If you have a pair of hard-soled shoes, two pressure-sensitive LED tiles, and some baby mama drama from which you need to extricate yourself, let this Instructable be your guide and recreate the special-FX steps from Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”. More »
Did you know that Alzheimer’s patients frequently suffer what are officially called “critical wandering incidents”? These shoes have an embedded GPS chip that sends an alert via Google Maps so the lost senior can be located. More »
The adapting Verb shoes from VectraSense Technologies, an MIT spin-off company, have been in development for a while, but now they’re finally ready to buy. They’re not quite Marty’s amazing Nike’s from Back to the Future 2 but they are clever: the built-in twin air bladders are controlled by an on-board computer that detects what activities you’re up to and adjusts the air pressure accordingly.
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.
Holy crap! We’ve just solved one of life’s great mysteries, and wanted to let you in on it. Keeping your feet warm when you cannot be bothered/are too much of a cheapskate to invest in a gadget based solution has always been a problem, but we’ve sussed it. Here’s how: get your feet up close and personal to your PSUs. That’s all there is to it. Nothing more, we promise you.
My feet feel so good But damn, these ugly sandals Hurt my dignity. [Product Page via Nerd Approved] More »
You know those annoying Heely shoes, the ones that kids zoom around on in the mall, leading to chipped teeth and broken wrists? Well, someone actually did something somewhat useful with them. Sort of. Artists Christian Croft and Kate Hartman hacked a pair of Heelys, using the wheels to generate electricity. The electricity generated is then used to power a LED panel on the front of the shoe that gives the wearer directions… to nowhere.
Confused? Yeah, I know. We’ll let them explain. This work applies its energy toward a more playful application in hopes to promote discussion in the realm of sustainable energy development and alternative transportation design. Electricity harvested from rolling powers a microcomputer and lcd display embedded on the shoe to deliver random directions for a pedestrian to follow. Arrows and text show up on the screen display telling the wearer which direction she should travel next—north, northeast, southwest, etc. Depending on the speed of rolling, a directive appears on the screen every 15 to 20 feet. These directions drive the wearer to follow a random zig-zaggy path that mimics in physical space the mathematical simulation of the random or drunkard’s walk.
Oh, art! Why make something useful when you can justify something useless and feel like an artist? But hey, kudos for making a pair of shoes that can generate electricity, even if it doesn’t go to powering anything worthwhile. [Product Page via Treehugger] More »
Everything USB got their feet into the USB heating slippers and found that it’s actually quite toasty. After inserting their feet and hooking up the 4-foot USB cable to a USB port, they found that the heating elements got up to 101 degrees F. Yea, that’s only slightly warmer than your body, but it should be toasty enough to keep your feet warm in chilly winters. [EverythingUSB] More »
An anonymous guy exchanged a 4-foot-long surface-to-air missile launcher for size-3 Reebok sneakers. It happened at the Kicks for Guns 2007 program, in which Orlando citizens can turn in any weapon in exchange for sneakers or $50 in cash, no questions asked. Check Orlando Police Sgt. Barbara Jones holding the actual piece of equipment after the jump. More »
