Gadgets
About Time Clock Rolls Around Your Desk and Tells You the Hour
Posted by Addy Dugdale at 11:18 PM on January 18, 2008
For those of you who can't get their secretary to roll around their desk while telling you what time it is, SanderMulder's About Time clock might fit the bill. Despite the fact that it doesn't do other things that your PA might be able to do, such as make the tea, filter unwelcome calls, and %4*& your #@*/ and type up your letters, the anodised aluminum unit has got a fabulously quirky way of revealing the time of day.
Written around the edge of the face are vague approximations of the time: So, if it's four-ish, you might want to put the kettle on; and if it's around nine then it's definitely time you went home. Dutch designers SanderMulder haven't put a price on the About Time, but it's available now. [SanderMuldervia 7Gadgets

The Asus Eee PC will get
I don't know if it is the shape, the black and silver steel contrast or the total retro feeling, but this point-and-shoot handgun and camera is just absolutely amazing. Sure, it's not digital. And maybe not
Walter Mossberg has tested the
Those Koreans sure do get spoiled on the technology front; check out Ripple's Ripple-Mini PC, for example. The device, which will retail for a shockingly low €90 ($150), will pack in an Intel Celeron M215 (1.33GHz), 1GB RAM, SiS 662 North Bridge and SiS 964L South Bridge, all in a dinky 20x300x220mm, Mac mini-esque case. Hit the gallery for some more shots.


It's one thing to promise
The fat, fun-loving iPod nano just got music streaming capabilities, all thanks to the Greenhouse FM transmitter. The streaming device looks rather swank, and is available in five complementing colors, including metallic black, silver, red, green and blue. It will allow you to chuck out your tunes to any free radio station, by tuning the transmitter into the free station using the plus and minus buttons either side of the display.
The folks at CNET were surprised to discover that using some Dell laptops can result in electric shocks that "vary in strength from a gentle tingle to a sudden jolt." They also noticed that the shocks occur when connecting peripherals to the laptops. It appears that the offending devices have been isolated to versions that feature a brushed-aluminium finish —namely the XPS M1330 and
Japanese footwear company Onitsuka Tiger is getting a major promotional boost thanks to this 1 metre long illuminated shoe developed by the folks at Freedom of Creation. The work is intended to "communicate Onitsuka Tiger's Japanese roots" in the form of a highly detailed city-shoe. It has everything from billboards to buildings —and if you will notice, the Onitsuka Tiger stripes represent streets and highways and a Godzilla-like monster looms over the city.






Unlike many of the flash drive designs these days, the Domino concept by Marcos Breder adds adds a little extra fun and functionality into the mix. Each domino can be split into two separate drives, with the white dots indicating the remaining storage capacity. The problem is that playing an actual game of dominoes with these drives would be damn near impossible (so gambling is out) —and putting enough of them together to form a proper toppling pattern would require countless drives. Not that it matters all that much given the fact that this product doesn't actually exist. [
Sound & Vision has word that Pioneer is going to stop making plasma sets that only size up to the lowly 42-inch mark. Specifically, the intel comes from one of Pioneer's dealer district sales managers, but Pioneer's total non-denial—that everything is still being considered—indicates there might be a bite of truth to this. Speculation is the 42-incher space will be filled by LCD, 'specially since Sharp now owns a decent-sized chunk of Pioneer. Besides, it makes good business sense: If you got the coin to toss at one of their
CNBC's Jim Goldman thought he was engaging in a little harmless name-dropping to Steve Jobs when he mentioned that he and Microsoft's Robbie Bach spoke last week at CES, but Steve Jobs took it another way. When Goldman repeated Bach's statement about how the version 2 Zune was now a worthy alternative to the iPod, Jobs replied, "Was he inebriated? Do you even know anyone who owns a Zune?" Ouch. People excuse Apple's jabs toward Microsoft because they're underdogs in the OS market, but it just seems mean when they do the same in the iPod-dominated portable media player market. [
The latest in relaxation technology comes to us from British company Hoverit in the form of a handmade acrylic lounger that can hover in mid air. As you might have guessed, the gravity defying aspects of the chair derive from repelling magnetic forces in both the bed and base. Hoverit also suggests that the magnetic forces can "help back, muscular problems and headaches" in addition to delivering a relaxing sensation akin to floating on air. More after the break.
Looking to add a unique personal touch to your living space? I see plenty of sports fans decking out a room with team colours and accessories —so why can't Apple fanboys do the same? First off you need to add a little flair to that boring old couch with the OSX dock pillow set pictured above. Unfortunately, the design is one-of-a-kind, so you had better find someone who is handy with sewing machine. No problem right? Now all you need is some storage. Fortunately, the perfect solution is available after the break.

