Hasta La Gadget!

Now this is a marriage proposal that will resonate with Harry Potter fans. Rachel was ready to propose to her girlfriend Jaquie, so she enlisted the help of CustomMade, which some people have described as a cross between Etsy and Match.com. It’s basically a site that lets people find artisans who can turn their projects into a reality.

I think it’s safe to assume that Harry Potter played a major role in their relationship, because Rachel had her proposal fashioned after the most popular game in the wizarding world: Quidditch.

The Quidditch proposal set that Rachel commissioned included two Bludgers, one Quaffle, a bat, and of course, the Golden Snitch. All it needs is a charm spell to make everything come alive… Rachel hid the ring in the Snitch (where else?) and presented the set to Jacqui. She said “yes,” Voldemort is still dead, and all is well in the world.

If you want a custom Quidditch set of your own, then you can get one made by artist Anthony Albano for somewhere between $800 and $1,200 (USD).

It sounds very strange to say Porsche and hybrid in the same sentence, but the company has been working on hybrid cars for a long tim. In fact, they’ve been offering a hybrid version of its four-door Panamera since last year, and also has the hybrid 918 Spyder supercar. Now, Porsche has announced that is getting ready to launch its first ever plug-in hybrid automobile with a new addition to its Panamera line.

The new Panamera S E-Hybrid should be significantly more fuel-efficient than the old hybrid version of the car and perform better as well. The E-Hybrid has 416 total horsepower and its new electric motor produces 95 hp on its own. The previous hybrid had a measly 47 hp electric motor.

The E-Hybrid also gets a significantly larger lithium-ion battery pack featuring 9.4 kWh of electricity compared to only 1.7 kWh of electricity in the outgoing hybrid. The car will also be able to drive for 20 miles on electricity alone – which isn’t stellar, but good for short hauls. When the gasoline engine is fired up the E-hybrid can reach 60 mph in 5.2 seconds and has a top speed of over 160 mph. As you might expect, the Panamera S E-Hybrid is an expensive car, with prices starting at $99,000 (USD).

Do you really want a Jar Jar Binks USB flash drive? There are so many better characters you could choose from. Well, at least this storage device can’t possibly be as inept and useless as the CGI Gungan himself, right?

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Next time you throw a cocktail party with a prohibition-era, Boardwalk Empire theme, I’ve got the perfect thing for you. Instead of serving up your drinks with regular ice cubes in them, try putting some gun-shaped ones in their cocktails.

All you need is this cheap silicone ice mold from DealExtreme and you can make ice cubes in the shape of tiny handguns. I guess they’re not cubes when they’re shaped like guns, though. You can also use the mold to make gun-shaped candy and chocolate, but I don’t recommend that you try and take your creations through the TSA checkpoint at the airport, unless you get a thrill from a full-body-cavity search.

Readers can be a fickle bunch – around here we know this from experience. It seems like we’re always getting comments or e-mails accusing us of taking money from this company or that because we cover so many of their products. At the same time, we’re always getting e-mails wanting to know why exactly you haven’t talked about the latest whatnot from this company or that. I can certainly imagine that the geeks over at iFixit have caught more than little grief over the fact that they tend to rip apart every Apple device ever made.

To celebrate April Fool’s Day, iFixit has opted for tearing down something other than an Apple gadget.

This time, they have torn down an orange. As in the citrus fruit, which has prevented scurvy for thousands of years. As is typical for teardowns from iFixit, there are plenty of shots of the tools needed and images of the (quite literally) juicy insides.

If you have a penchant for the Orange, be warned that it has a repair ability score of zero. Yep, once you open this thing up there is no fixing it. This is a one use device, unless you are into organic gardening anyway.

View the full Orange teardown over at iFixit.