These two tables are designed after the two ever-loved Apple products; the first belonging to the iPod Classic. As a table, it is quite unattractive; however it does look like an iPod. There is a screen that dominates the top half of the table and the controls directly below it. The unattractive quality comes from the bulky look that the table has — a look that the common day iPod doesn’t have. When the iPod first made its debut it had a similar bulky look to it. In fact, if you’re to pull out your very first iPod Classic, had the colour of it been, they would look strikingly alike.

iPod Classic table

Perhaps the designer made this table during that time, or perhaps he chose this design as an art choice. Either way, the look is difficult to pull off in your living room, unless you have the right combination of furniture to match it with.

iPhone table

The second table is designed to look like the iPhone 4, and it definitely has a better appeal visually. It has a sleek black surface that could potentially match anything it’s put against. It is more simplistic in appearance than the iPod classic table is. Much like a real iPhone, most of the table is dominated by the screen. Considering the fact that the iPhone is touch-based, the use of buttons isn’t necessary. The borderline problem with this table is that it’s normal looking. It could easily be confused for a normal table.

That being said it all comes down to purpose. If the buyer wants the table to match everything in the living room, then the second table would be a more ideal choice. However, if the buyer wants a piece that immediately can be recognized for the device it’s representing, the first design is definitely a better pick.

For more iPod gadgets check out this iPod stand and this new iPod nano.

Okay, moving on we now solve the problem of knowing the time on this special watch. If you look at the picture of the watch, its dial contains many small rectangles; the ones we are interested in are those which are colored. Now, the colored rectangles can be any of the seven colors excluding black; the total number of colored rectangles are 32. The division according to colors is 2 red, 4 orange, 6 yellow, 8 green, 6 blue, 4 indigo, and 2 violet. Now for time division the red, orange, and yellow colors represent hours, where each rectangle of any of these colors represent 1 hour. The rectangles coloredgreen each represent 4 minutes; where as blue-colored rectangles represent 3 minutes per rectangle, the indigo rectangles are 2 minutes per rectangle, and the violet rectangles represent 1 minute each.

All rectangles colored
Now, that we are aware of that, let’s try to read the time. If you look at the pictures you will see that the watch is showing the time 6:43. Okay, first let us figure out the hours, now I have already told you that the rectangles filled with red, orange, and yellow stand for hours. You can see in the picture that there is 1 red rectangle, and 5 yellow rectangles. So, in total we have 6 colored rectangles that represent hours. This is in accordance with the time I told you (6:43). Now, we have to deal with the minutes. If you look at picture carefully you will see that there are 5green rectangles, 6 blue rectangles, 2 indigo rectangles, and 1 violet rectangle.

First we will get the total minutes individually. Each green rectangle represents 4 minutes, so 5 green rectangles will be 4×5=20 minutes; each blue rectangle is 3 minutes so 6 are 3×6=18 minutes; an indigo rectangle is equal to 2 minutes, so 2 will be 2×2=4; there is only 1 violet rectangle, so that stands for 1 minute. Now to add up. 20+18+4+1= 43 minutes. This is exactly the same as I’ve told you before. Reading the time on this watch will be time consuming but it’s a good enough item to just wear on your wrist, based on it style and design.

Or fast forward to the 22nd century, will this piano float on air thanks to a built-in hovering mechanism? Well, it is neither of the above, although seeing the Airpiano being played in the hands of the master is truly a sight to behold as it gives you the feeling as though you were watching a graceful martial artist, musical conductor or mysterious magician at work here. Why is it called the Airpiano? The answer is simple, really, as it features an innovative interface that is activated and controlled by moving a hand in mid-air above the flat display surface — as long as you remain within range of a sensor array matrix. This is only made possible thanks to custom software, enabling one to have a huge library of tones and sounds at a one’s disposal.

There is a total of eight Infrared proximity sensors together, all of them spread horizontally across the surface of the Airpiano in order to let you play three notes depending on your vertical hand position. These sensors have the option to be specially programmed to provide up to eight control faders for altering volume, pitch, and filters among others. Custom software paves the way for MIDI mapping while Open Sound Control message assignment ensures you will be able to project a vast soundscape at your spatial command. Should there arise the need for confirmation of user action, LED lights located at the surface of the instrument comes in handy.

While it might resemble the Theremin, the Airpiano’s inventor has this to say about his pet project. «What makes it so different from a Theremin, besides the technology, is the concept of interaction. Playing a Theremin is hard to learn since every slight movement of the hand changes the pitch/volume of the generated sound. It also lacks visual feedback. The idea of the Airpiano is to keep things as simple as possible in order to achieve full control over the instrument.”

