Hasta La Gadget!

Most of us are too young to remember when televisions were black and white, and came in wooden cabinets. Heck, some of you guys might not even remember tube TVs. If you’d like to transform one of today’s most popular gadgets into a classic TV set, then check out the V-luxe iPad stand.

The V-luxe stand will hold all three generations of the iPad, and will make it totally look like an old television (with a 10″ screen), especially if you play some classic black-and-white video on it. The swivel stand allows you to view your tablet at a wide variety of angles. Each one of these stands is handmade from quality hardwoods by BKNYdesign, and has a speaker cabinet built into the base for listening to tunes or movies.

They’re available in mahogany, walnut, or cherry wood and will set you back $1500 (USD).

Activity bracelets and other fitness gadgets are a great way to get motivated to get into shape. Instead of relying on paltry humans, your love for gadgets will keep you running when the lactic acid starts to settle into your legs! Well, that might still be a pipe dream, but check out Lark’s latest release. It’s kind of like a minimal version of the Nike+ FuelBand.

The LarkLife will track your activity, from sleep patterns to food intake using a bracelet and a mobile app. For now, this will work only with iOS devices. It’s not waterproof, but splash-resistant, and has a pedometer inside to count your steps. It will be able to measure how long you sleep and how long it takes you to go to sleep. There’s a vibrating alarm built-into this band as well.

Just like other bracelets, you have to manually enter your food intake, which is a bit of a downer in my book, but the band uses Bluetooth Smart to automatically sync with your iPhone. It can also tell whether you’re running or walking, meaning that the app will log workouts even if you forget to enter them. The device will dish out advice during the day and reward “good behavior” with badges. It’s available for pre-order from Lark for $150(USD) and will be available before the holidays.

Last year, NASA engineer Mark Rober shared his cool see-through iPad costume with us, but while it was one of the more clever geeky costumes I’d seen in a while, it wasn’t exactly cheap to pull off – you needed a pair of iPads to do it. Well now Mark and his buddies have come up with a spin-off on his original concept, which lets you create fun animated Halloween costumes using any iOS or Android device.

DigitalDudz is an an app, which when combined with the appropriate t-shirt and some duct tape, creates some brilliant animated costumes. Most of the designs feature some sort of moving eyeball effect, which is quite creepy. Here, check it out in action:

And if eyeballs aren’t your thing, there’s always the iWound, a custom-made latex insert with bloody details, which when paired with the “beating heart” mode in DigitalDudz is about the goriest thing you’ll see this Halloween (especially if you place the heart somewhere unusual on your body – like your arm or leg.) There are also animations of maggots, snakes, spiders and gears if you’re going for some sort of steampunk look.

Pretty creative, huh? And with the app going for the grand price of FREE, you can definitely put together a cheap Halloween costume with DigitalDudz. The matching t-shirts sell for $23.50(USD), but you can always just use the app with your own t-shirts too. Grab the iOS app here, and the Android version here. The iWound latex insert sells for $34.50.

Be sure to check out the tips below for the best way to set up your DigitalDudz costume:

Sure, I like Diesel, but I never thought I’d see them make headphones. That’s probably one reason why Monster, whose widely-publicized split from Beats, provided the technical know-how to help make these. I’ll give the VEKTR Headphones one thing: they look unique.

These headphones look like they came out of some science-fiction movie. The cans are covered in jagged lines, that give them a sort of asymmetric feel. They remind me of a Lamborghini Aventador or an F117 stealth fighter.

Thusfar, Diesel is vague about the exact technical specs that go into these headphones. One thing I know is that they don’t have active noise-canceling, but are priced like a pair of cans that should. On the other hand, they do offer large, comfortable ear cushions and a microphone and remote for your iPhone, iPod, or Blackberry. I also like the unusual tri-folding headband design.

You’ll have to spend $279.99(USD) in order to get your hands on a pair of VEKTR headphones, though you can score a pair for about $30 less over on Amazon.

If you’re the DIY type that likes to whip up projects using different components and an Arduino, you’ll like the new ArduinoLCD from EarthMake. This device is an integrated color LCD that fits everything you need to add a screen to your projects in one package. The little screen measures 3.5-inches and supports touch control.

The display has an integrated 16-bit GPU and comes with a mounting bracket for easy integration into your projects. The display can be programmed using EarthSEMPL making it easy to design your own user interface. The resolution of the little color screen is 320 x 240 and it supports 65,000 colors.

The display has a 500:1 contrast ratio and can operate on 6 to 9 V of power, drawing less than 200 mA. The screen has 4 MB of integrated flash memory and can operate using USB 2.0 or Arduino Shield interfaces. The ArduinoLCD is available right now for $79 (USD).