Hasta La Gadget!

The Tapi slides onto any faucet and transforms it into a a switchable tap and fountain, all at the squeeze of a rubber nipple. The silicone blob fits over the tap’s tip and lets water through as normal. Give it a squeeze and the flow is cut, which redirects the water out of a hole in the top giving an instant drinking-fountain. In the kitchen it’s good for a quick sip without dirtying a glass. In the bathroom it works well for rinsing the toothpaste suds from your frothing maw.

My mother used to have a primitive version of these tap-accessories on her faucet back when I was a kid, although in that case the fountain-function was caused by cheap rubber slipping off the metal tubes and spraying water all over the kitchen. They also made all water taste of rubber, although you could pretend you were milking a particularly productive cow if you imagined it hard enough.

The Tapi Tap Squeeze Drink Fountain claims to be flavor free, and costs just €5 ($6.30) for one. It comes in a double-rainbow of colors, and will offer endless fun as you pinch it and spray suffocating jets of water up the the noses of unsuspecting house guests.

Tapi [Dreamfarm via Oh Gizmo!]

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So great is the name for this kitchen device that it’s possible it came before the gadget itself: The Smoking Gun.

The Smoking Gun is a gun-shaped home-smoker for infusing foods with all manner of charred-wood flavors. It works a lot like a hash-pipe (and will undoubtedly find use as one in some homes): you load a small wire basket with the wood-chips of your choice and light them. The smoke is drawn away and pumped through a tube into the target food container.

Because of the distance, the smoke is cool when it hits the food and therefore doesn’t cook it. Thus, you can cold-smoke raw meats and keep them raw, or even smoke fruits and other things that are damaged by heat.

The whole kit looks very convenient, and runs on four AA batteries for portability (camping!). The set costs $100, which is a little steep, and only includes a half-ounce each of hickory and applewood sawdust. Further dust costs a whopping $25 for a box of four one-ounce jars.

The Smoking Gun is a new gadget, but has anyone out there ever used anything like this? I’d actually buy one if it worked well. And after the initial $100, it’s pretty cheap if you make friends with someone from the local sawmill.

The Smoking Gun [Williams Sonoma via Oh Gizmo]

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Yes, what you see above is real. It is also, not surprisingly, from Japan, the land of the crazy gadget. The Tama-chan is a watermelon-cooler, a 14-pound roll-along case which will keep your fruit chilled in summer or your rice warm in winter. It gets its power via AC or DC cables, and can be plugged in to the cigarette-lighter socket in your car.

To be honest, the gadget would look more at home in a sci-fi B-movie, filled with the brain of a hyper-intelligent super-being and rolled around by a tough-but-stupid minion. As an actual real-world device, it seems almost pointless. As the Lady commented when forced to give her opinion, “You’d have to have a lot of space at home” before buying one of these.

On the other hand, it would make an excellent vehicle for the world-dominating plans of watermelon baby.

More astonishing yet is the price. The melon-cooler (or brain-preserver) is ¥20,000. That’s $230. A fortune for the melon-lover, but a real bargain for a body-less super-brain — or melon-embedded infant genius — intent on ruling the world.

Portable hot and cold storage [Joybond via Switched]

Remember the novelty “executive toy” of the 1980s, the panel of pins that could be squished onto hands, faces or any other object and the metal rods would form a 3D portrait in steel pixels? Well, this concept KitchenAid “Variable Grill” is something very similar, although you’d never want to push your face into it.

The grill is of the hinged type, and the top surface has 140 separate elements, or heat-pixels, if you will. Each pixel has a glass top which actually touches the food, and a heating element which sits behind it, providing the BTUs. Because every heat-pixel moves independently, they can settle onto the surface of the food and the elements are all the same distance from the surface. Thhe glass stopping the elements from actually touching it.

It’s ingenious, but the rendering is a little on the long-and-thin side: wouldn’t a square be better? I also wonder if the heat would really cook any more evenly than a normal grill, if well attended by simply turning the target food often.

These kinds of grills could be considered slightly gimmicky, and don’t achieve much that you couldn’t do with a broiler or a cast-iron grill=pan. On the other hand, George Forman hasn’t done too bad in the same market so perhaps the designer, Roberto Bertran, is on to something.

KitchenAid Variable Grill [Yanko]

Capsule espresso machines have driven the price of proper home-made coffee down to (usually) under $100. The problem is we now have a razor-blade, or games-console model to deal with: the machines are dirt cheap, but you need to reload them with expensive (and environmentally nasty) capsules or pods. Illy, maker of some of the best espresso available, is in on the game, and has added a characteristically high price tag to the mix.

The new Illy Y1 iperEspresso Machine, from coffee-machine maker Francis Francis costs $125 and, like all such machines, uses disposable, pre-dosed and tamped capsules containing the ground coffee. The consistency of these factory-made plugs is what gives you a perfect cup every time. In this case, the hot water is pushed into the grounds at a pressure of 19 Bars, or 276 PSI, and despite the huge base just seven spent pods can be contained within before you need to clean up. Water capacity is 24-ounces.

And the capsules? When you buy the machine, you’ll also be signed up for a recurring monthly delivery of three packages of coffee. If bought separately, these cans cost $16 each for just 21 servings, or $0.76 per cup. To qualify for free shipping, you’ll need to spend over $75. That probably won’t be too hard.

As handsome as this machine is, I’ll stay away. My local bars all serve great espresso from real machines, made by people who know what they’re doing. A cup costs only €0.90 (just over a dollar), and I get to take a break instead of slurping at my desk.

Experience the next generation of espresso with iperEspresso [Illy via Uncrate]

See Also:

• No-Hassle Huff: Inhaleable Coffee Dust
• Too Hot to Handle: Hip-Mounted Coffee-Holder
• Coffee-Cup Collar Expands Like B-Movie Special Effect