Sony has announced their firmware 3.95 update should be coming soon. It’s a minor upgrade, only adding two small features to the platform…but one that I find completely necessary and long overdue. First, shutting off Remote Play will now no longer necessarily shut down your PS3. Second, and more importantly, PSOne classics can now be played with customisable button layouts. Retro ports on all platforms are notorious for wonky button mapping with little or no way to tweak. Good call, Sony. [kotaku]
Forget DIY camera stun guns: they’re just a stunt. If you want real pocket protection, these charmingly disguised stun guns can deliver 350,000 volts of agony to an assailant. Will they think it looks like you’re just brandishing a tube of lippy at them? Probably not an experiment to try. They have an LED flashlight built-in, and come with a charger. If carrying this around in your purse makes you feel safer, they’re available for a paltry US$49.95 in a variety of shades and shapes. So you can, you know, coordinate your electro-shock defence with your outfit. Weird. [Red Ferret via Gizmodo UK]
We are fans of huge LEGO things, from airplanes to ships to spacecrafts, but this colossal version of the legendary Legoland Yellow Castle—for some one of the best LEGO sets in history, including Joel—has to be the most amazing giant concepts we have seen so far. It may look small, but hit the jump to grasp the gargantuan dimensions of this 6:1-scale model, with each original scaled piece made of dozens of regular bricks.
Hello, I’m a sexy lady who has been Swarovski-encrusted by my PR people in order to publicise something called the Urban Performer Unit. It’s basically a handbag with a little pocket for your iPod which enables you to control your music from the outside of your bag. Nice idea, don’t you think? There is, however, one slightly disturbing thing about this Austrian-designed purse:
Does this make up for the “no PS3 Blu-ray to PSP” transfer story? Kind of. Sony’s new BDZ-A70 Blu-ray recorder system won’t do that either, but will record your TV shows, and can transfer that video content to your PSP or Sony Walkman. That’s kind of a consolation, and there’s even a “one touch” button on the front to make it easy— it apparently can transfer about 60 minutes of QVGA video in around 3 minutes.
Designed by Esti Barnes, El Luminoso is a made-to-measure carpet that mixes LEDs into the pile. Given that the last rugs I writhed upon with gay abandon wrote about were the Wurst rugs, a selection of sausage-inspired floor coverings that looked like a pool of puke, Esti’s design is bleedin’ gawjus. No idea of the price, but expect it to be hefty, given that it’s a commission-only piece. [Top Floor via MoCo Loco]
The iBig Box is… THE BIGGEST IPOD DOCK IN THE ENTIRE KNOWN UNIVERSE! It’s red, it’s gigantastic, it goes to eleven, it makes soccermums laugh and kids dance like the Bangles, and because its inflatable, it can be filled with hydrogen and take you floating around the world or burn down like the Hindenburg. Either way, it will give you endless fun for US$59.99 and third-degree burns. [Liquidation Connect via New Launches]
Nokia said they didn’t care about the iPhone back when it was introduced, not even commented on it beyond a brief “smeh.” Then, they presented their iPhone killer concept, a demo that looked and acted exactly like Apple’s handset, even while it was “no competition for Nokia.” Now they have announced they are “readying” the final product, code-named Tube. They showed it yesterday, while pooh-poohing on His Steveness’ toy:
The Local River is an aquarium-vegetarium (hang on a minute) by Mathieu Lehanneur, the same guy who thought up last year’s Bel Air plant filtration system. Using the same curved white design that tickled our fancy with the Bel Air last year, the Local River is a home storage system for fish and greens that is inspired by the Locavores movement of San Francisco, people who only eat food grown within a 100-mile radius. More info below the gallery.
The chaps at Super Talent are not only incredibly modest, talented and super, but they must also be fantastically tiny to have put together the world’s smallest 8GB flash drive. (Flawless logic, I’m sure you’ll agree.) Retailing at US$35, the price is pretty reasonable, at least until you drop it into your chest hair and lose it forever.
