LiteCubes Freezable LED Lamps Make Drinks Twice as Cool

You’ve tried all sorts of cocktails and added all kinds of fruits, vegetables and tiny umbrellas to your drink. Why not add a shot of technology to the mix? LiteCubes are freezable nontoxic plastic 1″ blocks that light up. This has to be a rave party staple.

litecubes led ice cube

Each LiteCube contains an FDA-approved freezable gel. You can use LiteCubes to keep your drinks cool without watering them down. But the star in each cube is the LED. LiteCubes come in single or multicolored variants. You can set the light to glow steadily, flash slowly or at a seizure-inducing pace. You can also turn the LED off, which you should do after ever party. The lithium battery inside is not user-replaceable and is only guaranteed to last up to 12 hours.

You can order LiteCubes from a variety of places. Amazon has a 9-block sampler pack for about $19 (USD), but you can also order from OnlyCubes for $1.45-$1.65 per block or DirectGlow for discounted wholesale purchases.

[via Instash & LiteCubes]


SegaToys upgrade its Homestar R2-D2 with the Homestar R2-D2 EX

Segatoys introduces the HomeStar many “moons” ago, a nice little toy that will project the milky-way and other stars on your ceiling. Back in June 2011, SegaToys announced the Homestar R2-D2, a enhanced version of the regular Homestar planetarium in the shape of RD-D2 and that was capable to project the Death Star along side other regular celestial objects.
Today, SegeToys introduced an enhanced version of the Homestar R2-D2 with the Homestar R2-D2 EX which comes with many …

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: Eindhoven’s Evoluon Center, folding compact cars and the best of 3D printing

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

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As we enter mid-August, millions of people will load up the car and head out to the beach for summer vacation. But no matter how much energy you put into building a sandcastle, it’s unlikely to be as impressive as the structures produced by Stone Spray, a solar-powered, robotic 3D printer that can create entire buildings out of sand. It’s hard to deny that 3D printing has the ability to change the world — especially after learning about a two-year-old girl who gained the use of her arms with the aid of a 3D-printed robotic exoskeleton (she calls them her “magic arms”).

Continue reading Inhabitat’s Week in Green: Eindhoven’s Evoluon Center, folding compact cars and the best of 3D printing

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Inhabitat’s Week in Green: Eindhoven’s Evoluon Center, folding compact cars and the best of 3D printing originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 12 Aug 2012 10:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Manfrotto Hotshoe Dimmable LED Panel

When it comes to camera equipment, you know the more gear someone carries, the more professional he or she is. Well, most of us would just tote around a compact digital camera that has its own built-in flash, while more serious shutterbugs will look towards a DSLR kit. Here is an accessory that you might want to consider purchasing if you were to make the move up to the big leagues, so to speak, with the $79.99 Manfrotto Hotshoe Dimmable LED Panel.

It is said that the Manfrotto Hotshoe Dimmable LED Panel delivers perfect lighting for on-the-go filmmakers, being tiny enough to fit in your camera case, while it is also versatile to play nice with a wide variety of DSLRs and compact cameras – and get this, it will also work even with smartphones, now how about that? This 24-LED light source delivers daylight-bright light, where all two dozen LEDs will emit continuous light at a constant temperature of 5600°K (daylight), not to mention an illuminance of 220 lux at a distance of 1 meter. You can control the lighting in a precise manner thanks to its dimmer. Any takers?

[ Manfrotto Hotshoe Dimmable LED Panel copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]


Philips blazes Nairobi streets with solar LED lights

Dutch multinational electronics company, Philips, has partnered with the Kenyan Urban Roads Authority to install solar-powered LED street lighting in Nairobi. Philips says that, if implemented on a wide scale across the country, the project has the potential to generate up to 100 per cent energy savings. The main goal of the project will be to highlight the benefits of sustainable energy sources and alternatives to expensive, less efficient traditional lighting.

The key to what Philips calls as “the most reliable, efficient and cost effective solar powered road lighting solution” lies in combining high brightness LEDs with patented optics and an intelligent controller. Philips said that this will ensure that the maximum amount of power is transferred from the solar panels to the batteries. High energy efficiency also means that the cost and size of the batteries can be reduced by as much as 50 percent compared to other standard solutions being offered in the market today. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Philips launches FWP3200D DJ-like iOS speaker dock, LED lighting system changes color based on your mental state,

OMG LED Case for iPhone Turns Notifications into a Disco Party

If you can’t wait for FLASHr to come to fruition, or if clear transparent cases just don’t do it for you, then check out OMG Cases for iPhone, that light up like a Christmas tree whenever you get a new push notification.

omg case iphone led light up

The OMG Cases come in a couple of different designs, but these cases don’t just rely on the LED flash to let you know about a new notification, nope, they light up thanks to LEDs at the bottom of the case and some kind of optical fibers embedded directly into it. The cases actually pulsate brightly whenever there’s activity on your phone.

