Aug 11

Plywood Bike Is Beautifully Bendy

Posted in: Today's Chili, Transportation

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I have never been anywhere near Stanisław Płoski’s Bonobo plywood bike, but I can feel the thing flex as clearly as if it were beneath me on a pothole-strewn road. Plywood is strong and beautiful to look at, but it isn’t exactly stiff.

Saying that, Płoski has certainly bent his sheets of veneer into a rather fetching form, something like a smoothed-off outline of a regular diamond-shaped frame. And by leaving out the seat-tube, this thing will probably ride as softly as a 1950s Cadillac.

Along with the flexy ride, I also worry about the weight of this thing. Wood is heavy enough as it is, but combined with all those bolted-on brackets it likely weighs a ton.

Not that any of this in necessarily bad. Dutch-style city bikes also weigh a ton, but they are comfortable too, just like the Bonobo with its laid-back riding position.

Finally, I wonder how you’d lock this bike? Any thief could quickly saw through the frame and then just use a splint to glue it back together.

Bonobo [Duzosuper via Cycle EXIF]

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Aug 09

Get A Handle on Your Caffeine Habit With the ‘Coffee Brake’ Cup

Posted in: household, Today's Chili

Coffee brake

The Coffee Brake is the perfect gift for the cycling, caffeine-addicted environmental hippy in your life

Oh-ho! The pun-tastic Coffee Brake mug from South Minneapolis-based Scalleywags certainly made me smile. It’s an insulated, double-walled stainless steel coffee mug with a bicycle brake lever for a handle. The 14-ounce cup also has a non-slip base and a snug-fitting plastic lid.

I want to buy a Coffee Brake as a gift for Wired.com’s NYC bureau chief John C Abell. Not only does he already use a metal mug for his coffee, he has also conducted a tireless (and successful) campaign at his local Starbucks to get the staff to write his order on a post-it note, instead of wasting paper cup to do the same thing.

Mr. Abell is also a cyclist, and I suspect that he may be moonlighting as a pizza delivery boy. Therefore, this $20 adult sippy-cup is the perfect gift for him. I just have to cross my fingers that he doesn’t read this post and spoil the surprise.

The Coffee Brake [Scalleywags via Urban Velo. Again]

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Aug 08

Bike Mount for Foxl’s ‘Audiophile’ Portable Speaker

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, bluetooth, speakers, Today's Chili

Foxl mounted on bike wide shot

I have tried mounting a speaker on my bike, but it never quite seems to work. The closest I cam to success was to tie the JawBone Jambox to my handlebar with a pair of toe-straps, but the Bluetooth connection is rather flaky and the tiny speaker’s sound isn’t up to the noise of city streets.

I am tempted by Foxl’s new Bike Kit Bundle, a bar-mount for the Foxl Hi-Fi speaker. We last saw this speaker — which claims audiophile status thanks to its “twofer” speakers that combine mid-range and tweeter into one unit, and its “bass battery,” which uses the rechargeable li-ion battery as the mass for the subwoofer — back in February.

Now, for an extra $50, you can buy a bar-bracket to put your music front and center in your bike’s “cockpit.” The Foxl-specific mount is supplied with the third-party GN032-AMPS handlebar clamp from Arkon. The product page suggests that the speaker can then be used for phone calls as well as music, although this seems like a terrible idea in terms of safety.

I’m still not sure if in-bike music makes me cool, or a complete dork. What I do know, though, is that I don’t really want yet another piece of plastic bolted to my bike, and neither do I want to wear headphones in city traffic. I guess the hunt will continue.

Foxl Bike Kit Bundle [SoundMatters]

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Aug 01

Electric Bike Becomes Stationary Bike, Charges Itself

Posted in: Today's Chili, Toys and Games

One bike

If Rube Goldberg had been a theoretician, he’d have come up with the OneBike

Here’s pretty much the weirdest electric bike idea I have ever seen. It’s called the OneBike, and it combines an exercise bike and an electric bike into one. If that sounds ass-backward, read on: it gets worse.

