Hasta La Gadget!

The Strider ST-3 grows with your kid

Some people think that bikes are just for kids. Those people should be sterilized. But bikes are pretty great for kids, and the sooner you get them started, the sooner they’ll be riding without training wheels. Seriously. I know bike polo players whose kids were riding at three years old, which is pretty badass.

Which brings us to Strider’s new pedal-less balance bike, a two-wheeler which will carry toddlers from 18 months to three years. The ST-3 grows with your kid, with adjustable-height handlebar and saddle. Grown-up roadies will envy its 6.4-pound weight, and anyone can appreciate the polymer tires, which won’t ever go flat.

These things look like great fun, but there’s an even better way to save money. Just take the cranks and chain off a regular kids’ bike and put them back on again when little Johnny learns to balance.

The Strider ST-3 will be out for Christmas, and will cost $130. It is not yet on Strider’s site.

Strider product page [Strider via Urban Velo]

See Also:

• Transforming Kids Bike With Two, Three or Four Wheels
• Panasonic Electric Granny Bike Foolishly Aimed at Kids
• Bike In A Box Promises Cheap, Safe Kid's Cycles
• Home-Made Kid-Carrying Cargo-Bike

It might look blessedly cable free, but things could get messy, fast

Cyclist? Incorrigible gadget freak? Do you still — miraculously — have space on your handlebars to clamp one more widget? Then I have just the thing for you, you bearded freak, only you’re going to have to make some friends if you want to use it: The HIOD One cycling communicator.

The HIOD One is a Bluetooth communication setup for up to five cyclists, and it looks to be a real pain to use. The communication part looks great: you can talk to one person at a time, up to 400 meters (1,300 feet) away via Bluetooth (Bluetooth 4.0, presumably). You can also use it to listen to music, and to talk on the phone.

But then we get to the practicalities. First, and most sensibly, is the bar-mounted head unit with a high-contrast OLED display. This is the control center. Then, there’s a wireless voice unit, clipped to wrist or chest or even helmet. And by wireless I mean wireless until you plug in the mic and the earphone, which you’ll need to actually use it.

For some, this will kill the deal right away. A lot of people don’t like to ride with headphones for reasons of safety. For me, a single earpiece drives me crazy with its asymmetry.

If you manage your cables properly, though, this is a nice hi-tech alternative to walkie-talkies. On the other hand, for anything but ultra-lightly equipped road racing, you might as well just buy some cheap walkie talkies, right?

The HIOD will eventually go on sale when the company has managed to find some dealers to sell it.

HIOD One product page [HIOD Sports via Andrew Liszewski]

See Also:

• Airdrives: Bike Headphones That Won't Kill You

Fixie Fashion: Samsung commissions ultimate Galaxy Tab dock

There’s some silly two-faced fashion going on over in London Town. Samsung, maker of me-too touch-screen devices, commissioned Brick Lane-based bike builder 14 Bike Co to make a bike and mount for its Galaxy Tab tablet.

In keeping with current fashions, the bicycle is a fixed gear model with obligatory Brooks saddle, and although it does actually have a pair of brakes, there are no cables or levers — kind of like a tablet that runs Flash, but doesn’t enable it by default. The bike is white on one side and black on the other, matching either Galaxy Tab colorway.

The tablet holder is fashioned from carbon fiber and dangles from a cylinder which grabs the top tube. Samsung says that this lets you flip up and use the Tab when on the bike, but it also means that the thing will flap from side to side whenever you turn a corner.

Ridiculous as this implementation is, tablet on a bike are actually a pretty good idea. The big screen and long, long battery life make the iPad a great handlebar HUD, GPS tracker and general mapping device. I currently tuck mine into a handlebar bag, but that means reaching in every time you need to use it. Better would be a proper handlebar mount.

I’m in the middle of building a touring bike (Surly Long Haul Trucker framer and Shimano Alfine 11 hub, as you’re asking) and I have a feeling that the iPad might neatly be stowed in the map-case attachment for the Ortlieb handlebar bag. Full report if that works out. In the meantime, ZooGue’s three-ring binder adapter for the iPad might let you replicate Samsung’s shenanigans yourself.

Samsung Bike [14 Bike Co via Bike Biz]

See Also:

• Horn Bike: iPhone Speaker and Bike Mount Combined
• Photo: iPad Powers BMX Bike-Stereo
• Sprocket Pocket: iPad Turn-Signal for Cyclists

The ultimate JamBox mount: An entire bike

Yves Behar, the designer of JawBone’s JamBox speaker, has obviously heard that I’m looking for a JamBox bike mount. Only instead of just designing a mount, he’s gone and built a whole bike to hold the thing.

That’s not strictly true, of course. While the Local, as it is called, does indeed hold a JamBox, it is designed to do a whole lot more. The Local is “the bike version of the practical pick-up truck.” To this end it does everything other cargo trikes can do, and more.

The Local will carry luggage and kids on its low front platform, and with a strap it will even carry a surfboard. Lights are built into the frame, there’s a tether to stop anyone snatching your bag off the front shelf and the bike features the first integrated lock that looks like it would work.

The D part of a d-lock is integrated into the frame at the front, and a bar locks across its ends. Remove the cylinder, drive the bike so its front swallows a pole and re-lock. You’re done.

Finally, a Shimano Alfine 11 hub and disk brakes front and rear will start and stop you easily.

The idea is that you can use this bike to do anything a car could do in your neighborhood. I like it a lot, and especially the light, bright colors that make it less like the serious cargo-carriers my local fruit shop uses to deliver its goods.

Behar makes no mention of price or availability, but if any concept deserves to make it into the real world then this is it.

Local product page [Fuse Project via Design Boom]

See Also:

• Jawbone Makers Dream Big for Tiny Headset
• Pick Up Artist, the Best-Named Cargo Bike Ever
• Home-Made Kid-Carrying Cargo-Bike

Boing boing! Ron Arad’s steel-wheeled bike is totally rideable

If you were to idly doodle a picture bike whilst chatting on the telephone, you might slip from realism into fanciful embellishment. And if your were placed on hold during that call, or if you’d smoked a little something before it, you might come up with something like Ron Arad’s WOW Bike.

Arad’s design is like a fixed-gear 29er rendered coming via your grandmother’s wallpaper. Everything about it is familiar except for those wheels, each fashioned from 18 strips of steel. These strips are bent and pinned to make a kind of chromed chrysanthemum.

The bike was designed for the fancy W hotel chain, and can be ridden by any guest brave enough to do so. Currently the bike is in the Leicester Square branch in London. So how does it ride?

Surprisingly well, says Arad’s design director Marcus Hearst. And he means “surprising” — the design was put together in just two weeks, with no testing, and no real idea of whether the wheels of steel would even work. The result is a softer ride than you’d get on regular wheels, but still quite practical.

The bike will be at the London W until October 29th, after which it will be auctioned. Any Gadget Lab readers who take it for a spin on London’s rain-slicked streets and live to tell the tale should tell us about it in the comments, or just e-mail me direct from your hospital bed.

Soft-Ride Bike Has Steel Tires, And You Can Ride It Now [Fast Code via Jon Fingas]

See Also:

• A Shape-Shifting, Show-Stealing Chandelier
• Amazing Electric 'Bike' Is a Junkyard On Wheels
• EDWARD Electric Diwheel Is Like a Sci-Fi Bike