I’m not sure if there’s an extra battery in the bottom part of this case or if it’s just for the LEDs to suck on your iPhone’s battery through the dock connector. Each case sells for $29.95 (USD) here.

omg case iphone led light up abstract

[via Ubergizmo]


Acer breeds LEDs with lasers, new hybrid projector is born

Acer breeds LEDs with lasers, new hybrid projector is born

Acer usually graces our pages for its pico projector range, but the company’s taken a leaf out of the high-end book for its latest non-portable model, the K750 LED-laser hybrid. The world’s first combo projector spits out 1080p, just as you would expect, at a contrast ratio of up to 100,000:1. Acer claims the color brightness, saturation and fidelity are significantly better than mercury lamps, and appears to be leaning towards the business and education markets, citing the K750’s instant on / off capability to sway the productive types. If you fancy one of these in your house, however, better start saving your cash — AVForums claims it’ll be available in the UK later this month bearing a price tag of around £1,700 (approximately $2,650).

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Acer breeds LEDs with lasers, new hybrid projector is born originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Aug 2012 12:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Would You Like a Nyan Cat Running on Your T-Shirt? You Can Do that With tshirtOS

So this won’t be the first time that you’ll see an interactive shirt (remember the fully playable electric guitar t-shirt and the drum machine shirt?), but this is the first shirt of its kind to actually be able to do all that it promises to do. The tshirtOS. A t-shirt with its own operating system. The name already sounds cool, but just wait until you see the actual thing.

tshirtOSThe tshirtOS is the result of a joint venture between Ballantine’s and CuteCircuit. The shirt is described as a wearable (obviously), sharable, and programmable piece of clothing that you can use to display random stuff like tweets, animation, and photos, and even play music and videos.

The shirt features a large multi-color, flexible LED grid, connected to a controller circuit and battery pack. It’ll also have a camera, accelerometer, microphone and speakers for truly interactive displays. It’s controlled by an app that’s to be installed on your smartphone. Because of its programmable nature, the sky’s the limit with this baby.

Make a fashion statement, share your thoughts by displaying your tweets as you go along, and make a nyan cat run around your shirt to give everyone around you a dose of geeky randomness.

Want it? Head on over to tshirtOS.com to find out more.

[via Dvice]


Inhabitat’s Week in Green: 30-foot ‘Buckyball’, Olympic stadium Lego replica and the ‘Mantabot’

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

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Building a robot that can stand and walk on two legs like a human is challenging enough — but what about a robot that swims like a human? A team from Tokyo University of Technology has created the Swumanoid, a swimming robot that’s based on the physique of a human swimmer and can swim a variety of strokes. But why should a swimming robot have to look like a person? Most fish swim much faster, more gracefully and more efficiently than humans. That’s why scientists from the University of Virginia are developing the Mantabot, a robot that looks and swims like a ray.

Continue reading Inhabitat’s Week in Green: 30-foot ‘Buckyball’, Olympic stadium Lego replica and the ‘Mantabot’

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Inhabitat’s Week in Green: 30-foot ‘Buckyball’, Olympic stadium Lego replica and the ‘Mantabot’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Aug 2012 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TshirtOS is web-connected, programmable, 100 percent cotton (video)

TshirtOS is webconnected, programmable, 100 percent cotton

An LED display, camera, microphone, speaker and accelerometer all packaged into a t-shirt and controlled via your smartphone? That’s the concept behind tshirtOS, a wearable platform for “self-expression” that currently only exists as a prototype. It can show off tweets, play music videos, capture belly-height photos and send them off to Instagram, and pretty much do anything except play percussion. CuteCircuit, which came up with the idea in cahoots (inexplicably) with Ballantine’s whisky, says it’s about to conduct product tests and will mass produce the smart-shirts if enough folks register interest. There’s no Kickstarter page, definite specs or pricing for any of this, but based on CuteCircuit’s history and the video after the break we’re inclined to believe TshirtOS is more than just viral marketing stunt for the sake of a dram — click onwards and judge for yourself.

Continue reading TshirtOS is web-connected, programmable, 100 percent cotton (video)

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TshirtOS is web-connected, programmable, 100 percent cotton (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 05:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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