Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve all gotten a hair in our drinks at some point, though we probably all reacted differently. (Only the small majority of us hit someone and then was beaten by a group of hoodlums and left to die on the streets. That was me. Not the hoodlums, of course, the guy who almost got killed.) We’ve also probably all spilled a little bit of a drink in our facial hair, which I can assure you populates my face in a gorgeous manifestation of peach fuzz. With the Beard Cozy, you can cover your booze or other canned drink with the beard off of someone else’s face to help maintain the temperature of your beverage! Also, the manliness of your sole.

The Beard Cozy is a manly “mug cozy” for cans, and you should probably pick one up if it’s interesting to you. Also, you should pick up my phone, which I just dropped, and I don’t care if you find it interesting. I hope you find it uninteresting, because it finds you uninteresting you LOVELESS SLUG. “You know this is the last time I’m ever inviting you over, right?” I don’t care, since I just climb through your fire escape and watch you eat anyway.

This was made by Etsy seller armsandink, and you can cheat on me by heading over there, but the Beer Cozies are currently sold out. If you’re looking for more beard-related items, check out the Bearded Ski Mask and the Viking Beard Helmet when you’re prepared to move on.

[via Uncrate]

Jack Kieffer owns Cool Gizmo Toys, which is stuffed with geeky lists.

Have you ever lost your keys in your apartment? Then, did you end up finding them after searching for hours or days in the most unexpected spot? Then Hone was made for you. These Bluetooth dongles pair up with your iPhone or iPad using a free app and will emit an audible vibration alert when you tap the “Find” button.

Hone is definitely a useful gadget if you frequently misplace your keys or other small items. Keys can slip out of your pocket, into your couch and into the black hole that collects lost keys, change, and the occasional Cheese Doodle. Using this Bluetooth dongle is a perfect way to get them out of there. Each dongle has a 150 feet reach and 6 months battery life.

Hone was crowdfunded through Kickstarter. At the time of writing, the project is already fully funded. They had amassed $52,000 out of a projected goal of $46,000. There are still 22 days left in funding to snag yours. Pledges start at $49(USD) each for the Hone.

[via Uncrate]

Ah, the smell of real honest to god books. There’s nothing quite like it. The smell of a book can instantly transport you back to something amazing that you once read. But sadly you can’t get that smell from E-books. Actually, now you can.

Paper Passion will make your reader or tablet smell just like books of old. Hey, you wear perfume or cologne, why shouldn’t your E-reader? Okay it’s really meant for you to wear, but it makes more sense to spray it on your gadget in my opinion. It will set you back $115(USD) for a bottle, packaged in a matching, but unreadable book.

The “new book smell” perfume was commissioned for the Wallpaper magazine Handmade exhibition in Milan. But I have to ask, what about “old book smell”? That smells pretty good too. There’s nothing like the smell of an ancient paperback.

[via Roger Ebert via io9]

A team of students at the University of Maryland A. James Clark School of Engineering have been hard at work trying to perfect one of the ideas that many inventors and pioneers of aviation have tried to achieve for many, many decades. That goal is human-powered helicopter flight. The students have set an unofficial flight duration benchmark with their pedal-powered helicopter dubbed the Gamera II.

The team set the unofficial flight duration record on June 20, with a time of 35 seconds. The 30-second flight has to be verified by the National Aeronautic Association and if verified will become the new record superseding the teams previous record of 11.4 seconds set last summer. The team of students is only the third team to achieve human-powered helicopter flight.

The team is vying for $250,000 prize if they can become first team to build a helicopter powered only by person to liftoff and hover for 60 seconds. The helicopter has to attain a height of at least 3 meters at some point during the 60-second flight and stay within a ten square meter area for the duration of the flight. You can check out the video of the June 20 flight above.

Bowww-chica-boww-bowww. Scientists discovered fossils this month of ancient turtles that shows several mating pairs that went out in epic style. I imagine it went down like this, girl turtle shouts “OMG we are sinking!” Guy turtle says, “So what?” Scientists discovered the fossilized remains of nine mating pairs of an extinct turtle called Allaeochelys crassesculpta.

These turtles died in the act of procreating and were discovered in the Messel Pit in Germany. This particular location was once the volcanic crater lake in a wet tropical environment. The location was used as a mine in the past for the oil in the shale located there. However, it has since become one of the most important sites in the world for understanding what the environment was like in the Eocene era between approximately 56 million and 34 million years ago.

Other fossils discovered in the area include early horses, reptiles, primates, honeybees, giant ants, birds, and bats. The scientists speculate that the copulating 47 million-year-old turtles died when they sank into the poisonous depths of the lake. This is scientifically important because no vertebrates have been found in a mating state before.

[via Fox News]