Hasta La Gadget!

Do want. Ryan Callahan’s Tron-inspired kid’s bike was on show at this year’s Trek World

Unsurprisingly, the kids of my bike-polo playing friends are riding two-wheelers before they get to three years old, but for the children of less bike-obsessed parents, the usual path to learning to ride is through the push-bike. These are pedal-less bikes which the kids sit on and scoot along with their feet.

They are also usually dead boring, either fashioned from wood to a design that would make a Scandinavian mother proud (tasteful, but a total snooze for a toddler) or plain old plastic tat. Enter the Light Cycle learning bike, designed for by Ryan Callahan. As you can see, the Tron-themed light cycle is pretty damn awesome, and its long wheelbase also makes it look like an old Harley or even a miniature Honda Goldwing (Kinda. If you squint the right way).

Ryan isn’t just a cool-dad candidate. He’s also a designer at the great Trek bicycle company, and this model was built for this year’s just-ended Trek World trade show. Ryan not only mocked the bike up in CAD software, but built a prototype, too. If I was a kid, I’d think it was totally awesome and take it out for a spin immediately. As a fully-formed human being, I’d probably do exactly the same. Right up until my 90 kilos crushed it into the flat light grid beneath, at least.

Here, at last, is a hubless bike that I can get behind.

Learning Bike Concepts from TrekWorld 2012 [Bicycle Design]

Business and pleasure: The Duet vibrator comes with 8GB or 16GB storage

The Duet is a tiny, thumb-sized vibrator. That alone probably wouldn’t be worth writing about, but this vibrator is also USB-powered, and can be bought with up to 16GB storage.

The toy plugs into any free USB port to charge, and when full can give a terrifying four hours of pleasure. It has four different patterns of vibration, five power levels, and runs almost silently. This discretion extends to the design, which doesn’t really look like a sex toy at all.

In fact, the feature list is pretty good even before we get to the vibrating part. The silicone and metal body is completely waterproof. You can drop it into water up to three meters (10 feet) deep, and of course you can use the thing in the bath.

But the oddest part is the flash memory option. I can see the sense of putting a few gigs of storage into something that will be plugged into a USB port anyway, but what on earth would you keep on there? Porn is the obvious answer, but what’s the point if you can’t look at it and use the vibrator at the same time?

The Duet is currently seeking funding in CKIE, a Kickstarter-like site. You’ll need to pitch $75 to get the base model (it’ll be $140 when it goes on sale), $125 for the 8GB stick ($190 retail) and $250 ($350 retail) for the 16GB “Luxe” model which comes with a shiny gold-plated coat.

Duet product page [CKIE via Yanko]

See Also:

• NSFW: Make My Vibrator Vintage
• New iPod Touch Has a Vibrator
• Wind-Up Vibrator is Powered by Your Wrist
• Vibration-Powered Batteries Charge Themselves

This handheld SNES-a-like is almost as ugly as the real thing

Just as we feel nostalgia for the music of our youth, so we feel equal attachment to the video games played during our pot-smoking college years. For me the console that most often appeared through the smoky haze was the SNES, with games of Super Mario Kart and Streetfighter II played until we were too tired and stoned to taunt each other any longer.

So I have my eye on the Hyperkin SUPABOY, a handheld, LCD-screened console that plays SNES games as God intended: from the original game carts and not through a downloaded ROM file. This portable aspect, though, isn’t the one that gets me excited. I’m far more interested in the ability to plug in two proper SNES controllers (some of the best ever designed, according to my smoke-hazed memory) and send a signal to a TV via a composite-out cable. I could of course pick up a real SNES, but it’s just too big to keep around the house.

It looks good, although weirdly none of the features are guaranteed by Hyperkin. Still, the prototype had no trouble with the usual problem games like Starfox (tricky thanks to its “Super FX” DSP chip).

The price is a reasonable $80, to which you’ll have to add your own controllers. Still, I’m tempted. If only I can find some similarly old friends to play against.

Available soon.

SUPABOY product page [Hyperkin via Retro Thing]

See Also:

• Video: SNES for iPad, Controlled by iPhone
• Wiimote-Controlled SNES Emulator on iPad
• Flash-Cart Lets You Play SNES ROMs on Original Console
• SNES Emulator for iPhone
• Game Heaven: SNES Controller for Wii

If Rube Goldberg had been a theoretician, he’d have come up with the OneBike

Here’s pretty much the weirdest electric bike idea I have ever seen. It’s called the OneBike, and it combines an exercise bike and an electric bike into one. If that sounds ass-backward, read on: it gets worse.

It works like this. At home, the bike folds and fits into a base-station, turning it into a stationary bike. You pedal away and the usual monitoring options tell you how your heart and calories are doing. The twist is that your pedaling also generates electricity, which charges the bike as you work out.

Then, when you go outside, you unfold the bike and ride with electrical assist. The tagline reads “Electric Bicycle with a new charging method that induces exercise.”

What? I have a concept for you. It’s called a “NormalBike,” and it has a special drive system which — as you move your legs and pedal through the city streets — “induces exercise.” I think it could catch on.

Why do all the work in the living room (doubtlessly watching Tour de France reruns on TV), but do no work outside? Is it me, or does this make no sense whatsoever?

The only way that Byoung-soo Choi and Jun-kyeong Kim’ concept could possibly be justified is if it were shared. Imagine a couple: one is a fitness freak and can never sit still. He charges the OneBike in the evening after a day out mountain biking. His partner, either disabled or just plain lazy, takes the freshly charged bike out whenever he can be bothered to get off the couch and go out for Doritos.

Other than this rather far-fetched scenario, the OneBike frankly leaves me quite bewildered.

Cycle Your Way To Power [Yanko]

See Also:

• Livestrong Stationary Bike Wins 'Tour de Bedroom'
• $10000 Exercise Bike for Posing, not Riding
• Fetish: Stationary Bicycle Celebrates the Art of Spin
• Wii Exercise Bike: Biggest Game Controller Ever?

If the Wright Brothers had had this paper plane motor, they could have skipped their tedious double-decker bi-wing design

I’m pretty good at paper airplanes. With the right design and a few extra creases (a Concord-like bent beak at the nose, and a raising of flaps at the back end of the wings) you can make a plane that flies straight and true, and doesn’t loop-the-loop as soon as you throw it. In combination with the Electric Paper Airplane Conversion Kit, I have a feeling my planes could be unstoppable.

The kit comes from everybody’s favorite nerdware vendor, ThinkGeek. It consists of a propeller which pushes the plane from the back driven by a small motor up front, and the two are connected by a 7.25-inch shaft. Juice the motor for 20 seconds using the included battery pack and the propeller will spin for 90 seconds. That’s a lifetime in paper-airplane years.

Imagine. In 90 seconds, your plane could fly the length of your street. Or it could be sent off to the dorks on the other side of the office, giving you time to slip back into your cubicle chair and watch the results out of the corner of your eye. If you get really lucky, it might veer off course just as it passes the human resources department, shooting through the boss’ door during an important client meeting and getting those idiots from HR fired. They deserve it anyway, right?

The kit costs $20 and is available now. Batteries are not supplied, but awesomeness comes included in the box.

Electric Paper Airplane Conversion Kit [ThinkGeek]

See Also:

• Gadget Lab Notes: Surgery Robot Folds Miniscule Paper Airplane …
• Alphageek: Master of Paper Planes Aims for Space
• Falling with Style at the New Millenium Paper Plane Contest …
• Interview with The Paper Airplane Guy