Hasta La Gadget!

For those of us who tend to travel a whole lot, you would know that getting enough rest along the journey is key to ensure that you arrive at your destination as fresh as possible, and this mantra is even more important if you happen to cross several time zones along the way. Forget about the in-flight entertainment, get some sleep. The thing is, our necks tend to feel plenty of strain when we sleep on those contoured seats that never seem to fit the curves along your body, and since most of us travel cattle class, here is a little something that might help you out – the £19.99 Hoodie Travel Pillow.

The Hoodie Travel Pillow will arrive in black, gray and red colors, where it boasts of an inflatable neck-brace style support alongside an integrated hood. Being made out of comfortable fleece material, it comes with a special ‘privacy’ drawstring to stash away your identity in a jiffy, not to mention ensuring that harsh fluorescent light or sunlight will be kept at bay. Something tells me that version 2.0 of this, assuming it ever rolls off the production line, would be accompanied by a pair of built-in speakers for some private entertainment.
[ Hoodie Travel Pillow copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

I once used my hoodie as a pillow when I got to the airport ten minutes too late and missed my flight. That probably didn’t serve as the inspiration for the creation of the HoodiePillow, although I can’t help but recall that particularly bad experience when I saw this kooky pillowcase.

Novelty aside, I can think of a couple of good uses for the HoodiePillow. For one, you can ‘wear’ it to shield your eyes from the outside world. So if you use eye shades, then you might want to use this as an alternative. Since it has a built-in pocket, you can use it just as you’d use a regular pocket on a regular hoodie, like for holding your phone or music player when you’re using it or listening to music when you’re lying down.

The HoodiePillow pillowcase is available online for $24.95 (USD). Just don’t try to wear it while walking down the street.

[via Oh!Gizmo]

I’ve got a confession to make to my wife. Without her approval, I’ve been gradually transforming our basement media room into a shrine to all things geeky – with a decided tilt towards retro video games. I now know what pillows I must purchase for the couch. As a matter of fact, I just paid for them as I write this.

These awesome retro pillows look like classic NES game cartridges – though they feature some non-existent games on them – presumably because nobody wanted to pay Nintendo some exorbitant licensing fee. At least I don’t remember playing Unicorn’s Revenge or Lava Jump on my old 8-bit system. But then again, my brain might have been deprived of oxygen from blowing on all of those cartridges.

The pillows are made from polyester, and they measure 14″ x 12″ x 3.5″ each, which makes them too big to cram into your console, but much more comfortable than sitting on a stack of actual cartridges.

You can order a pair of the Retro Video Game Pillows over at ThinkGeek for $34.99(USD). Now when can I have some Atari 2600 cartridge pillows?

You could monitor your sleep using the science of actigraphy but, as we’ve learned, accelerometers don’t always make for the best slumber trackers. The real deal stuff, used by scientists, requires all sorts of electrodes, which are a tad cumbersome and tend to yank out hair. Sony is proposing a system that removes the glue and sticks the sensors in your pillow. This is according to a patent application the company filed that proposes, among other things, an advanced alarm clock that monitors brain waves to detect when you enter and leave REM sleep. One particular example has it guiding users though an efficient power nap, by starting a timer once they’ve started dozing and only waking them once they’ve come out of a deeper sleep state. The proposed alarm could take any number of forms, from a buzzer, to a flashing light or bed shaking motor. To dig through the application for yourself hit up the source link.

Filed under: Sony

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Source: USPTO

It’s not the first time Engadget editors have stepped foot at Nokia House — the company’s HQ in Espoo, Finland — but it’s always a treat, and our visit this week is no exception. Today we took a walk down memory lane, and spent some time with several Nokia handsets — from one of the very first mobile phones to the Lumia 920. We played with some of the more iconic models and designs, such as the 1011 (first GSM handset), 1610, 7700 / 7710 (S90), 7280 (lipstick phone), 770 / N800 tablets, N-Gage / QD, 3300, 8800, 8110 (from the Matrix movie), N93 / N93i, N91, N92, N76, N95 and finally the 7650 (the first handset running Symbian). In addition, we also got to handle some of the Lumia 820 and 920 accessories, including the Fatboy wireless charging pillow and JBL-branded Power Up speakers. Check out the gallery below then hit the break for our hands-on video. Oh, and don’t forget to tune in tomorrow for our live Q&A with Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop.

Update: That music-centric handset which uses an IBM Microdrive is the N91 (not N90) and was announced in 2005 (not 1995), and that flip-phone is the N76 (not the N75) — sorry for the slip in the video.

Zach Honig contributed to this report.

Continue reading Engadget visits Nokia House, walks down memory lane (video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Engadget visits Nokia House, walks down memory lane (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Sep 2012 13:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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