticking your palm or foot into the water. This is a neat electronic bath plug that not only keeps the water in your tub, but it also measures the bath water temperature through smart color coding and glows according to it. When the plug isn’t in use, it must be placed on the magnetic induction recharger base.
Made of waterproof and heatproof silicon, the plug has some built-in thermal sensors, LED lights and a color reference chart which provides the information concerning the temperature every color signifies. The blue color means you should stay away from the water because it will freeze you on the spot. The green one is your invitation to paradise, while red indicates a hot water.
The product recognizes a temperature range of 81 to 113 degree Fahrenheit and features the option of switching from Fahrenheit to Celsius scale. And if this isn’t smart enough for you, you should stick with the “traditional†way of testing the water and you might try to enjoy it!
This is an interesting device, if you ask me, but I wonder who is going to be the daring manufacturer who’ll be willing to “borrow†the concept and make it real.
(Source Yanko)
Posted in News | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
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Never get used to anything so much that you won’t be able to give it up one day, if you need to. It’s just not worth it, because one way or the other everything comes to an unexpected reinventing which overthrows the world’s general picture of the respective object.
The conventional shape of luggage is worldwide recognizable, but has its disadvantages. It’s not easy for travelers to lug around square and rectangular bags filled to bursting, even if they’re on wheels. Imagine you have to rush down the stairs with an enormous luggage that seems to comprise your whole wardrobe. It isn’t a very nice picture, so that you know!
Rooz Mousavi had the idea of rethinking the traditional luggage design and came up with an innovative concept, the Samsonite OBAG, a clever piece which is not on wheels – but it’s a wheel itself.
The travel bag has a rugged exterior made of a hard waterproof material meant to get it through harsh treatment, from snow, mud to cobblestones or even flights of stairs. You can now say goodbye to those nasty weather conditions which made it difficult for you to wander around with your heavy luggage.
In addition, the large wheel requires less energy on your part in order to move it around, even on the stairways. There are two storage compartments on the sides of the suitcase which allow you to carry more stuff. As far as the telescopic handle is concerned, it collapses into the bag and leaves a tablet shaped storage pod which can easily be placed wherever you want to.
There are so many out of the common baggage concepts, there is no doubt about it, but it would be a pity for Samsonite OBAG not to see full production soon.
(Source Yanko)
Posted in Funny Gadgets | No Comments »