It works like this. At home, the bike folds and fits into a base-station, turning it into a stationary bike. You pedal away and the usual monitoring options tell you how your heart and calories are doing. The twist is that your pedaling also generates electricity, which charges the bike as you work out.

Then, when you go outside, you unfold the bike and ride with electrical assist. The tagline reads “Electric Bicycle with a new charging method that induces exercise.”

What? I have a concept for you. It’s called a “NormalBike,” and it has a special drive system which — as you move your legs and pedal through the city streets — “induces exercise.” I think it could catch on.

Why do all the work in the living room (doubtlessly watching Tour de France reruns on TV), but do no work outside? Is it me, or does this make no sense whatsoever?

The only way that Byoung-soo Choi and Jun-kyeong Kim’ concept could possibly be justified is if it were shared. Imagine a couple: one is a fitness freak and can never sit still. He charges the OneBike in the evening after a day out mountain biking. His partner, either disabled or just plain lazy, takes the freshly charged bike out whenever he can be bothered to get off the couch and go out for Doritos.

Other than this rather far-fetched scenario, the OneBike frankly leaves me quite bewildered.

Cycle Your Way To Power [Yanko]

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Jul 30

Insert Coin: YouTurn accelerometer-based turn signal system for cyclists

Posted in: bike, light, safety, Today's Chili, Transportation, video

In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you’d like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with “Insert Coin” as the subject line.


Many of us who bike in the city ride in constant fear of being tapped by a taxi cab, or crushed by a bus. There’s no way to completely eradicate the risk of being run over by a much larger motorized vehicle, but making yourself easily visible — both at night and during the day — can certainly make a difference. Smart cyclists use hand signals long before they need to make a turn, but the YouTurn signal system aims to make those indicators difficult for drivers to miss, with an accelerometer-based gadget that illuminates an arrow in the direction of your turn. If you want to turn left, for example, simply point your hand to the left, and the device will flash a giant yellow chevron. The prototype you’ll see in the video below is integrated with a glove, though the final version will simply attach to the back of your hand, and can be stored in a bag when you’re not on your bike. There’s no mention of durability or waterproofing, though since the inventor’s objective is to enhance safety, we imagine he’ll be taking precautions to avoid electrocution in the rain.

YouTurn inventory Jack O’Neal launched a Kickstarter page to help fund his project, and is accepting preorders at $50 a pop. There’s no final pricing listed at this point, but at 50 bucks for a first-run YouTurn, we were happy to make the pledge. We hope to see O’Neal meet his funding goal and send these to production, but until then, we’ll keep looking both ways and hoping for the best.

Continue reading Insert Coin: YouTurn accelerometer-based turn signal system for cyclists

Insert Coin: YouTurn accelerometer-based turn signal system for cyclists originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jul 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 26

Flexible Bike Racks Look Great, Probably Aren’t

Posted in: security, Today's Chili, Transportation

Steal me please

The Grazz and Tulip Fun Fun bike racks are as tough as they sound

We all know that a cable — even a hardened one — is just about the worst bike lock you can use. I learned this lesson some years ago when I lived in London. I came out of the pub to find my D-lock on the ground, still intact and looped through the ends of the cable I had used to “secure” my almost-new mountain bike to to a lamppost. The bike of course, was gone.

Now I carry locks and chains that weight almost the same as the bike itself, but there is no chance that I would ever use them to lock my bike to Keha3’s Tulip Fun Fun or Grazz bike racks. Both of these are made from steel cabling inside plastic sleeves, and both would allow a thief to snip through them with bolt croppers and attend to my now vestigial locks at their leisure.

Which is a shame, as a flexible bar makes it a lot easier to lock your bike properly, securing the wheels as well as the frame. And the paint-friendly plastic coating is certainly welcome.

Maybe designer Margus Triibmann’s Estonian home-town isn’t as bike-hostile as London, Barcelona or New York. Then again, if Margus is using that skinny little cable lock to chain up his bike, the weak bike rack is the least of his worries.

