Hasta La Gadget!

It’s probably not the clock you need to build if being punctual is your modus operandi, but it’s sufficiently nerdy nonetheless. One Nirav Patel — which may or may not be related to our own Mr. Patel — decided to hand craft his own “sleep remaining indicator,” which utilizes a slowly rotating servo, a laser beam and a timer in order to work its magic. Put simply, the beam gets shorter and shorter as one’s wake-up time draws near, but oddly enough, you’ll never be able to see its awesomeness if you’re actually sleeping. Quite the conundrum, no?

Laser-based ‘clock’ shortens beam as wake-up time draws closer originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Jan 2010 21:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This wonderful piece of plastic sculpture isn’t just a Polaroid Land Camera. Take a closer look and you’ll see that it is a Polaroid Land Camera made from Lego. To see just how good it is, below is the original, from Flickrer Timmy Toucan.

That’s some rather creative Lego use right there, but the replica, showcased at the Lego-fetish site Brickshelf, prompts a rather interesting question. Why don’t cameras look this good today? Is is merely the retro-stylings of yesteryear which look so good to our eyes, bored as they are by the amorphous blobs of plastic that are today’s gadgets? Or is the Polaroid just a design classic, its beautiful lines obviously superior even when masked by the misty swirls of time?

Clearly something to consider as we end yet another year, and the instant nature of the extinct Polaroid is the perfect metaphor for, well, instant disappearing things. More importantly, is there anything around today which will look this good in the future? Thinking of cameras, I come up with the Olympus Pen, but that is based on an old design itself. Suggestions? Put them in the comments.

Lego Polaroid [Arvo/Brickshelf via Giz]

Polaroid Land Camera 1000 [Camerapedia]

Real Polaroid Photo: Timmy Toucan/Flickr

You know, a beanbag might be good for the occasional portable movie viewer, but if you’re cubicle bound and liable to look to your iPod touch or iPhone for news and entertainment on a regular basis, you’re going to want something with legs. Here we have a couple prime examples of devices fashioned from good ol’ fashioned LEGO brand building blocks that do the trick with the style befitting one of America’s favorite childhood choking hazards. Itching to get in on the action? Hit the read link — but not before peeping the video after the break.

Read – LEGO iPhone/iPod Touch Rotating Dock
Read – iStand

Continue reading Battle of the homebrew LEGO iPhone docks

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Battle of the homebrew LEGO iPhone docks originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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James May, presenter of the show Top Gear, is planning to build a house entirely out of Lego bricks. No big deal, you say. We’ve all done that. Mays is planning a little bigger, and is making a life-sized house out of the plastic bricks, including a staircase and a fully plumbed, working toilet.

Why? Because he can. Mays has another show called James May’s Toy Stories (the creative department was out playing Nerf the day the name was decided), which appears to be a kind of Top Gear for toys. Recently he built a garden from Plasticene (a non-drying Play-Do).

May has no idea how many brick’s he’ll need, but is said to already have “thousands”. We have a feeling it’ll take a few more than that, but we wish him luck. When it’s done, May plans to live in the house for a couple of days to try it out.

Top Gear star to build Lego house [BBC. Thanks, Chuck!]

Photo: Mirko Macari/Flickr

We see no reason why this Lego remote control shouldn’t become reality. In fact, quite the opposite. We don’t see why the world should be deprived of such a superlative setup.

Think about it. Not only can you, as designer fueledbycoffee intends, endlessly rearrange the switches to suit your tastes, much like icons on the iPhone screen, you can play around with this during more boring shows. Connecting the various components shouldn’t be too hard — the base could take care of power and actually beaming the info to the TV and the “buttons” simply contain switchable RFID tags.

Just don’t tell Sony. The company would probably bring out a licensed version missing the skip and fast-forward buttons to force you to watch ads.

Core-Toon:Dream Product – Lego Remote [Core77]