The modern convenience of air travel comes with great costs: High-priced flights, TSA junk-groping, and of course the dreaded overage fees for checking bags that weigh more than 50 pounds.
The Rufus Roo travel jacket aims to solve at least the latter problem. The jacket lets wearers avoid the excess baggage fees at the cost of personal style. If your suitcase ends up heftier than you’d like, you can stuff up to 22 pounds of excess crap into the pockets of your Rufus Roo.
The jacket comes in adult large and medium for about $50, or around $40 if you’d rather turn your child into your pack mule. The jackets come in multiple colors, including purple, blue, or red and black with fancy zipper accents.
Please remember to stow your dignity in the overhead compartment for the remainder of your flight.
I might never have been near a snowboard, but I can see how these iPhone-remote gloves from Burton could be really, ahem, handy. The Burton Mix Master Glove/Mitt doubles as a wireless controller for your iDevice while the phone itself sits safely inside a cozy, warm pocket.
Instead of running cables through clothes, the Mix Master communicates with the iPhone or iPod via an RF dongle which plugs into the dock connector. Thus prepared, you can press buttons on the back of your hand to skip and play/pause your music, and adjust the volume.
The gloves themselves have leather palms, and are covered with a breathable, weatherproof, wicking membrane so your hands stay dry.
The only problem might be the price. At $160, you could afford to buy an iPod Nano and put that on the back of any regular mitten.
With three years yet to go, Nike has busted out Marty McFly’s 2015 Air Mags. Photo credit George Kiel III/Nice Kicks
Just 22 years after we first saw a glimpse of the shoe of the future, Nike has at last made the Air Mag, the self-lacing, light-up sneaker worn by Marty McFly in Back to the Future II. It’s not the first BTTF shoe Nike has made, but its certainly the one closest to the movie-prop original, and was designed to be an exact replica.
The Air Mag is also Nike’s first rechargeable sneaker. The shoes have a electroluminescent “Nike” panel on the strap, and LEDs glow from the sole and heel. What it doesn’t have is self-lacing laces. Maybe we’ll have to wait for 2015 for these, or maybe they’re just too damn hard to make.
The shoes, originally worn by Fox in the film, were created by Nike designer Tinker Hatfield in 1989. He didn’t give them much thought until 2005, when he started noticing online petitions (like this one) calling on Nike to release them. That’s when he considered recreating the unusual kicks. After six years spent reverse-engineering a shoe used in the film, he and Nike footwear designer Tiffany Beers felt they finally had it right.
Doc Brown is back! Air Mag Promo Slot.
So, how do you get your hands (or feet) on this awesome piece of movie history (or future)? You’d better be prepared to spend some cash. Nike is auctioning off 1,500 pairs of Air Mags on eBay, with the profits going to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s research. Prominent Googlers Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki have put up $50 million, with which they’ll match all donations.
“It would only make sense that the shoes be auctioned to benefit the foundation of the man who made them famous,” Nike said on the sneakers’ web site (Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1991).
They’re certainly much cooler than the Hyperdunk 2015s, which were pretty awesome in and of themselves. Unlike the Hyperdunks, however, I don’t think I’ll ever get my feet into a pair of Mags. But this time I’m totally happy with overpricing shoes, as the cash going to a good cause.
Nike's slightly less accurate Hyperdunks from 2008. Photo Charlie Sorrel
If you want to bid, the auctions have already begun over at nikemag.eBay.com.
The Mutewatch is like an iPod Nano, without the annoying iPod part
You know those silicone armbands that turn the touch-screen iPod Nano into an oversized watch? Imagine that you could have one of those, only without the Nano, and for €200 instead of €150.
You have now successfully imagined the Mutewatch, a watch named (presumably) for the silence that will gush from friends and coworkers when you tell them how much you paid for it.
The Mutewatch is actually pretty cool: Its face is a multitouch display. Tap it (or flick your wrist) to light up the LEDs which show the time, and tap above and below the digits to set the time for alarms. A motion sensor knows when you’re moving fast or hard and increases the vibrating alerts to match, and the watch lasts for a week or two on a single charge (charging is done via USB).
Actually, now I think about it, this might be better than the Nano, Apple’s most annoying iPod yet. At least the Mutewatch does one thing, and does it well. Apple’s crappy Nano attempts to do everything, and ends up doing nothing properly.
The Mutewatch comes in red, white or gray and is available now.
I’m not sure what I like the most about JawBone’s JamChain — the product itself or the promo video that goes with it. Starring Hasan Minhaj — comedian, actor, writer and alpha nerd — the spot is a geek parody of Ice Cube’s It Was a Good Day, with bikes instead of low-riders and a JamBox speaker instead of, erm, low-riders.
The JamChain is a piece of frivolous nonsense, a plastic chain with a cradle into which your punchy Bluetooth speaker slips, ready to be slung around your neck like Flava Flav’s clock. Best of all is that the JamChain is free to JamBox owners. Just sign into your MyTalk page (the place you go to make software updates and tweak settings), hit the “deals” tab and you’re there. You’ll have to pay shipping.
What I’m more interested in, though, is that handlebar mount for the speaker. I’d buy that in an instant.