Tulip Fun Fun product page [Keha3 via Yanko]

Grazz product page [Keha3]

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Jul 25

Apple’s Campus Bikes Are Classically Minimal

Posted in: Apple, Today's Chili, Transportation

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Neither high-tech nor fancy, Apple

This bike is the Apple campus bike. The photo above, taken by designer Everaldo Coelho, shows one of the bikes apparently used to get around at Apple’s headquarters at One Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California.

If you were expecting a high-tech machine that looks more like Eve from Wall-E than a silver mixte that could come from any decade in the past 50 years, then you will obviously be disappointed. But take a closer look and you’ll see that this bike is as well suited to its task as an iPad is to its own market.

First, it looks great. Everything is silver, gray or black, even the panniers that sit astride the rear rack, ready for an iPad, a MacBook Air or even (gasp) stacks of paper.

Next up is the style. The mixte frame is somewhere between the step-through bike and the more familiar diamond-framed design with a high top-tube. The mixte is easy to mount, but still uses triangles in the frame to keep it strong and rigid.

Meanwhile, a chain guard keeps oil off trouser cuffs, a three-speed internal hub is both easy to use and almost maintenance-free, and the fenders (along with the waterproof panniers) are great for the odd Californian shower.

Most importantly, though, it looks to be of good quality. Although the logos have all been removed (even the tires are bare of brand names), those deep v-section wheels look tough, the brakes and levers are all metal, and the twin top-tubes even meet the seat tube with a lugged connection.

UPDATE: Jul 26 2011. Thanks to our awesome readers, we now know that the Apple Campus Bike is an M3 Mixte from Public Bikes in the Netherlands San Francisco. Check out the product page here. Thanks, Richard!

UPDATE 2 Jul 27 2011 Brad from Public bikes wrote to say that the company is just up the road from Apple in Cupertino, California. The bikes were a special order from Apple and — as Brad says — ” the end product really does look impressive.”

Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but if you think about it, this simple, classic bike seems like exactly the thing Apple would pick to get its employees around the campus. I wonder what Microsoft uses? Probably electric golf carts. Or even (shudder) Segways.

Apple’s Campus Bike [Flickr via Mac Magazine and Cult of Mac]

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Jul 25

Toyota’s Prius Bike With Thought-Controlled Gear Shifters

Posted in: Today's Chili, Toyota, Transportation

Pxp

The Prius PXP’s sleek lines hide a futuristic secret

Remember Firefox? No, not the bloated open-source web browser, but Craig Thomas’ sleek Soviet fighter plane which had thought-controlled weapons systems. Wouldn’t it be cool if somebody, somehow, did that to a bike?

It turns out that somebody has. Toyota, in cahoots with Saatchi & Saatchi, Parlee Cycles and the boffins at Deeplocal, has come up with the PXP, or Prius Bike. The “Prius” part might be mere branding, but the bike itself is pretty damn awesome, right down to the thought-controlled gears. Yes, you read that right. Thought-controlled gears.

The frame and most other parts are fashioned from carbon fiber, shaped to be aerodynamic and integrate almost every component: cables are routed internally, brakes are built into the forks and the stem is indistinguishable from the headset. This not only makes for a bike that barely distracts the air as it slices through it — it also results in a bike that is so gorgeously minimal that it makes many fixed-gear machines look fussy. There’s even a hole ready to be filled with your smartphone, for the usual kind of cyclo-computer shenanigans.

IMG 1875

Using electrodes to read brain activity, the helmet lets you shift gears with your mind

But we’ve seen this stuff a hundred times before. The real meat is in the gears. Human/digital interface specialist Deeplocal has built a helmet that lets you shift gears just by thinking about it. Just like Clint Eastwood was able to blast enemies out of the sky by thought alone in the Firefox movie, the PXP’s rider can flip up and down through the electronically shifted derailleurs with his mind.

