Jul 26

Yoga Mat Organizer Will Increase Your Yoga Smugness Quotient

Posted in: Today's Chili, Toys and Games

Core

The Core lets you carry anything inside your yoga mat, and nobody will ever know

The best way to up your Yoga Smugness Quotient (YSQ) is to pile on the eco-hippy credentials. Thus, you carry filtered water in a reusable bottle, not environmentally catastrophic bottled water. You wear brightly-patterned, loose-fitting pants, probably with a drawstring at the waist.

And you even pay some shady environmental “agency” to make your incense-burning habit carbon neutral.

To aid you in your quest for a YSQ of 1.0 (the perfect score), you might like to take a look at the Core yoga mat organizer. It comprises a water bottle and a small canister (for keeping your meagre belongings) which screw together. When in yoga class, their use is obvious. When class is done, your yoga mat wraps around the tube and straps keep it furled and let you hang it from your shoulder.

‘Hello ladies. Want to see what I have under my mat?’ ‘Please, for the last time, leave us alone’

The Core is (or will be) made by Quirky, which means you’ll have to pledge to buy one and wait for it to actually be made. And this will be the perfect test of your yoga-hippy patience: The last Quirky product I ordered took so long to actually get made that after months and months of waiting I cancelled my order.

Core product page (Quirky via Oh Gizmo)

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Jul 07

Crayola iMarker, a Kid-Friendly iPad Stylus

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

The Crayola iMarker looks just like a real marker, minus the healthy solvent smell

Kids love the iPad. They love to jab their sticky little fingers at its screen, they love to drool over its elegant glass and aluminum curves and they love to drop it onto floors, hard tiles and soft carpet alike. Clearly, they should be kept away from my iPad.

But if you have kids, and you’re willing to let them use your $500+ tablet for such dubious reasons as “education” and “development,” then you might like to spend yet more money on the Crayola iMarker (made by Griffin). It’s a $30 stylus for kids which differentiates itself from other chunky styluses by looking like an actual Crayola marker, and by costing double the price.

Thus equipped, your offspring can attack your iPad and record their scrawlings. A free companion app, called the Crayola Color Studio HD, allows them to do all the usual things kids do with crayons: coloring messily over the lines, drawing pictures of mommy so poor that they’d be a fight-worthy insult if done by an adult, and making machine-gun noises with their mouths while they draw trails of bullets raining down on “mommy’s” head.

Or they could, were the app not so crashy. The App Store reviews say that the Color Studio HD crashes on launch, and when it does work, it lacks “sensitivity”, which causes the user to press harder on the screen than they should, even though doing so makes no difference.

Luckily, there are all kinds of excellent drawing and painting apps for the iPad which can be bought separately.

So why buy the Crayola iMarker in pace of something like the Alupen? Because it’s plastic, so when your progeny drops the thing onto the glass screen of the iPad, it won’t crack it. Available now, online or from Best Buy.

Crayola ColorStudio HD [Griffin. Thanks, Jennifer!]

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Jul 01

Lego Star Destroyer: 50-Inches Long, 3,000 Pieces

Posted in: lego, Star Wars, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

C-3PO: The odds of successfully surviving an attack on an Imperial Star Destroyer are approximately… Leia: Shut up!

Ever wanted to re-make the opening shot of Star Wars Episode IV in Lego, but could never find a Star Destroyer big enough? If you’d really wanted to do it, you probably would have just bought a whole lot of gray Legos and gotten on with it. But for the lazier film makers, we have just the thing: The Lego Star Wars Super Star Destroyer.

This thing is huge. In fact, I have a feeling the minifigs were Photoshopped into the image above because it doesn’t show the scale: the assembled kit is 124.5 cm long, or just shy of 50 inches, and weighs 3.5 kilos, or almost eight pounds. Lets just say your kids probably won’t be playing with this very often.

The kit has more than 3,000 (mostly gray) pieces, and comes with Vader, Admiral Piett, Dengar, Bossk and IG-88. It also comes with a tiny, cute regular Star Destroyer. I bet you never thought you’d hear the words “tiny” and “cute” used to describe such a hulking death machine.

Predictably, it isn’t cheap. The kit will sell for $400 when it launches in September. That’s a lot for a toy, but still not enough to stop me considering it.

