Nov 11

Webbed Latex Diving Gloves Will Terrify Mermaids

Posted in: Apparel, Today's Chili

Yes, I know what you’re thinking and you, sir, have a filthy mind. And I admit that on first seeing these terrifying webbed-gloves, I thought the exact same thing. So let’s get our minds out of the gutter and take a look at the other advantages of wearing gloves that make you look like an amphibian gimp.

The name doesn’t help any: Darkfin sounds like a lame fish-wizard, but the contoured latex gloves will help you to swim more like a fish. The finger-flaps increase the surface area of your hands by 70%, letting you push harder against the water when diving, swimming, surfing or even sky-diving (in the air, obviously, not the water).

The Darkfin company says that the rubber won’t impede your manual dexterity, and that the gloves – if looked after – are tough enough to outlast a wetsuit. They have one other advantage, too – because of the increased force needed to push, you’ll get some hot-looking upper-body musculature in no time.

Just make sure that you never, ever leave these on your nightstand. $25.

Darkfin product page [Darkfin via Uncrate]

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Nov 05

USB Cufflinks, For the Man Who Has Everything (Except Taste)

Posted in: Apparel, Today's Chili, usb

What do you give the man who has everything? Well, nothing, obviously, because he has everything, and if he doesn’t have it, he clearly doesn’t want it. So you do what every other poor sap does. You buy some piece of novelty crap, something that combines two other things into one brand new and ill-conceived hybrid that maybe, just maybe, your man never even knew existed. And you get bonus points for wasting a few hundred bucks instead of just blowing a couple of dollars.

By this reasoning, the Robert Graham USB cufflinks are the perfect gift for the man who has it all. They are both novel (USB! cufflinks! Together!) and expensive ($250). They are also, depending on the pair you pick, quite tasteless, although thankfully not Donald-Duck-necktie-tasteless. You can pick between Paisley, Black Leaf or “Black/Rainbow”, all of which are guaranteed to clash with even the most conservative of shirts. Each ‘link pops open to reveal a 2GB USB drive, for a total of 4GB per pair.

Kidding aside, this always-with-you storage is actually pretty handy. I guess the problem is the patterns which have been vomited onto the cufflinks in the form of colorful enamel. Still, one thing can reassure should you be buying this as a gift for the man who has everything: if he has any taste, you can be certain he won’t already have a pair.

Robert Graham USB cufflinks product page [Cufflinks.com]

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Oct 21

Award-Winning Braille Bracelet Looks Good, Feels Even Better

Posted in: Apparel, Today's Chili

How do you design a learning aid for blind people? By making a tactile, easy-to-find tool, that’s how.

The Braille Alphabet Bracelet was designed by Leslie Ligon, who has a blind son, and has just won a People’s Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The bracelet is simple, with an embossed letter on one side of each segment and its Braille equivalent on the other. It is also beautiful, and makes a lovely piece of jewelry in its own right.

It’s easy to use, and the blind owner can pick up the dotted alphabet just by touch, wherever they are, like a guilty Catholic nervously fingering a rosary. This is important, as only ten percent of legally blind people in the US can read Braille yet “at least 90 percent of the blind that hold jobs are Braille literate.” So it seems like – as in the sighted world – you need to be able to read and write to earn a living.

Want one? They’re just $40. Amazingly, they used to be on sale at Amazon, but now you’ll need to head over to the National Braille Press to get one. Available now in silver.

The Braille Alphabet Bracelet Wins the 2010 People’s Design Award [Cooper Hewitt]

Braille Bracelet product page [NBP]

Image: Cooper Hewitt

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Oct 20

Vote for This Amazing Tron Watch to Get it Made

Posted in: Apparel, Today's Chili

This is a call to arms, a plea for all you lovely Gadget Lab readers to do your sacred nerd-duty. Head over to the Tokyo Flash blog right now and vote for this amazing Tron-inspired watch. Did I just say “Tron” and “watch” in the same sentence? Yes I did. Off you go now, but hurry back.

The watch is called 7R0N, neatly sidestepping trademark troubles, while clearly signaling its inspiration. Designed by Scott Galloway in Yorkshire, England, it has bioluminescent strips that represent the trails of the Lightcycles in the movie, and the hour and minute “hands” are replaced by the frisbee-like light-discs the battling computer-dwellers hurl at each other when enacting their deadly video-games.

Scott says “I tried to think of a way to get the watch noticed. I have several light-up LED watches, but as cool as they are, it’s always been about the clock face with little attention to the strap itself. I wanted a watch where the strap was just as important as the face itself.”

