Hasta La Gadget!

A lot of people I know play it safe when it comes to their outfit choices because they don’t think they can pull off the more fashionable or edgy look. But if there’s one thing I learned, it’s that being ‘fashionable’ doesn’t mean you have to totally be out there.

In fact, you can still be outrageous subtly, as these tooth-soled shoes will allow you to be when you put them on.

These shoes by British studio Fantich and Young look like your typical pair of black shoes when viewed from above, but take a closer look and you’ll see that all is not normal. Instead of a rubber sole, these shoes are lined with teeth at the bottom.

They’re fake teeth, thankfully, so no humans were harmed in the making of these shoes. Regardless, they’re still pretty hard to stomach.

What do you think? Can you replace your old Oxfords with these this tooth-lined pair (it’s called the ‘Apex Predator’ shoe by the way, which is as apt as names can get.) It’s not for sale though so if you want a pair for Halloween, you’ll have to make your own.

[via Designboom]

As head-mounted displays and motion controllers improve, the possibility of truly-immersive virtual reality in our living rooms continues to get closer and closer to our reach. However one of the big challenges is that you’ll still be standing still or walking in place in any game that involves moving around. While there are omni-directional treadmills that solve this problem, you won’t be able to afford one (or fit one in your living room) any time soon. Now, there’s an odd little gadget in development that aims to solve this problem without any moving parts at all.

Created by Julian Williams, the WizDish is a disc that you stand on, while wearing special shoes (called, of course, WizShoes), which enables you to move around in any direction, while standing in one place. The action isn’t exactly what I’d call walking, though – it’s more like shuffling. The 14 pound device relies on a small amount of friction between the bottom of the shoes and its platform to allow you to move around – without falling like you might do wearing socks on a slippery floor.

According to its maker, “The WizDish exploits the fact that you have 29 bones in each foot to balance with. You slide your feet over a slick concave surface in a simulation of walking that gives surprisingly similar proprioceptive cues to real walking. Once you can see where you are going [using an HMD] you take more confident strides and quickly forget it’s a simulated walk. The key advantages of the WizDish are that you can start, stop and turn with absolute ease…”

Personally, I’m not yet convinced, but then again I think that the cumbersome headgear and eye-strain inducing optics of HMDs still have some big hurdles to overcome before I’ll be strapping one to my head for a 3-hour gaming session.

(I have high hopes for the Oculus Rift HMD though. Please let it be as good as it sounds.)

[via Road to Virtual Reality]

People fall in and out of love all the time. Unfortunately, some couples decide to break up after making all sorts of wedding plans and preparations. Not only is that exceptionally heartbreaking, it also results in a whole lot of wasted time and money.

So many weddings are getting canceled every year (over 250,000!) that it has caused services like Bridal Brokerage to emerge.

Bridal Brokerage basically buys cancelled weddings and sells them to interested buyers who are hoping to put together a wedding within a short period of time. It’s a win-win-win situation, at least according to the wedding brokers: sellers get their deposits back, suppliers enjoy uninterrupted business, and the buyers can purchase pre-planned weddings at lower prices.

It’s an interesting business but the whole thing is pretty sad at the same time. One good thing (if there’s any to be found) regarding the sheer number of cancelled weddings is that at least the couples who broke up before tying the knot won’t end up getting a divorce a couple of weeks or months later.

[via Neatorama]

People put weird and inappropriate stuff up for auction on eBay all the time. Remember the woman who wanted to sell her soul on eBay? Or the multitudes of sellers who sold enchantments and potions online (before eBay forbade them to, that is.)

There’s another listing that eBay took down recently, and we’re glad they did for many reasons: the James Holmes rubber Halloween mask.

Now aren’t you glad that eBay took the listing down? Aside from the fact that it looks incredibly creepy, it’s just a horrible, horrible sight to behold.

James Holmes is infamous for being the one behind The Dark Knight Rises movie theater killings in Aurora, Colorado last July. I doubt anyone would want anything to do with whoever wears this mask on October 30th because it just shows poor taste.

The mask was put up for sale by eBay user realface13, who listed the starting price at $500. There were no bidders when eBay decided to pull the plug on the auction a short time after.

[ABC News via Softpedia]

Whether you’re a frequent flier, an avid outdoorsman or a kid who was a prime target for bullies back in grade school, when you were so thin you might as well have been two-dimensional, your packed lunch a bait for your physically endowed peers – wait where was I? Right. We’ve all lost a bag at some point in our lives. So it’s fun to see a concept for a suitcase that hates being lost as much as you hate losing it.

Conceptualized by Rodrigo Garcia, the Hop! suitcase has three Bluetooth sensors and a microcontroller. The sensors are meant to be paired with a Bluetooth-enabled phone. A pair of treads running on compressed air help the Hop! follow its owner – or whoever has his phone. If the Hop! loses track of the phone that it’s paired to, it will lock itself down and make the phone vibrate.  It will try its best not to cry, because it’s a big boy.

Head to Garcia’s website to see more details and pictures of the Hop! Forget about following me, what I want is a suitcase that can carry me around.

[via Slash Gear]