You already know the
Having the internet be constantly displayed no matter where we look is a dream we've had for years, but having to shove an electronic contact into our eyes makes us think twice. This prototype device, which has red LEDs and can be worn for up to 20 minutes (tested on rabbits) with no adverse effects. The contacts beam images directly into the eyes, which means you can have either superhuman vision by feeding a zoomed in image to the device, or even heads-up displays like Arnold had in T2 or RoboCop had in RoboCops 1, 2 and 3. [
We've noticed this a bit ourselves, but reader ggperez points out that there's been some reports of Airport Wi-Fi dropouts on Mac laptops running Leopard. He describes the situation:
We're not sure if this HTC Pharos 3470 Windows Mobile Smartphone will actually be called the Pharos when it launches—especially since it gets people confused with
The Modem is a new art and music venue opening in Berlin that's being built in an abandoned power plant that used to supply juice and heat to East Berlin. It's a gigantic space, nearly 250,000 square feet in size, and it's full of cold-war-era contraptions, knobs, levers and other fun doodads that are sure to give it a completely unique atmosphere. If the art and music are any good I would say this will be come a must-visit spot for anybody visiting Berlin. Hey Blam, please send me to Berlin to cover the opening, OK? Thanks.
According to the experiments by the Banner Good Samaritan Medical Centre team, playing some Wii games improve surgeons' performance. The study pitted a group of eight trainee surgeons, who spent one hour on the Wii, against normal trainees in a surgery virtual reality simulator. However, only a few games help this:
Reason number 149 I won't move to Texas: Time Warner confirmed it'll be testing a new pricing plan in Beaumont that's based on how much bandwidth you eat up. That's right, hard caps. Totally made-up example, since they haven't released details on the package tiers: Pay $US50 a month for 500 gigs, and if you consume more, get slapped with probably obscene overage fees.
Holy crap! The Age of The Machines is nigh: a bunch of scientists in Switzerland have created learning robots that can lie to each other. Okay, so they don't swill beer or put bends in girders—they just communicate to each other with benign flashing lights, thank goodness, instead of using lasers to destroy humans:
Pizza Hut, ever expanding both waistlines and accessibility to their greasy goodness, has launched a new mobile ordering service allowing users to text message 4 pizza. Apparently online pizza orders have really taken off, accounting for 20 percent of total sales (that stat is either from Pizza Hut or Papa John's, we couldn't discern from the copy) and texting could account for another huge percentage as well.
Update: That was fast. It's busted—or fixed, depending on your POV. See the jump.
You don't have the ultimate bachelor pad unless you own a urinal. And as long as you're going all out with the theme, the urinal might as well glow like the slutty fluorescents of a cheap motel sign. The Gloo urinal is built from plastic and filled with LEDs, at last bringing the same style we see in the
Stressed-out scientists can now relax with the Sandpendel, a mashup Zen sand-garden/physics-experiment desktop toy. Designed by Jürg Näf, the Sandpendel is based on Léon Foucault's famous 19th-century experiment that demonstrated the Earth's rotation. Details, plus another pic, are below.