Your watch, Scott, is awesome, and we want to send everybody we can to the Tokyo Flash site to vote and hopefully get this thing made. There’s just one problem: It’s actually pretty easy to tell the time on this thing, in contrast to pretty much any watch made by Tokyo Flash. The outer ring shows minutes, and the inner ring indicates hours. Thus you can quickly and easily decipher the times in the picture above: 8 o’clock, 4 o’clock and 4 o’clock. Simple.

Seriously, people, go vote on this thing. Even if you don’t want it, we need some for office Christmas gifts. Obviously, fop-haired Daniel Dumas will be needing one to keep his Tokyo Flash collection complete, but even the normally punctuality-challenged Gadget Lab slave driver Dylan Tweney wants one of of these. And what Dylan wants, Dylan gets.

Tron-inspired LED Watch [Tokyo Flash. Thanks, Scott!]

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Oct 11

Marty McFly’s Actual Movie Sneakers for Sale: $15,000

Posted in: Apparel, Today's Chili

Forget all those Marty-come-lately imitations and knock-offs: If you want McFly’s actual real sneakers, as worn during the filming of Back to the Future 2, then you will soon be able to bid for them at auction. You’ll probably need to engage in some Biff Tannen-style back-in-time betting to afford them, but these are the real deal, people, and they look tacky as hell.

You will remember Marty’s self-lacing Nike sneakers as one of the technical highlights of Robert Zemeckis’ amazing trilogy. The only thing more memorable is the Doc’s automatic dog-feeder, a clock-controlled can-opener which would sling Einstein’s disgusting slops into an overflowing bowl. Well, that and the Flux Capacitor, I guess.

In the year’s since 1985, we have seen imitations, from the McFly 2015 project to the recent flurry of home-made versions which really do lace themselves. Hell, even Nike got in on it and patented the design. From the sales description:

This particular shoe was specifically made for walking around. Original future Nike 2015 self-lacing shoes are extremely rare and one of the most sought-after props from one of the most iconic Sci-Fi movies ever made.

The sneakers won’t come cheap, though. The expected sale price at the Hollywood Memorabilia Auction 42 on November 6th is $12,000 to $15,000. That’s in 2010 dollars. Here’s another picture:

Marty McFly Year 2015 future Nike “Mag” self-lacing shoe worn in Back to the Future II [Profiles in History via OhGizmo!]

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Oct 06

Dodobag, a Murse to Hold Your Dodocase

Posted in: Apparel, ipad, Today's Chili

The Dodobag is an elegant bag designed to hold the Dodocase, and elegant case designed to hold your iPad. You read that right. The bag is a bag to carry a case, and it costs $80.

I live in Europe, where as many men as women carry bags, so I already have a closet-full of what you might call “murses”. From what I understand, the American gentleman tends to think carrying a small bag might somehow diminish his masculinity. This is, I presume, where the Dodobag comes in.

Made from black Cordura nylon with a bright-red interior, the bag looks a lot like the case it is made to coddle. Inside is a padded sleeve, offering a little more protection from knocks than does the cardboard and bamboo Dodocase, and there is a handy removable pocket for cables and the like. The shoulder strap is adjustable, and there are D-rings for attaching a cross-strap to stop the bag from flapping like a soon-to-be-extinct bird when you use it on a bike.

Like the Dodocase, the Dodobag is made in San Francisco, this time by Rickshaw Bags. I have a Dodocase, which cost me $60 plus a lot of shipping and duty. I used it for a week before switching to the Apple iPad case, which in turn I toss into any of my bags, including one from Eastpak which looks almost the same as this one and cost a lot less. Still, if you are in the market for an iPad bag, like our own Brian X Chen, then this one should probably be on your list, if only because it looks “manly”.

Dodobag product page [Dodocase]

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Sep 30

Wooden Wristwatches Embrace Anachronistic Time-Telling

Posted in: Apparel, Today's Chili

Ask anyone, and they’ll say the kids today think wristwatches are a thing of the past: smartphones are so much more “now.” WEWOOD’s wooden watches forego touchscreens and brushed aluminum to embrace old-school craftsmanship and style.

Each watch costs about $120, and is made from Ebony, Maple, Guaiaco, or Red Wing Celtis woods. The Italian watchmaker’s design philosophy is “eco-luxury”: no artificial or toxic materials, use of waste and reclaimed woods whenever possible, and every watch purchased pays to plant a new tree.

But mostly, WEWOOD says wearing a wooden watch from connects you not with the present but time itself: “WEWOOD lets us rediscover nature in its beauty, its simplicity and inspired design. It reminds us of a tree’s powerful way of life; rooted, yet reaching… It respects your skin as you respect nature by choosing it. Your WEWOOD Watch breathes the same air that you breathe and may awaken memories from another time and place.” I guess that justifies using an all-wooden band, which otherwise seems like it could be totally obnoxious.

