Hasta La Gadget!

If only we’d heard of this earlier! Our own Brian Chen killed his iPhone by carelessly tossing a glass of water at it and confounded the mistake by weeping cry-baby tears all over the thing. If he’d been using this inflatable, waterproof iPhone case, though, he’d still have his trusty 3G.

The case lets you use the phone as normal, too. You can plug in some waterproof headphones to a clever slot which routes electricity and not water to the actual jack, you can use both the home and the off button and the camera has a window to peek out of. You can even use the touch-screen through the plastic cover.

A lanyard means you can swim with your iPhone round your neck, an armband is a little more practical for the same thing, and the earbuds also come in the box. A bargain at ¥3,280, or $34. Or you could, you know, wait until you have already dunked your phone and then put it in a box of rice, like Brian. The same rice that manages to stay dry for months even in a humid climate. How did that work out for you, Brian?

Product page [Sanwa via The Giz]

See Also:

• Rest in Rice: My Poor, Dead iPhone (2007 to 2009)
• IPhone Water Sensor Revealed
• iPhone Includes Water Damage Indicator

Unlike pretty much every other cassette tape hack we have covered (and there have been a lot) the Cassette Tape USB Hub is an actual, real, factory made product, and not an old tape with a few electronic gubbins stuffed inside. And why not? After all, USB hubs are almost universally dull (or hideous ‘novelty’ designs).

The hub’s case is an exact copy of the old-style cassette, right down to spinning wheels inside. It’ll even fit inside an old cassette box, if you still have one laying around. The catch is that this hub costs $25, which is a little steep for something likely to spend most of its time tucked behind a monitor, hidden from view.

Product page [Vat 19 via BBG]

See Also:

• Retro Cassette Deck Will Hook Up to Almost Everything
• Cassette
• Cassette Tape Belt Buckles
• Cassette Dock

This might look like a joke product, but designer Paul Kweton has actually built and used the Ring-O-Star (ho ho) bike cup holder. The silicon ring attaches to a bar-end via an aluminum expanding bolt, and then the cup of hot joe is placed inside ring and transformed into a dangerous weapon.

This is obviously a bad idea, but if used for a bottle of water or a soft drink (in a can, of course) it could be a handy addition to a bottle cage. Actually, let’s be honest. It’s a terrible idea. I would buy one, though, and load it with an empty cup and use both for handy storage and to baffle pedestrians.

Update: Our New York Bureau Chief, John C Abell, put me on the trail of a real, gyroscopically controlled cup holders, meant for use in boats or clamping to fishing rods. The $15 device swings on two axes to keep things steady, and comes with a insulating foam insert. You can even get it with a “Rail Mount Adapter”, which should clamp nicely to a handlebar. You’ll find it here. All it needs is some garish coloring and it could be marketed to the fixie-fashion crowd.

Coffee Cup Holder for Bikes by Paulbaut [Design Boom]

See Also:

• Coffee-Cup Power Inverter for In-Car Charging
• Cup Holder Blows Hot and Cold

Amongst the real gadget gems in Sierra Club Green Home’s “50 green Gadgets” list, there are some hilariously under-thought items. For every solar-powered Nintendo Wii system, there’s a Helios Solar Grill (the monstrosity above), which actually pipes heat from its parabolic sun-gatherer through to the grill on the other side, and manages to look like the kind of Jetson-junk “inventions” I drew as a kid.

Our favorite, though, has to be the Wind-Helmet Power Generator, a device so wilfully and impractically green that it is almost like the practice helmet Luke Skywalker wore in Star Wars, blinding the wearer to the obvious before them. The blurb:

The Wind-Helmet has a windmill in your helmet. Wind flows over the helmet, through the propeller in the rear, and stores energy in a set of rechargeable batteries for later use. Although there are a lot of power chargers out there, the Wind-Helmet allows for you generate power with something you will already be using. [emphasis added]

This is extraordinary. Lets take a look at the bike and consider what else “you will already be using”. Spinning wheels, perhaps? Wheels which have been used for decades to power the bike’s lights, or even trickle-charge iPods? Wheels which can generate power either with a dynamo or an almost drag-free rare-earth magnet setup?

But, you know, a giant, Tron-style helmet with a bunch of fans and turbines inside, hooked up to a battery pack via a cable is much more efficient, don’t you think? We have a couple of suggestions ourselves. What about a pump somehow operated by the turning wheels which would squeeze air into a pressure tank. It would then squirt out into a turbine and the energy produced then stored in batteries.

Or what about giant loops of cable buried beneath the road, and bikes loaded with magnets. Bike lanes could be painted in swooping zig-zags to make riders cross and double-cross the subterranean wires and power whole cities. Or perhaps that is a little impractical?

We kid, but there are a bunch of handy little widgets in the gallery, too. Did we mention the solar-powered Wii? Amazing.

50 Green Gadgets You Can Use To Help Save The Planet [Sierra Club. Thanks, Emma!]

OK, we were wrong. We said, prematurely, that the business card was dead, when in fact all it needed was a new case. The NES Controller Type Card Case, to be exact, a ¥2,900 ($31) anodized aluminum folder with a pair of compartments within — one for your cards, and one for those you receive.

There are two designs, neither of which do more than the other. Each looks like an NES controller, but one has a fake mic and volume switch in addition to the fake D-Pad.

You know where we’re going here, though, right? The case should actually be a fully functioning controller, for an iPhone or a Nintendo DS, perhaps. And if you’re going to put a USB plug on there, throw in some flash memory at the same time. Then it could be a little closer to justifying the price-tag.

Product page [GeekStuff4U via Akihabara News]
See Also:

• Augmented Reality Business Cards: WoW For Suits?
• LEGO Business Card
• How to Make a Business Card Vanish, Palm a Coin