There is never a shortage of portable speakers and they come in just about every shape and size you could possibly imagine. A lot of them aren’t exactly designed to be stashed in your pocket though. They’re more worried about having some cute shape or creating a speaker that can dangle from a keychain. Which is perfectly fine, unless you really do want something to just carry in your pocket. If that’s the case, then you’ll probably like these new speakers from ABC Corp Japan.
Since they’re called Pocket Speakers, you can guess where they were designed to be carried. The company has taken an eco-friendly stance and are recommending the use of Sanyo’s eco-friendly Enelopp batteries. Specifically, you’ll need one AA battery to keep it charged. It comes in a variety of colors and has an amplifier that delivers an output of 0.5W x 2ch. You can purchase it for 1980 Yen, which translates into about $22.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Pocket Speakers make music on the go simple
Aion Supplies Clean Water
Labels: Aion, natural cleaning, vegetables soap
Designed by Antoin Lebrun, the Aion is a multi-functional appliance which utilizes plants for their filtering and cleaning properties to provide a renewable supply of clean water and vegetable soap. When cooking, the plants act as a filtering hood. When it’s time to clean up, place the dirty dishes into the sink, shut the hood and the natural cleaning cycle will begin.
Presenting the Polite Umbrella
Labels: Polite Umbrella, rain, weatherAnyone who has been out carrying an umbrella on a rainy day will know how difficult it is to maneuver their way through a crowded sidewalk. If you have ever tried it, you will find yourself constantly paranoid about poking someone in the eye (or ear or nose), or constantly faced with the problem of having to perform some complicated calisthenics to try and avoid the inevitable umbrella related accident. This cool gadget by Joo Youn Paek called the ‘Polite Umbrella’ is especially designed so that you don’t have to worry about any inadvertent umbrella-related accidents in the future.
This is how it looks normally
With one simple tug on the handle, this is what happens
As you can see, before the guy tugs on the handle, it looks like any other cool umbrella, but as soon as the guy pulls on the special handle, voila! The umbrella shrinks to half its original size.
Here is a sketch of the design with arrows indicating how it works
Due to its design, the Polite Umbrella is even useful when the weather is both windy and rainy. If you have had the experience of taking an umbrella out in that weather, you will know how difficult it is to make sure your umbrella doesn’t invert itself or, even worse, gets caught in an updraft and goes flying away.
Here’s the best part though… In spite of everything, if you still want to poke someone with an umbrella, then you still can
Transparent Toaster
Labels: Bread, Toaster
This transparent toaster allows you to see the bread while it is toasting so you're never surprised by toast that comes out too dark. This idea is based on a transparent heating glass technology. Although the glass does not currently get hot enough to toast bread, the vendor explained with some R&D this application may be possible. The concept was developed by the Inventables Concept Studio
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Pill Microphone for the iPod
Pill popping has become an undesirable habit among many people these days (look what it did to the late MJ), making us question the wisdom of making a microphone for the iPod that comes in the form of a pill. Well, guess as long as you do not mistake it for your regular intake of multi-vitamins instead, all should be well and fine. The jury is still out there on whether the audio quality picked up by this is good enough, but we’re guessing the answer is not too positive
The French Fry Phone
Labels: french fries, phones, store
If you have a serious thing for french fries, then you’ll love this phone. It flips open to reveal a hidden key pad that allows you to dial and talk into the french fries. The red plastic phone comes at an extremely affordable price too. You can pick it up for all of $20 from Urban Outfitters. Honestly, Urban Outfitters has got to be my new favorite store, purely due to having anything from french fry phones on up to extremely well made retro radios
Saturday, July 18, 2009
The SmartShopper
No list would be complete without a gadget to make Mom’s life a little easier. Press record and speak into the device to add grocerys or tasks to your list. When you’re ready to go out for the day, it conveniently prints out an categorized list for everything that you have stored previously. Instead of sitting down to write down a massive list to take to the grocery store, family members can add things to the list during the week. It saves money and time by helping to prevent return trips to the store. Now if only you could take it with you and have it speak to you as you’re shopping…you’d never forget anything again.