These watches (particularly the ones with the digital faces) remind me of the Futurama episode “Obsoletely Fabulous,” where the robot Bender rebels against technology and replaces his metal body with a wooden one.

You couldn’t really call these watches retro, because even a century ago, we didn’t usually make watches using so much wood. Maybe you could borrow an analogy from grandfather clocks and call them “grandfather watches.” Or even (sigh) “steampunk watches.”

Image via WEWOOD.

WeWood: Watches crafted from reclaimed planks [Cool Hunting]

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Sep 28

SteriShoe Fixes Your Festering Feet

Posted in: Apparel, Today's Chili

Oh man. I just found out why my sneakers smell so bad. Warning: look away now if you are eating.

Each human foot has more than 250,000 sweat glands and sweats up to eight ounces per day. This sweat causes your shoes to become breeding grounds for the fungus and bacteria that cause toenail fungus, athlete’s foot, and odor.

It gets worse:

People who suffer from these ailments are likely re-infecting themselves when they wear their shoes. You would never re-use a dirty band-aid, so why would you put a foot that is undergoing treatment into a dirty shoe?

Eight ounces! Of filthy foot-sweat! No wonder I have to leave my yellowing tennis shoes on the balcony overnight. Thankfully, there is a gadget that will help. It’s the SteriShoe, and it sits inside your shoes, bathing their stinking innards in cool, cleansing UVC light.

This ultraviolet light is the kind used for many germicidal applications, and the SteriShoe people say that their insert kills 99.9% of germs, making your shoe a safe place for your foot once again. UVC light can damage eyes and skin, however, so there are a few safety devices. First, the SteriShoe will only switch on when it is slightly compressed, meaning stuffed inside a shoe. Second, it only works in the dark. To this end, it comes with a pair of dark bags so you can use the SteriShoe with sandals and other hippie-wear.

How much would you pay for full foot freshness? If you answered $130 then you’re in luck, for that is just what SteriShoe is charging for one of its germ-killers. It comes in four sizes, and spare bulbs can be had for $12 apiece.

SteriShoe product page [SteriShoe via Oh Gizmo!]

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Sep 27

Headache-Inducing Tokyo Flash Watch is Unreadable

Posted in: Apparel, Today's Chili

There are just two things you need to know about Wired.com’s King of Reviews, Daniel Dumas. First is that his beautiful, floppy-fringed haircuts cost more than your car. Yes, Mr. Leno, even your car. The second is that he has a different Tokyo Flash watch for every day of the year, each as inscrutably unreadable as the next. Even Danny, though, would balk at this watch, which is not only impossible to read, but gives you a headache if you even look at it.

Remember those posters that you put on the back of the bathroom door and stare at for hours, trying to defocus your eyes enough to make them pop into 3D? Well, the new Optical Illusion watch from Tokyo Flash is a bit like that, only it will frazzle your retinas and turn your brain to mush in mere seconds. Here it is up close. Can you tell the time?

Of course not. Go and have a lie-down.

Are you back? Good. It is actually possible to read the time. The background is just a bunch of diagonal lines, all running in the same direction. The digits are arranged in a 2×2 square, and are displayed with diagonal lines that run perpendicular to the background. Should you fail to read these digits, or should you just want to find out the time without giving yourself an epileptic episode, press a button on the side and the background is replaced with plain green.

The watch is currently on the Tokyo Flash blog, and the company is soliciting votes to decide whether to make it. If you care about the future of our world, about the lives of our children, then for all that is holy please visit and vote “no”. I beg you.

Optical Illusion LED Watch Design [Tokyo Flash via the Giz]

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Sep 21

Three words: Boba. Fett. Backpack.

Posted in: Apparel, Star Wars, Today's Chili

Okay, five words: Boba. Fett. Plush. Rocket. Backpack.

ThinkGeek has already sold you a pair of Lightsaber chopsticks, and you bought the adorable Tauntaun sleeping bag for your kid. But think ahead now, to when your son first goes off to school. Where will a geek’s offspring carry his lunch? How will he wear his (father’s) nerd-colors with pride? You need to get him this Boba Fett Backpack, which – at $50 – is the most awesome yet overpriced bag you could find.

The rocket-shaped pockets on either side are the perfect size and shape for storing cans of soda (and if you ship junior off to school with a pack of Mentos, too, he might actually be able to fire himself off into a convenient nearby Sarlacc pit. Available now, helmet (sadly) not included.

Boba Fett Plush Rocket Backpack [ThinkGeek]

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