Hasta La Gadget!

Good lord! This bomb, for remote control aircraft, is possibly the most panic-inducing accessory we have seen. Ever.

The Quanum RTR Bomb System fixes onto the bottom of your RC plane or helicopter and is released using a spare channel on your receiver. The bomb itself is made of tough fiber reinforced nylon, and will split open on impact and spread its payload. It even comes with a second release plate so you can fashion a bomb that looks even more menacing than this one.

We love it. We also realize that, in a world where a man accidentally opening the wrong door can shut down an airport for hours, using the Quanum bomb would mean instant arrest. Like an elder brother encouraging you to do something stupid, the product page at Hobby King has this wrong-headed suggestion: “You can fill the bomb with fine powder such as chalk to create that perfect explosion effect on impact.”

Can anyone say “Anthrax scare”? $17, get them while you still can.

Quanum RTR Bomb System [Hobby King via Oh Gizmo!]

Business cards work because most everyone has them. And if they don’t, it doesn’t matter: the transaction still works with a single card. Electronic business cards, like Poken, do not work. And they never will until everybody you want to swap details with is using the exact same application or widget.

But that isn’t stopping Poken from trying. The Poken itself is a little USB keychain in the shape of a “cute” character, with a large, fold-out hand. To exchange details, each Pokenator (we made that word up) must flip open the hand and then touch it to the other Poken in an annoying this-is-what-the-hip-kids-are-all-doing high-five.

Once precious bodily fluids have been successfully intermingled via RF, a light will flash green and you can promiscuously move on to the next hot thing in the room, for up to 50 different people. Once back at the computer, you can plug in and enjoy all the new contact details, as well as profiles for most social networking sites.

There are two main Poken models, the Spark and the Pulse. The $20 Spark is Poken-only, and the $35 Pulse also has 2GB of flash memory. Both, we predict, are doomed to failure, although the Poken FAQ does address the problem of critical mass: The entry points out that no cellphone based interchange has worked because they are unwieldy, or don’t work cross platform. We’d agree, and add that for this to even begin to work, the device and software should be ubiquitous.

So we present our solution. Apple should build this in to the contacts app of the iPhone and iPod Touch. So many people already have these that the tipping point has already been reached. But that software has to be already there, baked in, and not even a free download from the app store.

Poken Beta [Poken. Thanks, Alan!]

If you owned a bike when you were a kid, you would have, at some point, turned it into a “motorbike”. You would have taken a clothespin and a playing card and attached the latter to the chain-stay with the former. The resulting flickety-flack sound was enough to turn your pushbike into a roaring speed machine. And it was free, as long as you didn’t suffer punishment for choosing any card other than the joker.

The Turbospoke does exactly the same, only it costs $25 and is way better. It even uses a card to do the sound-making: There are three differently “tuned” cards in the pack, and they are made from longer-lasting plastic. These cards fit into a supplied clamp and onto this you mount the exhaust. And this is the best part, as the exhaust not only looks like a motorbike exhaust, but it acts as a horn speaker to amplify the sound.

About that sound. It’s less “motorbike” and more “lawnmower”, but it sure beats the old fashioned, home-made way of doing it. In fact, if the kids in your street ever get one of these, it’s likely to be just as annoying as the teenager who guns his two-stroke 125cc bike past your house twice a day. So annoying would it be that I’m thinking of strapping one on at the next bike polo game to psych-out the other team.

Turbospoke Product page [Turbospoke]

Turbospoke review [Gram Light Bikes]

A radio-controlled USS Enterprise. How does it fly? That was my first question after skimming the e-mail I got this morning from Hobby Media blogger Francesco Fondi, so I jumped straight to the video (you don’t need to watch all of it):

The answer is that, like a penguin, it flies underwater. Francesco tells us that “in Japan there is a new underground hobby for geeks who love to transform static kits in Radio controlled underwater spaceships”. While it won’t surprise you that in Japan there is a niche for every kind of nerd, the elegance of this kit mod is stunning.

The NCC-1701-A is built from a 1/350 scale off-the-shelf kit by a Japanese modeler named Starfleet Yokosuka. Instead of trying to put some kind of invisible helicopter blades on top, Yokosuka turned it into a remote controlled submarine. The real surprise is how space-like (TV-space, that is, not real space) the lighting is, and how elegantly the ship maneuvers under the water. We keep expecting to hear the whump of a Photon Torpedo hitting home, with the bonus that even the science-pedants could enjoy it without complaining about the lack of sound in space.

Star Trek USS ENTERPRISE NCC-1701-A e Space Battleship Yamato radiocomandata [Hobby Media. Thanks, Francesco!]

Domino runs are fun and all, but they’re a real pain to set up. Hours or days are spent lining up the little plastic bricks, painstaking work which is all over in a few seconds, an orgasmic explosion of tumbling tiles. It is spectacular, but somehow leaves you with an empty feeling inside.

What if there were a way to make setting it up as much fun as knocking it down? Unless you are on a very slow connection, you will have seen the picture above and now be way ahead of me. The Auto Domino Building Truck is a toy truck which drops dominos out of its rear end, lining them up in neat rows, ready to tumble.

200 dominoes sit in a rather long and top-heavy hopper. As the AA batteries power the lorry forward, it lays the bricks one by one, tick-tack, onto the floor behind it. You can choose a straight line (boring) or a curve by locking in the truck’s steering. I like to imagine toppling the first domino when the little truck is only half-way through its job and then watching as it panics, trying to outrun the cascade as it inevitably rushes forward, one tiny falling tombstone at a time.

As it says on the vehicle’s side: Action domino wonderful! $25.

Product page [Brando via BBG]