Hasta La Gadget!

D-Box movie-theater chairs will shake you in time to the on-screen action

Imagine if, every time there was an explosion up on the cinema screen and a crashing thunder of sound from the theater’s THX speakers, your seat shook, spilling your beer/coke/popcorn into your lap. Well, imagine no more. The Kinetic Movie Theater chair could make this messy, pants-wetting fantasy into a moist reality.

The D-Box, already in several theaters across the U.S and also available for home use, takes “motion-codes” embedded in the movies (DVD and BD for home use) and uses them to control motors in the seats that rock, roll, shake and rattle you in time with the on-screen action.

I can see this being great for games, but who really wants to watch a movie and be jerked around while doing it? Does being shaken in time to Jake LaMotta’s punches in Raging Bull, or bobbing up and down as you descend the rapids in Deliverance really add to the movie? My guess is that this will work best in crappy action movies, which are pretty low on content as it is.

Still, if there’s one thing that can tempt me to part with my money, it’s a scary-sounding health warning, and the D-Box has a great one:

The D-BOX motion system and motion enabled seats may be harmful to women who are pregnant, persons with heart conditions, the elderly, persons with back, head or neck conditions or injuries or those with other pre-existing medical conditions.

Available now, in various first and third-party forms.

D-Box Movie Theater Seats [D-Box via Core77]

See Also:

• Gaming Chairs: Which Is The Chairiest?
• Ultimate Game Chair
• Quest Chair Moves With Your Movie
• Sound Egg Chair Fries Your Brain at 360 Degrees
• Freakazoid Rocking Chair Gives Lounging a Floaty Feeling

Valve-cap LEDs may be tacky, but they’ll also make you safer at night

Here’s a case where tacky novelty can actually result in something that keeps you safe and also makes you look cool. The Flash Tire Wheel Valve Cap Lights pretty much sum up their function in the name: they are little LED lamps that replace your bike valve dust caps.

The little battery-powered lights screw onto a Schrader valve (the fat kind also found on cars and motorbikes) and glow like tiny Lightsabers. For such a cheap item (just $3 per pair on Amazon), they’re actually pretty smart. Instead of switches, the lights have motion and light sensors so they only turn on when you’re moving and it’s dark. Once you get going, they’ll paint a virtual circle of light in the air.

Be careful, though. Fellow gadget blogger and Wired.com alumnus John Brownlee put something similar onto his bike when he lived in Berlin, Germany. His lights were bigger and flashier, but the effects on the normally calm and bike-friendly population of Berlin were startling. Poor John was heckled and even had beer bottles thrown at him on one night ride.

If you decide to risk it, strap on a helmet and grab a pair in red, green or blue.

Flash Tire Wheel Valve Cap Lights [Amazon via Red Ferret]

See Also:

• Spinning Wheel Lights Make A Rolling Video Screen
• Magnet Powered Bike Lamps Light Up the Night
• Pimp Your Ride: Cyglo Bike Tires with Embedded LEDs
• LightLane: Personal Laser Bike Lane

If you have ever wandered into your local Apple Store, taken a look at the cool perspex blocks which house the new display iPads and thought “I want one of those,” then we have good news. For just $75 you can have one, turning any blond wooden table in your home into a sleek, Cupertino-compatible countertop.

If my memory of Apple’s units serves me (and it doesn’t, because I drink to forget, and I have a lot to forget), then this version, from PC Gadgets, is a very close replica of the original. Carved from solid acrylic, the iPad 2 Display Dock has space to cradle an iPad 2, with an extra dock up top for an iPhone or an iPod.

I can’t actually think of may uses for this other than making your own faux Apple Store, but I want one anyway. The best part of the whole thing, though, is a line on the product page. “The iPad2 Display Dock will make you the envy off all your friends who bought inferior stands.” Indeed.

iPad 2 Display Dock [PC Gadgets]

See Also:

• Hanfree: The World's Biggest iPad Stand?
• The Pocket Stand, an iPad Stand and Amplifier
• BlueLounge Nest: iPad Stand and Desk-Tidy In One

Shoot aliens as they invade your home with the AppBlaster

Slot your iPhone into this toy gun and you can blast away at aliens that only you can see, overlaid on top of the scene ahead of you thanks to the magic of augmented reality.

The AppBlaster is a £20 ($32) plastic gun with an iPhone case. Load up the (free) companion game, called Apptoyz Alien Attack and you’re off. The attacking aliens are projected on top of a live view of your bedroom or kitchen, fed in through the iPhone’s camera. Your aim is detected by the iPhone’s gyroscope and you fire by pulling the trigger, linked to a capacitive pad that touches the screen.

To reload, just throw the gun up to your shoulder, and the accelerometers do the rest. It looks like a blast.

The game itself looks cheap and tacky at best, though. My suspicions are also raised by the App Store reviews, too many of which contain the line “Best free app I’ve ever played.” At least it’s free to try before you drop dollars on the gun itself.

Maybe other games will be written for the AppBlaster. I’d love a LaserTag style game where you could actually shoot friends who were also toting the AppBlaster, but that might be too tricky to implement. Still, imagine playing the N64 classic Goldeneye, only in your apartment instead of in a secret underground lair.

AppBlaster [Red5 via Engadget]

See Also:

• TapNav Augmented Reality Navigation App Reads the Lane Ahead …
• Word Lens: Augmented Reality App Translates Street Signs Instantly …
• Augmented Reality App Identifies Strangers With Camera
• How it Works: Augmented Reality

The Pinza shows your unruly cords who’s boss

Your desk, like mine, is a mess of cords. Worse, those cords tend to slip and slide onto the floor beneath where they immediately multiply and tangle themselves like Medusa’s hairdo. What you need is one thing to rule them all. That thing is the Pinza.

The Pinza is a fancy variation on the home-made bulldog clip cable-wrangler. You run your cables through the slot in the center of the stainless steel cylinder and then pop an o-ring over the end. This pairs up with another rubber ring to stop the Pinza from sliding around. To extract a little more cord, just pull. When you let go again, the weight of the cord pulls the Pinza back. It rolls on its rubber runners and pinds the cord in place.

Better still, it looks great, which is important on my desk as it needs to contrast with all the half-empty espresso cups and unopened bills that litter the top. It’s also cheap, as these things go, costing $12 or $16 depending on which size you choose. Available now.

Pinza cord wrangler [Pinzacord via Werd]

See Also:

• Bobino Cable-Tidy is Cute, Cheap
• Mysterious Cable-Tidy Hawked by Superheroes
• How To: Five Minute DIY Desk Cable Tidy
• Readers' Hacks: New, Improved Headphone Cable-Winder