Speck's See Thru Hard Shell case for the iPhone 3G is one of the few cases I've seen that makes me go "Oh, interesting" instead of "bah, nonsense." Firstly because it's simple, just snapping in two polycarbonate parts around the sides and rear of the phone, with rubberised grips so it doesn't slip out of your mitts. Secondly, when you've snapped it in two, one half remains snugly on the phone while the other half acts as a stand, perfect for impromptu movie viewing. And that's just neat. It's in a variety of colours for US$30. [Product page via Slipperybrick]

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Ah nanotubes. Is there anything you can't almost possibly do? Well, now you can add bouncy mobile phones to the list because a team of Clemson University researchers have developed a way to make beds of tiny, shock-absorbing coiled carbon nanotubes which could be used to cushion objects from damaging impacts. They hope that these coiled nanotubes could be used in everything from body armour to mobile phones in the near future.

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Golden Shellback is a coating that lets you spill, pour, or submerge your gadget in a liquid and have it survive. Golden Shellback says it will protect against oils, water-based liquids, synthetic fluids, dust and dirt. Tekzilla's Patrick Norton shot a segment on Golden Shellback and has footage of mobile phones and CB radios functioning normally under a foot of water (Golden Shellback claimed the CB sat underwater for 455 consecutive hours).

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IEDs, or Improvised Explosive Devices, are a sad fact of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, so you'll see the influence of these deadly weapons in this list of the US Army's top inventions for 2007. Every year the Army selects the top refinements, outright new inventions, or streamlined weaponry, and pumps out a list. This year's list features several new types of Humvee armour, GPS-guided artillery rounds, and a wheeled contraption for vehicles called SPARK (above), which sniffs out IEDs before they have a chance to do any damage.

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We've already seen a version of this: Autoliv's hood airbag system, but Toyota Gosei (an offshoot of, no prizes for etc etc, Toyota) has gone one better. As well as protecting the pedestrian from being squished like a bug on a windscreen, it has airbags down the side of the car, both front and back, protecting passengers from injury in the event of a nasty shunt from every which way in the car.

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Case-mate has announced the release of a "groundbreaking" new product designed to protect your iPhone, iPod touch, iPod classic (80GB and 160GB) or BlackBerry Curve from scratches using a military-grade Scotchgard film from 3M that was originally designed to protect Apache helicopter blades during Desert Storm. The film is also completely clear, so there are no bulky, ugly cases to contend with. But the real question here is: does it blend? Well, let's find out:

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Look, I know that you're all about protecting your most sensitive of data, but a program that will destroy it if your computer is moved seems more likely to result in accidental deletion than actual protection. Sure, if you install it on a tower you'll probably be OK unless someone moves it to clean or plug something in, but the first time your kid moves your laptop into the living room and erases all of your banking info from the last decade you'll probably wish you had just chosen a really good password. [Pocket-Lint via New Launches]

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SentrySafe has made safes for 70 years, but now they've teamed with Seagate/Maxtor to make hard-drive housings that withstand up to 1550degrees Fahrenheit for a half hour, and "full" 24-hour water submersion. Some like the Fire-Safe/Waterproof 80GB and 160GB ($320) drives are freestanding units that house 2.5" bus-powered drives in impervious containers. The other alternative is a full-blown $520 safe that has a USB pass-through for your bus-powered drive. A third option is a smaller filing box, the Data Storage Safe, which lets you keep DVDs and other small documents along with a small USB drive. [SentrySafe]

We don't know whether these phone fingers are real or not, but until the USB trouser press goes into production, these miniature, teatless, not-for-procreating-unless-you-lost-your-willy-in-a-freak-accident
-and-had-a-rodent-penis-transplant condoms are my favourite useless thing evah. What else do you think they should be used for, though?

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If you are anything like me, your cell phone takes a beating. If you're not sitting on it, it's getting scratched in your pocket, and if it's not getting scratched you're dropping it in the toilet. The SaY concept phone may not be able to withstand a good toilet dunking, but it's rubberized exterior should be able to handle just about anything else you can throw at it. If the SaY was an actual product, it would also feature an angled keypad for better ergonomics, a 4-megapixel camera, and a pair of stereo speakers that are intentionally designed to resemble a dead cartoon character. A nice touch...I think.[Blue Map Design via Yanko]