Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve been blogging about Tenga’s beautifully conceived series of stylish male sex toys since way back, and we aren’t ashamed of it either! There’s something amazing about being able, through good design, to make a socially awkward product palatable enough to be displayed in normal stores next to the toiletries.

“Only in Japan” perhaps, but it’s a testament to sexual openness through consumer products. Now Tenga is collaborating with known fashion designers to create completely original designs for the Respect Yourself Project on World AIDS day.

The five designers were each given a blank slate to design on, which is a trend we’ve seen in packaging a product design from cigarettes to maxi pads (believe it or not).

If you’re free on December 1st, pop by LeBaron in Aoyama for the Respect Yourself Project Party, sponsored by Tenga and the respective design houses, and experience the beginning of global mainstreaming of personal sexual health. That, or the inevitable decline in world populations. Either way, it should be fun!

We were out on a Tokyo Trend Tour with a client this week, and came across this capsule vending machine in Ginza (gashapon) that dispenses wigs…for dogs.

Japan’s pet market is so evolved, and undeniably fashion-conscious, that across town in Harajuku we found a line stretching down the block with female dog owners waiting for a limited edition line to debut at the girliest pet shop you’ve ever seen.

The Hövding is an airbag for your head. Mounted in a bulky collar, which can be disguised as a stylish scarf, the bag explodes on when you crash and surrounds your delicate melon with an inflated hood. I know there are some drivers out there who hate cyclists, so here’s a video of the Hövding in action, with a sneaky car-driver mowing down an innocent biker.

Hövding means “chieftain” in Swedish, and the air-helmet was designed by Swedes Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin as a university thesis project. The collar contains the bag itself, helium to inflate the airbag and sensors which tell the Hövding when to fire. The sensor unit consists of gyroscopes and accelerometers which constantly monitor movement and deploy to bag when you’re in danger. The Chieftain is charged by USB (firmware can also be updated via the same port) and you switch it on by zipping the collar shut around your neck.

With a car airbag, the time to fire is obvious – when impact is detected. But as you see in the video, there are many ways a cyclist can fall that look similar to normal, safe activities in other contexts: going over the bars and falling forward is a lot like bending down to lock a wheel, for instance. To eliminate false positives, Haupt and Alstin carried out extensive testing with both dummies and – amazingly – stunt men and women.

So why wear this instead of a helmet? Style is the first thing that comes to mind. You can change the covers of the collar to match your outfit, and you won’t muss your hair while you ride. I’d probably feel less safe in this active scarf than I would in a passive, always-on helmet, but the Hövding seems to be reliable, and I don’t wear a helmet anyway.

There’s one more thing that this protector will do: adapt. When you hook up the hood to a USB port, you can choose to upload your “chiefs”. The unit contains a “black-box” which keeps the last ten-seconds of sensor info in a buffer and saves it on impact. This information is then aggregated to improve the performance of the software.

Bonus: fall off a bridge on the way home and you won’t drown, however drunk you are.

How the Hövding works [Hövding via David Report]

See Also:

• Explosive Dog Collar Keeps Heads Above Water
• Prototype Bike-Helmet Stinks When Damaged
• NYC Giving Away Cool Bike Helmets
• Bern Brentwood: The Only Bike Helmet You'll Ever Need
• Lazer Bike Helmet Turns You Into a Space Pilot

I guess this was inevitable. Macy’s recently unveiled the “Magic Fitting Room.” It’s a 72-inch mirror display fitted with an iPad interface that will allow users to superimpose a variety of clothes on the viewer, without ever having to remove so much as a sock.

The augmented reality-powered Magic Fitting Room is a collaboration between Macy’s and marketing company LBi
International. The technology made its debut last month as part of New York Fashion Week’s Fashion Night Out and is currently open for use at Macy’s flagship Herald Square location in NYC and will remain there through November.

The mirror also has a social aspect and will allow users to share their photos via Facebook, SMS, and email. “Do I look fat in this?” can now take place half way around the globe.

via Crave, PR Newswire

Apple’s most recent iPod Nano didn’t impress our reviewers much, but if you pick one up anyway you’ll probably need a way to carry it around. The attached clip on the back is great for pinning the device to your clothes, but if you’re going out on the town with it you may want a better way to carry it around. Thankfully, iLoveHandles’ new iPod Nano wrist straps can do the job nicely if you’re the type to wear a wristwatch.

The product itself is just a leather watch strap with a notch cut out for you to affix the iPod’s clip onto. Just put the strap on like a wristwatch, and then clip your iPod Nano into place. Since the lock-screen on the new touch-screen Nano is your choice of an analog or digital clock, it works perfectly. The iLoveHandles straps are available for $19.99 list, but something tells me they won’t be the last people to make these, either to sell or to make for themselves.