Lego Star Wars Super Star Destroyer [Lego via Uncrate]

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Jun 29

Operation Star Wars Puts R2D2 On The Slab

Posted in: Today's Chili, Toys and Games

Watch as C3PO finally gets R2D2 where he wants him

The classic game of Operation is fun and all, but even in its sanitized card, plastic and metal form, digging into the faux-flesh of the human body is kind of gross. As somebody so squeamish he can barely cut his nails without feeling nauseous (don’t get into a slap fight with me unless you want to get sliced), it’s a game I’d love to play but sadly never will.

Or will I? Operation Star Wars has you playing a surgeon C3PO, operating on your little blue and white lover, R2D2. The robotic game of doctors and nurses has you welding the tweezers to pull out not bones but lightsabers, Leia holograms and tiny versions of Darth’s helmet and the Death Star.

Who knows how these things got in there (or how you’re supposed to grab a hologram with tweezers)? And who cares? If you’ve ever wondered what is inside the blooping body and brain of Artoo, now you know: tiny, abstract representations of the real world, just like we carry in our own heads. I guess robots and humans aren’t so different, after all.

Available for pre-order, shipping September. $30.

Operation Star Wars [ToyWiz via Red Ferret]

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Jun 24

Branch Holder Turns Dead Sticks Into Awesome Swords

Posted in: Today's Chili, Toys and Games

The Branch Holder will turn little Johnny into Zorro. Photos: Naama Agassi

Opinion on Naama Agassi’s Branch Holder could go one of two ways. You could dismiss it, clucking like an exasperated aunt, calling it useless. Who needs a gadget to hold a branch after all?

Or you might take one look and wish that Agassi had made this 30-something years ago, when you were a kid (if you’re as old as me, that is). The Branch Holder is a rubber strip with two holes. You thread it onto a suitably straight stick and that stick instantly — and magically — becomes a sword, turning an otherwise average kid into a swashbuckling pirate, a samurai warrior or even (gasp) a ninja.

It also offers a measure of protection to the knuckles of dueling children, meaning one less scrape to clean up after a scrap. Sadly, Agassi’s invention is a concept design only, but that shouldn’t stop you. After all, anyone with enough imagination to believe a stick can be a sword has enough imagination to raid the kitchen and chop up some Tupperware.

Branch Holder [Naama Agassi via Andrew Liszewski via Fancy]

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Jun 22

AnaPad, A Wooden iPad for Kids

Posted in: ipad, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

Sadly, the wonderful anaPad is likely to be nixed by Apple’s legal dogs

I let other people’s babies play with my iPad, usually to shut the whining brats up when they start to cry (again). The soothing tones and gently flashing pulses of SoundPrism usually do the trick, but inevitably these impatient monsters start to stab at the screen, harder and harder until I’m worried about them smashing the glass with their stubby, undeveloped fingers.

So, seeing as kids are pretty easily amused, I’m thinking of taking the anaPad with me whenever I can’t get out of visiting my over-breeding friends. The iPad-shaped toy is a magnetic whiteboard set into a plywood frame. Down at the bottom is a slot for a dry-erase marker, and on the screen are six magnetic “icons” which can be stuck, unstuck and slid around.

The AnaPad comes from Etsy makers twigcreative, and costs just $30 (or a lot less than a replacement iPad screen). Because of those icons, don’t give it to any child under three years unless you’re happy to see them choke. Also because of those icons, which so closely mimic Apple’s own as to be veritable lawyer bait, I advise ordering soon.

Available now.

anaPad – children’s creative tablet [Etsy via Cult of Mac]

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Jun 22

Floating PowerSnorkel Pumps Air to Divers Beneath

Posted in: Sports, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

Remember those old diving suits with the big metal helmets and the weighted shoes that let you walk across the ocean floor? The divers carried no tanks, relying instead on a partner pumping air down a hose from the surface. If the guy up top decided to take a smoke break, or just nodded off, the poor diver would suffocate.

So forget that lazy, good-for-nothing smoker on the surface. This is 2011 after all. Replace his sorry ass with the PowerSnorkel, a “Power Snorkel Hookah.”

The hookah consists of a buoy with a pump and compressor. It sends air down a tube to the diver(s) below. One diver can drop to 12 meters (40 feet), two can go to 6 meters (20 feet). In the latter case, each diver gets their own 6-meter tube which attaches to a y-divider.

A flag on top lets the pump and tank be easily seen and found, the battery will run for about an hour, and the kit includes a pair of regulators and dive harnesses.

It looks like a lot of fun. It’s no replacement for Scuba gear, of course. It’s more like a power-up for normal snorkelers. For recreational gear, its a little pricy — $2,500 — but then again, you are trusting your life to it, and it certainly costs less than keeping an unreliable, ne’er-do-well assistant on your team.

