Hasta La Gadget!

Burley, better known for its bike-trailers for carrying kids and pets, has come up with a lightweight, foldable bike trailer for carrying, well, anything. As long as it weighs under 60-pounds.

The new Burley Travoy looks a lot like a roll-along suitcase trolley. Once unfolded, the Travoy hitches to your bike’s seatpost and sits at around 45-degrees, ready to tow. As part of Burley’s Urban Trailer System, the Travoy can also be paired with a range of bags that turn it into a kind of trailer/pannier mashup.

The trailer is all about portability. The sub 10-pound Travoy is made from aluminum and the folks at Burley say that it is very stable. You can quickly hitch it and remove it from the bike and wheel it indoors (or around the market) just like a shopping trolley. There is even a bag for the trailer itself so you can store or carry it with you.

The Travoy is currently under testing, so we don’t know how much it will cost. You can check out more pictures over at Burley’s Flickr photostream. We particularly like the idea of using this with a folding bike: a great compact cargo solution.

Burley Travoy [Flickr. Thanks, Eric!]

Burley trailers [Burley]

Back in 1982, Clint Eastwood flew Firefox, an airplane that had thought-controlled weapons. That was a movie (based on a pretty good book), and the plane cost millions of dollars. Now, for real, you can control a computer with your thoughts and feelings for just $300.

The Emotiv EPOC headset is being marketed as both a gaming device and as an aid for the disabled. It has 14 EEG electrodes to monitor brain activity, a gyroscope so it knows where you noggin is in space and packs a li-ion battery for 12 hours of use. It is also wireless, and charges via USB.

The headset reads brain activity related to facial movements, and uses this to infer your emotional state and intentions. This is then translated in software to control various applications, from games to photo viewers to an on-screen keyboard. And of course, any application or machine could be made to do anything with the input, from steering a wheelchair to, we guess, firing the weapons systems on a stolen, cold-war era Soviet fighter plane.

There are three kits, and all flavors come with the same telepathic hat. The difference is in the software. The basic $300 version works with your PC (no Mac version), the $500 developer version allows writing of apps that will work with the EPOC, and a $750 Researcher SDK allows access to the raw EEG data for boffins to study.

What is most striking, once you get over the idea of a thought-controlled computer, is just how cool the EPOC looks. Instead of being some dorky or embarrassing medical aid, it looks like something straight out of a sci-fi movie. But then, we guess it is straight out of a sci-fi movie.

EPOC Product page [Emotiv]

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Friday published a trademark application for the term “Magic Trackpad,” which was filed earlier this week by Apple. The filing might allude to a rumored product we first heard about last year.

As is often the case with trademark filings, the item described by the application is too broad to draw any solid inferences on just what exactly a Magic Trackpad would be:

Computers; computer software; computer operating system software; computer utility software; computer hardware; computer peripherals; scanners; touchscreens; keyboards; computer mice; trackballs; trackpads; touchpads; light pens; joysticks; game controllers; graphics tablets; digitizers; cables and connectors; flash memory drives; USB drives; solid state storage devices; barcode readers.

However, the name of Apple’s new mouse is Magic Mouse, which has multitouch, so it’s likely this trademark is referring to a multitouch trackpad that will ship as a peripheral. Apple’s MacBooks already ship with multitouch glass trackpads, and we’d see no reason for Apple to file for a unique trademark unless it’s planning to sell it as a standalone product.

Most interesting about this particular trademark filing is we heard whispers about a multitouch trackpad gadget last year. Blogger John Gruber, who’s known for occasionally leaking details on Apple gadgets immediately before their release, alluded to a multitouch trackpad for desktops among a pile of other Macs he leaked accurately in October 2009. He labeled the trackpad as a “wild card,” acknowledging he was unsure of that particular item, and no such product was released in October.

Via Patently Apple

Photo of a MacBook Pro’s multitouch trackpad: huskermania/Flickr

Back up your files on this thumb-drive and you’ll keep your data from crossing to the Dark Side. The lightsaber drives hook up using a USB plug hidden inside the handle and can store just 1GB each, which is hardly enough to justify their $20 price-tag.

The lightsabers do at least make good use of the normally annoying flashing lights found on almost all pen-drives: When you plug them in they will glow, either with the malevolent red of Darth Vader or the moronic, headstrong and self-centered green of Luke Skywalker.

Available now, as officially endorsed Lucasfilm collectables.

Japanese Lightsaber USB Thumbdrive [Think Geek]

We bring you the most awesomest Wii accessory ever, the completely home-made Ghostbusters Wii Proton-Pack which, according to its maker Jack, is the “first ever fully fictional Wii Proton-Pack” in the world.

The kit consists of a backpack (with glowing blue LEDs) and a wand, into which the Wiimote and nunchuk are slotted. It’s made from pure junk, consisting of a “combo of kit-bashed pieces, PVC piping, styrene strips, bondo, [an] air-brush cleaning canister and various miscellaneous plastic housing bits.”

Now Jack can put this unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back and play the Wii version of Ghostbusters. Don’t cross the streams!

Nintendo Wii Proton Pack [GB Fans via Gizmodo]