Hasta La Gadget!

Oprah? Total tech junkie. There are a number of gadgets dotting the queen of daytime’s lift of “favorite things.” At the top of the list is Apple’s iPad, which Winfrey told her audience is “the best invention of the century so far.”

As is her custom, Oprah gave the tablet away to customarily overzealous audience members. The free iPads were also stocked with a Scrabble app and a digital copy of O Magazine.

“Words cannot describe what I feel for this magnificent device,” she told the audience “Thanks to my iPad, I now read about four newspapers a day. I write my column for O magazine on the iPad way before the deadline because I love writing on it so much.”

Also on her list this year was a Sony BRAVIA LX900 3D HDTV ($3,600), a Nikon D3100 Digital SLR Camera ($700), and a five-year subscription to Netflix, which, as we all know, is worth more now than it was a few weeks ago.

The biggest prize prize? That fleet of 2012 VW Beetles.

Check out this amazing kitchen appliance from Berlin-based designer Christoph Therard, a human-powered cabinet of mechanical wizardry which lats you crank normally electric-powered gadgets with nothing but your leg.

A machine like this needs a suitably cool name, and the R2B2 has one. The R2B2 works thusly: You hit pump the pedal and a big, heavy flywheel starts to spin up to 400rpm. Once moving, it can provide 350-watts of power for up to a minute. Gearing, switched with a big knob on the front, spins one of two shafts on the surface, one fast and one slow.

Therard’s research showed that the food-processor, coffee grinder and hand-blender are the most used gadgets, so he made them. The processor and grinder dock with the shafts, while the hand-blender gets its power from a flexible, twisting cable. A transmission lets it spin at up to 10.000 rpm. When not in use, everything can be stowed inside the main body.

It’s wonderful, and also almost silent in use, compared to the screaming blender-motors we usually tolerate, at least. I also like the idea of burning off some extra calories as I prepare my dinner. If Christoph ever puts this into production at the same time as I move into an apartment with a big enough kitchen, I’m buying one.

R2B2 project page [Christoph Therard via Core77]

See Also:

• Human-Powered Helicopters Get a Bigger Carrot
• Bike-Powered Christmas Tree In Barcelona
• The Trail Cart: A Human Powered Off-Road 4X4
• Gravity-Powered Lamp Wins Green Props
• Video: Pedal Powered Car Busted by Toronto Cops

Mr. Evolta makes it to Kyoto. But Matt Hickey wants to know when he’ll go head to head with the Energizer Bunny?

Man, computers become obsolete so quickly these days. You buy a computer and then, a month later, there’s something better on the market. So, why the heck would anyone shell out for a 30-year-old system? Why because it’s a collectors item, of course.

An anonymous buyer picked up an Apple-1 for $213,600. The exceedingly rare system from 1976 includes a 6502 microprocessor, an Apple-1 motherboard, a printed circuit board, three capacitors, a keyboard interface, 8kbs of RAM, and a letter signed by “Steven Jobs,” amongst other then start of the art features.

The Christie’s listing describes the product thusly,

Introduced in July 1976, the Apple-1 was sold without a casing,power supply, keyboard or monitor. However, because the motherboard was completely pre-assembled, it represented a major step forward in comparison with the competing self-assembly kits of the day.

The auction also includes papers from computer scientist Alan Turing.

Looking for an alternative to that extra large cup of coffee or energy drink to keep you awake on long haul drives? Then you’ll soon have another option in the form of the Anti Sleep Pilot, which promises to keep you from nodding off through the magic of technology. Already on sale in Denmark, the device is able to automatically turn itself on and off by monitoring the movement of your vehicle, and it attempts to keep you alert by regularly performing various tests that you can respond to just by tapping the device. That promises to not only prevent fatigue in the first place by keeping your mind active, but also warn you when it’s really time to take a break by monitoring your reaction times to each test. Still no word on an official price over here just yet, but we assume it’ll cost somewhere in the neighborhood of the 1,499 kr (or $270) the device currently runs in Denmark.

Anti Sleep Pilot promises to keep drivers alert, warn them when to pull over originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Nov 2010 09:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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