Ten minutes of training is enough to tune your brain to the EEG in the helmet and allow seamless shifting. The thought-control system is built from off-the-shelf hardware and custom software, so it could actually be put into production pretty soon. And fear not. There are levers for manually shifting should you need to do so.

Thought-controlled shifting is clearly mind-boggling sci-fi tech, and could probably be very helpful for pro riders. But for us bike-riding proles, maybe it’s a little too much. After all, one of the biggest advantages of a bike is its simplicity. With a basic toolkit and a connection to Google, you can fix anything.

Are these fancy electronic advances going to ruin home-maintenance the same way that electronic engine management spoiled things for the home car mechanic?

The Toyota Prius Projects: Concept Bike Week 10 [Prolly via Fast Company]

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Jul 22

Bikes on a Train: Station Dock Vends Folding Bromptons

Posted in: Today's Chili, Transportation

The Brompton Dock lets you grab a folding bike and take it on the train

The Brompton Dock is a clever take on Park and Ride schemes. Instead of parking your car on the edge of town and taking the bus to the center, you rock up at a railway station, check out a Brompton folding bike and hop on the train. Then, when you reach your stop, you unfold the bike and go on your way.

The scheme is being tested by South West trains in England. 40 Bromptons are stored in a block of lockers on the platform. You swipe your membership card and take a bike. From there you get to keep it for the whole day before returning it on your way home. Each bank of lockers holds 40 bikes.

The fees are tiny. You pay £50 ($80) per year to join, and as little as £1.60 ($2.60) per day for rental (prices rise to £4 ($6.50) per day if you don’t opt for a weekly or monthly plan, but this is still dirt cheap). Given that a Brompton starts at around £760 ($1,220), you could ride every day for a year and a half before you spent as much.

The big question is how do you get to the station to begin with? Maybe you drive, or walk if you can. But if you’re going to ride a Brompton every day, why not just buy one and ride it to the station as well? If you’re going straight to the office, the bike will probably never get stolen.

In fact, the hardest part of this scheme might be nothing to do with the bikes themselves. Instead, the real problem could be convincing your boss to install showers at the office.

Brompton Dock [Brompton Dock via EcoVelo]

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Jul 22

Chrome’s Niko, A Camera-Carrying Bikers’s Backpack

Posted in: Apparel, Chrome, Today's Chili

Bike Bag? Camera bag? Where do I sign up?

Today, the stars have aligned to bring the perfect Friday afternoon item for Gadget Lab. As an aficionado of both camera bags and bicycle bags, imagine how fast I scrambled to my keyboard when I saw this camera-carrying backpack, from none other than Chrome, the bike-messenger-bag people.

It’s called the Niko, and it’s similar in concept to Kata’s 3N1 bags, with a wraparound flap to open the bottom section and a separate, zippered and lidded compartment up top for sundries.

Like all Chrome bags, it consists of an outer nylon shell with a truck-tarp interior, rendering it all but totally waterproof. And like all Chrome bags, it has that big seatbelt buckle on the strap for quick-release. Sometimes, though, this release is a little too quick, like when some idiot comes up and jabs the switch, dropping your gear to the ground. It has happened to me, and it has also happened to Brad over at Urban Velo, who brought to Niko to our notice.

In use, the 2.5-pound bag will hold cameras, lenses, flashes and other gear in its padded, compartmentalized interior. Outside there are some Velcro straps for holding a mini-tripod, or even a pump. And because it only has one strap, you can swing it from your back to your chest to grab the camera whilst still on your bike.

Chrome bags are usually pricey, but they are also expected to last forever. Camera bags are also very expensive. So expensive, in fact, that they make the Chrome Niko look pretty reasonable at $95.

Will I be buying one? Nah. I already have the Kata, and if I fancy taking a camera out with a bike, I also have Chrome’s Citizen messenger bag, an expensive, heavy piece of kit which — when combined with Photojojo’s Anybag insert, is more than bag enough for anyone.

Chrome Niko product page [Chrome via Urban Velo]

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