This is a very simple product which we suspect
will have people across the world saying, “I’ve been waiting for one of
those” – it’s a Lounge-Tek Lounge-Book laptop stand and it enables you
to work on your laptop without needing to hold it, while sitting in an
armchair, on the sofa, on a chaise-lounge or even in bed. Really simple,
really practical, and available in a range of colours and materials
from standard at EUR99 (US$142) through to Gold-plated at EUR240
(US$350) Read More
ABS avalanche airbags now offer wireless remote activation
By Karen Sprey
January 16, 2010
Avalanche airbags, designed to prevent burial in
an avalanche by providing extra buoyancy, aren’t new but until now
skiers have had to activate the bag themselves. If they don’t realise in
time they have set of an avalanche it may be too late for the airbag to
be of use, resulting in burial and often, death. ABS
has introduced a world-first - a remote, networked electronic system
which allows airbag inflation to be triggered by other members of a
skiing party, allowing them to help each other in an emergency. The new
wireless system can be retrofitted to old-style backpacks with double
airbags. Read More
Volkswagen’s turbo diesel technology completed a comprehensively successful title defence in the 2010 Dakar Rally,
finishing 1-2-3 with WRC legend Carlos Sainz (bottom right) finally
winning the most prestigious “raid” in the world at his fourth attempt.
In the motorcycles, Cyril Depres (top left) won his third Dakar Rally,
after 9000 km across Argentina and Chile. He rode in triumph into Buenos
Aires to complete his third Dakar victory and the tenth consecutive
victory for Austrian brand KTM.
Indeed, apart from Sainz and Quad bike winner Marcos Patronelli who
finished second last year, all the winners were old hands. Yamaha
dominated the Quads as usual with a 1-2-3, the “tsar” (Russia’s Vladimir
Chagin) won the truck category for the sixth time, driving a Kamaz
(bottom left). The rugged Russian Kamaz truck won EVERY stage in the 2010 event, finished 1-2 and picked up a ninth Dakar win. Read More
The rapid development of personal entertainment
and communication technologies is causing quite seismic changes in the
weight the average UK female carries in her handbag. Research conducted
for UK Department Store chain Debenhams each year for the last two
decades shows that the doubling of weight of the handbag between 2002
and 2006, due to the adoption of laptops, has been completely reversed
in just three years by the adoption of smartphones, replacing laptops
and filofaxes. Read More
When taking a long scenic drive or getting away
camping for the weekend, one guarantee aside from the picturesque views
and camp side tranquility is that you, or one of your fellow adventurers
are going to need to answer a call of nature at a most inappropriate
time – i.e. in the car in the middle of nowhere or halfway through a
forest hike. Well gone are the days of the “phantom squat” or ducking
behind a tree and hoping not to be stumbled on by a family of tourists.
This nifty invention known rather fittingly as the Bumper Dumper, is
literally a toilet seat attached to a steel frame that requires only a
trailer hitch receiver to turn the back of your vehicle into a veritable
port-a-potty making the whole “roughing it” experience far more
palatable. Read More
China's consumer electronics manufacturer Dexim
has announced the release of a multi-functional power case to complement
the new iPod Nano 5G. Coming with a powerful flashlight to help shoot
video in low light conditions, a built-in speaker for desktop listening
and an antenna for improved FM radio reception, the DVA004 will also
gives extended play courtesy of its lithium battery pack. Read More
The world's first motorcycle comes up for auction
By Gizmag Team
January 16, 2010
An unrestored example (top left) of the very
first vehicle to which the name ‘motorcycle’ (motorrad in German) was
ever applied is to come up for auction in April. The 1895 Hildebrand
& Wolfmüller motorcycle sounds like a modern motorcycle in its
specification – twin-cylinder, four-valve, water-cooled, 1488cc engine –
but it is indeed as unconventional as it is rare. Check out the diagram
and you’ll see the rear wheel doubled as a pseudo flywheel and indeed,
the piston connecting rods and the pushrods that actuate the valve gear
are also attached to the rear wheel, there’s no clutch, no brakes and
there’s a lot of work to be done on a machine that’ll cost you GBP40,000
to 60,000 before you start. At the end of it all though, you’ll have a
bonafide centrepeice for any transport museum. Read More
There's not a lot that's particularly remarkable
about the MD80 mini spy camera - it's pretty tiny, it records reasonable
640x480 video in AVI format at 25 frames per second, and it can be set
to standby for up to 250 hours until it's activated by a sound, making
it a good little spy cam unit. It's pretty similar to any number of
helmet cam/mini video cam units but for one fact - it costs less than
US$25 on eBay, delivered to your door. For the price it's an outstanding
product and the sort of thing you could habitually carry around in your
car, recording driving conditions for an instant evidence stockpile in
case of an accident or incident. And more broadly it's an example of how
Chinese design and manufacturing can get a competitive, quality product
to market at a price point that absolutely annihilates the competition,
to the point where if you're still concerned about quality, you might
just as well buy five of the things in case four break. Which they're
not doing nearly so much these days. Read More
Wouldn't it be great to have a digital food
machine sitting in your kitchen that could create any dish, real or
imagined, from scratch at the touch of a button? Cornucopia: Digital
Gastronomy is a concept design that uses the well-established principles
of 3D printing - plus precisely timed and temperature-controlled mixing
and cooking - to open the door to a virtually limitless realm of
replicable, creative cuisine in shapes and combinations that are simply
impossible using our current, centuries-old cooking techniques. It's a
wonderful look into the future of cooking, from the creative food
lover's perspective. Read More
The iPhone's application capabilities continue to
astound us. We've seen on-the-fly multitrack recording already in our a cappella review of Sonoma's 4Track app,
but this one takes it to a whole new level. Voice band is a multitrack
recording app that lets you build up the sound of a full band, including
guitars, bass, drums, sax, synths and vocals, using only your voice as
an input. The demo video after the jump shows just how simple this
process is, and how astoundingly good the results are. Amazing stuff.
Read More
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