The power created from walking creates a bridge from the phone to a cellular network, which dramatically extends battery life. Image courtesy of InSetep NanoPower
Taking the stairs could mean more time between charges for your phone.
Researchers at University of Wisconsin at Madison have developed a shoe insert that uses the impact of your strides to generate electricity for your phone. The prototype “footwear-embedded harvester” consists of two pouches filled with nanoparticle liquid metal called galinstan. It generates electrical current as it is forced through narrow channels, a process the researchers call “reverse electrowetting.” Power is stored in a battery in the arch of the shoe.
Other kinetic energy harvesters use piezoelectrics, which feature crystal sheets that polarize and produce energy through movement. The drawback is the technology generates so little power that an iPhone 4 wouldn’t notice the boost.
The power sneaker features the option to plug a phone into the shoe, but researchers Tom Krupenkin and J. Ashley Taylor sought a less cumbersome approach. They found the biggest draw on your phone’s battery occurs when it’s searching for Wi-Fi or a cell tower signal, so they attached a Wi-Fi transmitter directly to the harvester. The shoe, not the phone, powers the connection to wireless signals. They say that means your battery can last up to 10 times longer.
The device is also able to be directly connected to a phone, which could be useful for soldiers toting night-vision goggles, or marathoners who rely on their iPhone 4’s music for motivation. And with no moving parts, the system requires minimal maintenance, making it a boon for those in areas with little or no electricity.
Krupenkin and Taylor plan to commercialize the technology through their new firm, InStep NanoPower. They’re courting shoe makers to design an incorporated piece of footwear.
Styles and technologies change, but whatever we use to tell time, most people consider the wrist a sacrosanct spot reserved for a timepiece.
Watchmakers use old and new mechanics to perform the age-old task of measuring the passage of time. You don’t see many folks wearing a sundial these days, but people still embrace almost every other means of keeping time, from old-school mechanical watches to the latest gadgets using e-ink and microstep motors. Here are seven Wired watches that make dime-store digitals look staid.
Oakley Elite Full Metal Jacket
Can’t decide to put a watch on your wrist or in your pocket? Oakley’s got you covered either way with the Full Metal Jacket. It features a heavy titanium timepiece mounted in a metal band, but you can ditch the band and put the timepiece in a slick pocket watch housing. Either way, you’ll be up to the second with the day, date and a chronograph. Of course, the damn thing costs as much as a nice used car, but such is the price of style.
The Merrell Evera MJ comes in three colors including black, which pairs well with a Chanel dress. Photo courtesy of Merrell.
Cycling is a bummer for riders who don’t have the option to change clothes post-commute. Leather-soled wingtips slip on metal pedals. All but the tightest jeans require rolling up the pant leg to avoid chain grease. The problem is compounded for those who don heels, braving a bicycle route fashionably rather than comfortably.
Merrell, sensitive to this plight, will soon be releasing the Evera MJ, a heeled bike shoe with bottom contours that fit snug into pedals, and a rubber sole that grips where your Christian Louboutins would slip and scuff. The suede upper has elastic accents near the toe for flexibility while torquing uphill, and a Velcro strap secures the shoe to any arch. Added side vents ensure your trotters get plenty of air flow.
Merrell’s heels will be available February 2012 for $110. Until then, you’ll have to make do with your flats.
‘Hello ladies. Would you like to see my restraining bolt?’
If you’re a normal human male, your mother almost certainly used to knit you embarrassingly-patterned sweaters when you were a kid. If you are particularly unlucky, she still makes you one every single Christmas. And like every other human boy, you hated them, despite the love which your poor mother wove into them.
Now, though, there is a solution to this painful yearly ritual: the R2-D2 sweater. The one you see above was put together by EricaKnit and sells on Etsy. The sweater is made from merino wool, and its natural stretch makes for a nice fitted shape (unless you have a Gamorrean guard like gut, that is).
Currently her awesome $450 droidal jersey is back-ordered until December, but that’s where your secret weapon (aka your mother) comes in. Show Mom some photos of this sweater, and maybe a few photos of Artoo himself. Then, on Christmas morning, instead of tearing open a package to find yet another wooly garment adorned with festive birds and snowmen, you’ll get an awesome Star Wars-themed sweater. Bonus: If your mother’s knitting skills are anything like my mother’s knitting skills, the arms of the sweater will be about three feet long. Thus, they can hang at your sides and, if a passerby squints and looks at you in just the right way, they’ll look just like R2-D2’s legs.
Frederick James's Madoff Collection is nearly sold out, but some cases made from Madoff's summerwear are still available. Photo courtesy of Frederick James
While Bernie Madoff spends the next 150 years in prison blues for securities fraud, iPad owners can buy his clothes to protect their iPads in style.
iPad cover manufacturer Frederick James is selling sleeves made from Bernie Madoff’s pants. The collection comes from Madoff’s summer attire, taken from his beach house in the Hamptons.
Last November, the U.S. Marshals Service auctioned off Madoff’s belongings, giving the proceeds as compensation to victims of his Ponzi scheme. John Vaccaro, founder of Frederick James, bought up Madoff’s cashmere sweaters and chino pants to expand his collection and help victims of the felon’s crimes.
Several covers made from Madoff’s khakis are still available on the Frederick James website. The sleeves start at $250 and come with a certificate of authenticity.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
