Hasta La Gadget!

Infilta’s Bra Dryer is a concept design odder than most. First, it is an extraordinarily single-purpose device Then we must consider that despite looking very cool indeed, it is essentially quite absurd — a model of a pair of breasts with a couple of whirring fans inside. Third, the California company actually has a patent pending and is planning to have this device in the shops by 2010.

The Bra Dryer is a name almost Australian in its wonderfully blunt honesty. It takes a boulder-holder and keeps it firmly in place as it dries. This should, apparently, help to keep the cups perfectly formed for a long time.

To accommodate different sizes, the design is modular:

 

One size doesn’t fit all…
  That’s why Bra Dryer will come in different breast and chest size variations which you will be able to mix and match. Breast pieces made of silicon rubber are detachable and will come for bra sizes from B to DD. The torso part will come for size couples e.g. 30-32, 34-36 and so on.

Adorable, and surely doomed to fail. A tumble-dryer might damage delicate lingerie, but this thing takes up space and extra power. What’s wrong with a washing line, or even just slinging you smalls on the radiator?

Product page
[Bra Dryer via Core77]

This is Joshua Silver, and while those glasses he’s wearing might make him look like someone you wouldn’t want near your children, they are in fact a cheap gadget which could change the developing world.

Silver’s specs are adjustable. The lenses comprise flexible membranes containing silicone oil. Using syringes (seen in the picture), the amount of oil can be adjusted and the refractive index of the lenses changed. The syringes are detachable.

This is big, because it means a single, uniform product can be mass produced and then tweaked at its destination without specialized equipment. Silver has already shifted 30,000 pairs — 20,000 of which were bought by the US Department of Defense and sent to Africa and Eastern Europe.

The current price is a pretty cheap $19, but is expected to drop to a fraction of that as scale economy kicks in. Let’s just hope somebody a little less patronizing buys the next batch. According to the Washington Post, the DoD-shipped specs have been customized:

Those glasses have a small U.S. flag and "From the American People" engraved in small print on one side of the frames.

From a Visionary English Physicist, Self-Adjusting Lenses for the Poor [Washington Post]

Barack Obama had more than the Presidential ‘beast’ limo taking care of his safety yesterday.

According to some reports, he wore a suit made by a clothier specializing in bullet-resistant clothing during the inauguration ceremonies.

While no one from the U.S. Secret Service have yet to mention any details about the garment’s structure, some are speculating it may have come from the line by Colombian designer Miguel Caballero. As we noted last year, Caballero is well known for his super tough but flexible and business appropriate clothing (see pic at right), such as the $7,500 polo shirt that can stop a shot from a 9-mm revolver.

Due to some of the unfortunately rising levels of dangerous conflicts in Colombia and other parts of Latin America, the need for this type of clothing has also led to a spike in sales.

According to Caballero, many of his garments offer more than three levels of ballistic protection and they are about seven times more flexible than the Kevlar vests that are usually worn. Designers that use Kevlar tie together dense strands of the material (500 to 1,500 filaments per strand of yarn, according to Slate), which is then weaved into the clothing.

With close to 2 million people on hand to watch the president-elect take the Oath of Office, the level of security was understandably tight and every precaution was taken to ensure safety for all.

Earlier this month, we noted that President Obama will be using the safest Presidential limo ever built, the so-called Cadillac One (or simply, "The Beast"), whose toughness rivals a tank and seals off like a bank vault in the event of a potential attack.

Unless you’re Bono*, you will only wear your sunglasses in bright, outdoor light, which is why these Solar Powered Sunglasses are such a great idea. That they are shaped like infinity itself is a mere nerd bonus from the designers of the "Self-Energy Converting Sunglasses", aka SIG.

They’re just a concept right now, but we’d suggest that someone (please, not Oakley) gets making these things soon. Running a cable to your head from your MP3 player is an everyday task, so the wires shouldn’t be too annoying. The specs should also have built-in earbuds to cut down on clutter, and a much longer cable to hook up phone or iPod — the one in the picture is ridiculously short.

Add in a couple of LCD displays and a waterproof keyboard and I’d be in heaven. I could blog from the beach, simultaneously turning my skin into bronzed, wrinkled leather as is the custom of all Brits living in Spain.

Product page [Yanko via BBG]

*If you are Bono, we have a request. Any chance of releasing a decent song ever agian? Your last good album came out 20 years ago.

See Also:

• Medusa: Crazy, Dreadlocked Leather Wig Hat Thing From Oakley …
• Shock! Oakley Makes Non-Hideous Sunglasses
• Review: Oakley Split Thumps Turn You Into Dork Incognito