PowerSnorkel [Power Dive via Oh Gizmo]

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Jun 20

Sensor-Powered Pick Turns iPhone Into Air Guitar

Posted in: iPhone, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

It’s Kickstarter time again, only instead of bringing you the strange fruits of amazing amateur inventors, this gadget comes from a pair of seasoned toy designers.

The Air Guitar Move for iPhone is a guitar pick that plugs into your phone. Inside the pick is an accelerometer, so it knows just how hard you are thrashing. A pair of companion apps work with the accessory to actually give it some functionality.

First, a “free play” app lets you finger chords on the touch-screen, whilst you strum them with the pick. You can also shake the iPhone around to vary the sound, much like bending the neck of the guitar. The second app is a Rock Band-like game, and the pick and screen become the controllers.

Air Guitar Move is just one of many app-accessory combos that turn a smartphone into a musical instrument. Several app makers in years past have created apps that replace turntables, flutes, electric guitars and other instruments. A few bold musicians, such as the Gorillaz and iPad DJ Rana Sobhany, are already experimenting with music apps on mobile devices as cheap, versatile replacements for the traditional recording studio.

The brains behind the Air Guitar Move are Colin Karpfinger, who previously came up with Thumbies, an iPhone controller sold by Best Buy, and Ronald Mannak, inventor of the V-Beat AirDrums and V-Beat AirGuitar (a toy guitar with a body you clip to your belt and a neck and headstock you hold in your left hand. Suffice it to say, Mannak likes air guitar).

To get an Air Guitar Move you’ll need to pledge $39 or more. It already looks like the guys will make it: They already have alomost $7,000 of their $25,000 goal, and there are still 20 days to go.

Air Guitar Move for iPhone [Kickstarter]

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Jun 15

Funky Robot Balls Let You Play Glow-in-the-Dark Golf

Posted in: apps, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

The Sphero Golf app lets you control the Sphero robotic ball in a raucous game of nighttime golf

Remember Sphero? You will after you watch this awesome video showing it being used with the Sphero Golf app.

Sphero is a robotic, smartphone-controlled orb. We first saw Sphero back in December, and then got to see it in action at CES 2011. Measuring in at 2.9 inches in diameter, this omni-directional spherical roller-bot is Bluetooth-controlled, induction-charged, and compatible with both iOS and Android devices. Also cool: there’s an open API so developers can write their own apps that work with the nifty gadget.

It’s a little difficult to actually see Sphero Golf in action in the video since it’s shot at night, but the plethora of glow bracelets, glow glasses, and glow hats, paired with some seriously dance upbeat tunes, make it exciting nonetheless.

Sphero is set to be priced at $130, and a purchase will include the Sphero orb, Sphero Golf, and two other apps. A handful of other Sphero-based games will also be available at launch on the Apple App Store and Android Market.

Although it won’t be available for purchase until late 2011, if you already know you definitely want one of these Bluetooth-controlled balls, you can reserve one today.

Check out the video preview of the app, and Sphero, in action below.


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Jun 10

Xploderz, the Love Child of a Super Soaker and a Paintball Gun

Posted in: Today's Chili, Toys and Games

Xploderz are available in four flavors. Pictured is the XRanger 2000.

Paintball is fun, except for the painful bruises that remind you of that fun a week after the fact. And mega water guns like the Super Soaker are great, but… There’s just something so satisfying about pelting someone with actual, individual pellets.

Enter Xploderz, a (frankly mind-blowing) Nerf-styled, Super Soaker/paintball gun hybrid.

The ammo? Small balls made of an absorbent hydrophillic polymer composed of acrylic acid, sodium hydroxide, water and a little coloring. Although not as painful as being hit by a paintball, the balls could sting when they make contact. If one accidentally gets shot down your gullet, they’re non-toxic, but not recommended as a supplement to your daily diet. They could also pose a choking risk to children and the choke prone.

The guns are available in three models: the 11.5-inch, 50-foot range XBlaster 200; the 18-inch, 75-foot range XStormer 100; or the monstrous 36-inch, 85-foot range XBlaster 2000.

If you’ve got two kids, or want to make sure you always have an armed opponent, you can get a power pack of not one, but two XBlaster 200s called the Face Off 400.

With Father’s Day coming up, a family set of Xploderz could make the perfect gift. Dads love this sort of thing. Right, dads?

Xploderz [Xploderz via Oh Gizmo!]


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