Hasta La Gadget!

LED taillights are everywhere, but most are pixellated eyesores. The 2014 Dodge Durango’s LEDs don’t suffer that problem. They give off a uniform electroluminescent glow, like someone wrapped Clu around the back of an SUV. It’s a neat look with some cool light trickery involved.

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The first bulbs in Philips’ color-changing, app-controlled Hue line were designed to mimic the omnidirectional shine of standard A19 light bulbs. This made them ideal for conventional lamps, but wasted a large portion of their light when installed in recessed ceiling fixtures. But today, Philips has announced the new Hue BR30 downlight bulb.

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While most alarm clocks try to wake you up with sight, sound or a combination of both, the ALARMclock sticks to facts. Sure, it’ll bleep and blare like any other clock when you set a time, but this clock will make you want to spend time more wisely in general. How? By bumming you out.

Designed by Chicago-based Fig Company, ALARMclock connects via Wi-Fi to a mobile app, which is where you’ll enter your login credentials to your bank account or social networks. You can set it to display your 401k, savings or investment amount, as well as an “an aggregate number which represents the scope and size of your social world.” If that’s not enough to get you to move your ass, you can also make it work like the Tikker and display how many days you have left based on your “age, health, lifestyle, diet, family history and other factors.”

It’s as beautiful as it is grim. Pledge at least $85 (USD) on Kickstarter to get an ALARMclock as a reward.

Before the invention of timepieces, our ancestors aligned their schedules with the rising and setting of the Sun. Mammoth hunting when the Sun goes up, then chill at Hairy Guy 34′s cave when the Sun goes down. Designer Jon Liow’s concept clock will let you partake in this ancient tradition of guesstimating with the Solar Light.

The Solar Light isn’t solar-powered. It gets its name from its function, which is to mimic the amount of sunlight in a particular timezone. By default, if it’s noon in your chosen timezone, the Solar Light will shine brightly, while its LEDs will probably be completely off at midnight. You’ll be able to select a timezone from a mobile app. You can also invert the light’s function (it’ll be brighter at night, darker during the day) and even turn it to a normal lamp from the app.

I think I’d love to have a Solar Light. It’s a nice way to imagine what your loved ones are doing if they’re abroad. It would be more useful though if it could also show you what the weather is like in that area.

[Jon Liow via Core77]

I really love having Philips Hue lights in my house. If I could, I’d do the whole house, but for now, I’ve only got my media room/arcade/mancave and my foyer done up with the colorful remote-controlled LED bulbs. However, one thing that has always been a bit lacking with Hue is the standard control app. It’s pretty limiting – it doesn’t do light animations or even acknowledge the concept of different rooms in your house. A little app has recently surfaced which adds both of these capabilities to Hue bulbs.

Goldee is a third-party app which has been made possible by Philips release of an SDK and API for Hue. The application’s primary purpose is to add dynamic looks to Hue which go beyond the static scenes enabled by other applications.

To use Goldee, simply add your bulbs and rooms to the app the first time you start up, then tap on the room and the scene you want to run. With the app’s built-in scenes, you can gradually watch the colors in your room shift to set one of ten moods. Each scene has been composed by a professional lighting designer and it shows.

My personal favorites are the pinky/orange hues of Night in Paris and the blue and green tones Aurora Glow. When you first fire up the app, you get the first eight scenes for free.

Sharing Goldee on social media opens up the ninth scene, while providing a review gets you the tenth. This is a clever take on downloadable content – instead of charging money for these unlockables.

As you can see from the video below, Goldee’s color sequences change very gradually – this isn’t a disco app. Goldee provides soothing and relaxing scenes which you can live with while you sit in a room and read a book, listen to music or throw a dinner party.

Goldee also offers a wake mode which can wake you up to its Sunrise scene, though without any Hue bulbs in my bedroom, I didn’t test this feature. You can apply scenes to multiple rooms simultaneously, a pretty slick trick that no other Hue control app does as far as I know. While the initial 10 scenes are all pretty good looking if you’ve got enough bulbs, Goldee promises a library of additional scenes you can run in the not-too-distant future.

A couple of quick notes about Goldee you should be aware of: 1) the app needs to be running – and in the foreground – to work; 2) there’s no way at this time to make your own custom scenes. I’m hoping that these are addressed in future releases – especially now that iOS7 allows true background applications.

You can download Goldee from the iTunes App Store for free.