Hasta La Gadget!

I wear glasses. I like them. I like how they look, and I like that they stop me poking things in my eye. But I can afford to buy them. For many, especially in developing countries, spectacles are an out-of-reach luxury.

Why? They’re just plastic, right? Some of that is the styling (or application of a designer label to a pair of commodity frames), but a lot os the actual shaping of the lenses. Enter a new breed of spec: adaptable, adjustable eyeglasses. Instead of solid, one-off lenses, these glasses have a hard lens at the front and a softer, flexible plastic sheet at the back. In between is a layer of viscous liquid with a high refractive index (light-bending ability). By pumping more of less of this liquid between the layers, you can custom fit your glasses to yourself, no expensive opticians or lens-grinding needed.

The main difference between manufacturers is the method of adjustment. Adlens’ specs (pictured) have a knob on the side which you turn to adjust the amount of fluid in the lens. Those from TruFocals have a slider on the bridge of the frames to do the same thing.

Why would you need adjustable lenses? For the elderly, one pair of adjustable glasses could replace glasses for reading and regular use. For the young, whose prescription can change rapidly, one pair of glasses could last a lot longer (assuming they don’t get smashed at school). And hopefully, should this technology become widespread, identical pairs of glasses (with basic, non-astigmatic corrections) could be made in bulk for the developing world and adjusted by the new owners themselves.

The biggest limitation right now is the shape. In order to work, the lenses need to be a perfect circle. Good news if you’re John Lennon or a high-school poet, bad news for everyone else.

Adlens product page [Adlens]

Trufocals product page [Trufocals. Thanks, Jessica!]

See Also:

• $20 Self Adjustable Pump-Action Glasses

The Fingerist is a $150 iPhone holder that makes you look even more like an idiot when you pretend to play guitar. The little box has a slot into which you slide the phone. You then fire up your favorite music-playing app (a virtual guitar or keyboard, for example) and commence to play (what I believe the kids refer to as “rocking out”). Because of its size, and two metal nubbins to connect a strap, the Fingerist makes the experience a little more like holding a guitar, and a little less like strumming a slab of glass and metal.

For that $150 (the price of an actual cheap electric guitar) you also get a 3-watt built-in speaker (3 AA batteries required) and a line-out socket to hook it up to an amp.

I suppose that it could be fun as a novelty, but the still-tiny size means that when playing, you’ll always look like you’re performing hammer-ons up at the top of the fretboard, which is the guitar equivalent of crossing your arms at the wrists whilst playing air-drums.

Despite this, I love the retro, blocky faux-wood design. It would make a great iPhone speaker dock, too, without all the guitar-playing shenanigans.

Fingerist [Evenno via Uncrate]

See Also:

• Make It: iPhone Guitar Connection Kit
• Hook Your Guitar to Your iPhone and Rock Out with iRig
• Turn Your iPhone Into an Electric Guitar With iShred
• PocketGuitar is Best iPhone Hack Ever
• Mobile Phone Guitar Makes Sweet Music
• Guitarbud Hooks Axe to iPhone

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We recently got some hands on time playing Microsoft’s new motion based Kinect at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. Just as Chris Kohler reported over at Game|Life, the interface definitely gets you off the couch causes some copious perspiration. And, yes it’s much like the Wii; your butt is no longer anchored to the futon and you’re actively engaging with your video games.  But the lack of any sort of physical controller is extremely odd. (Your body is scanned and tracked as your avatar mimics the movements you make in meatspace.) The self-conscious weirdness of reaching out into the air and gripping a non-existent steering wheel is something I’m not sure folks who spent the better parts of their childhoods gripping a Nintendo controller will readily take to.

And that’s a serious question that Kinect raises: is this active way of interacting with your video games sustainable? The fact that Wii Fit has sold over 22 million copies might seem to be a resounding “yes” but I’m not sure if it’s something that will translate over to games where you’re racing cars or blowing aliens up. Will you want to come home after working for eight hours, fire up Kinect and traipse around Reach, looking for the Covenant? Or would you rather gun down some Elites from the comfort of your couch? Unless it meant exercising Force powers, I think I’d rather have some sofa time.

After playing Kinect Joy Ride and Kinectimals for the better part of a half hour, I was a tad tired physically, but mentally wiped out. At the end of the day I’m not entirely sure if people will want to shell out $60 for a game that demands so much active participation. I can see Kinect becoming a fun little silo of games you play at parties on multiplayer mode. But for solo campaigns, I seriously doubt gamers will be able to maintain steady interest.

Wet Circuits may sound like a porn-site for robots, but it is in fact a store dedicated to a waterproof power-strip. The $40 strip, seen doing its stuff in the video above, has a few tricks up its sopping-wet sleeve to prevent you from electrocuting yourself when plugging things in.

The strips are sealed and the conductive parts are coated to stop them coming into contact with water. The power only flows to the plug when the pins are fully and correctly inserted. This has the pleasant side-effect of allowing your kids to poke paperclips into the socket in safety, and also cutting the risk of sparks. There is also a cut-out which cuts in at 100ºC (212ºF).

All this ignores the fact that you probably shouldn’t actually be plugging anything into the strip anyway: Your TV isn’t going to be any safer when perched on the end of your bathtub if used with this adapter. In this regard it seems about as practical as a pair of bulletproof contact-lenses.

So, a website with a “Dr” Jolin pouring water onto electrical outlets and conducting snuff-tests with deadly current, all on video? Maybe this is a porn-site for robots after all.

Waterproof Power Strips [Wet Circuits via the Giz]

See Also:

• Modular Power Strip with Ejector Slots
• Clockwork Power-Strip Rations Juice
• iGo Green Power Tower Surge Protector
• Power-Strip Extender Means You'll Always Make Friends
• Power Plugs

This is the sticker your iPad was made for: The iconic rainbow-colored Apple designed by Rob Janoff back in 1976, reproduced in self-adhesive vinyl.

Due to all that battery packed inside the iPad’s slim frame, no light reaches the rear case, so we are deprived of the glowing apple found on the lids of MacBooks. The black plastic apple that sits there instead provides a welcome textural difference for the fingers to fondle while reading, but it lacks glitz. Still, it’s a lot better that the almost impossibly lame original Apple logo, which featured ragged scrolls and a picture of Isaac Newton under an apple tree. That logo, swiftly replaced, would have looked more at home on a Lynyrd Skynyrd album cover than on a piece of consumer electronics.

This multi-hued sticker will cost you just $3.50 from the Etsy store. If you buy any other, larger vinyl design from the same seller’s store, they’ll throw this one in free. Not bad. If Apple was in any way nostalgia-minded, it should include these stickers in the boxes of its products instead of those awful, thin white stickers that we throw away by their thousands every day. Or worse, find stuck on the back of a Toyota Prius, like I saw once on a visit to – you guessed it – San Francisco.

Retro Apple Logo Decal for iPad [Etsy/CoolDecal]