Expect a limited run of production devices to hit the market sometime in September or October for a yet undisclosed price.

If you are one of those people who love to read at night, but can’t have your usual lights on, this Dog Lamp can come handy; and you can assemble and color it yourself too. The dog’s head is a lamp holder where you can insert the bulb. The wires are absolutely safe to use. The four short legs and a tail needs to be fixed to the body. The body of the dog can be used as a pen stand. Now, this makes it a multi-purpose dog.

The dogs head which consists of the bulb can be rotated in any direction. So you can make sure that light is concentrated on your book. It can be a good gift item for children but they should not be asked to fix it. If you are not good at handling electric equipments, get it done from someone who can.

The dimensions of the product are as follows. Length: 28CM, Height: 26CM and Weight: 11CM. The Price of the product is, ¥ 78,00RMB.
If you’ve got into a creative mode, and would like to learn new stuff on DIY, you must read about iPhone4papercraft model. Viewtiful Joe Papercraft is another wonderful work worth checking out.

To be honest, this really is ridiculous, well at least a bit: it costs whooping aging saloon money, you can’t actually use it for anything other than playing racing games and you shouldn’t reveal it to your sweetheart before you marry her as much as you shouldn’t do it afterwards. A dead-end? — No. Guys from 0—60 Magazine have recently worked their way to an affordable computerized cabinet so that you won’t need to look back bringing your dream to life.

0—60 Magazine have managed to squeeze their «D. Y. I. R-CADE» driving console into just half a thousand dollars in which you just pop in your existing gaming rig and set off burning rubber. The proposed set-up includes a PlayStation 3, Samsung L№ 40b550 40 inch LED monitor, Logitech G27 steering wheel, Logitech G51 5,1 surround sound system and a Sparco Chrono Road seat and lot of MDF sheets, plywood sheets, bolts, nails, nuts… But don’t wary though because 0—60 have got everything figured out in their downloadable PDF guide to your very personal D. Y. I. R-CADE pictured above. As you noticed, they have dedicated their guide and its end-result to the recently released Need For Speed: Shift.

They also have a sweepstake going on for US residents. Prizes are pretty much exactly what you need for your racing cabinet.

Touted as an alternative to Motorola’s Dext and Backflip smartphones, the Motorola Quench offers all the features and benefits of the Google Android operating system and Motorola’s MotoBlur software in a handset that doesn’t have a physical keyboard. Although MotoBlur’s limitations are still evident in this smartphone, the Quench possesses a better design and some nifty included features and represents excellent value at this price.

We were fairly happy with the build quality of the Motorola DEXT, and the Motorola Quench also impresses. Though we would have appreciated a larger screen considering the handset’s size, the Quench’s combination of tough-feeling rubber and dark chrome add a touch of class. The lack of physical QWERTY keyboard also means the Quench is a much thinner device than both the Backflip and the DEXT — it has similar dimensions to the Apple iPhone 3GS.

The Motorola Quench smartphone is controlled largely via its 3,1in capacitive touchscreen, but there are also five navigational buttons below the display. The home, menu, search and back buttons are regular Android fare, but the large, optical trackpad is a highlight. Similar to the trackpad on the new range of BlackBerry smartphones, you can swipe your finger across it to move throughout menus and press it down to select. The navigational keys on the Quench to require a rather firm press though, and the unlock/power button on the top left side is awkwardly positioned.

The Motorola Quench’s screen is responsive, bright and clear and this makes for a reasonable typing experience. In addition to haptic feedback, the Quench has Swype capabilities built into the device — this feature allows you to slide your fingers over the letters you want to type in a single motion, letting the software attempt to spell the word you’re trying to type. Though it sounds rather hit and miss, Swype is very easy to pick up and get used to and it was fairly accurate during testing. As with most on-screen keyboards, the software will learn as you type and add words you use regularly to its database. Our only complaint is that the keys are rather small in regular portrait mode — this can be solved by tilting the phone sideways to bring up the more spacious landscape keyboard.

Like the DEXT and Backflip smartphones, the Motorola Quench runs an older version of Android (1,5), and Motorola hasn’t announced any plans to update to the newer version (2,2). All the features and benefits of Android are present, but it’s Motorola’s MotoBlur service that the company is touting as a key feature. MotoBlur is a widget-based system that combines multiple social networking and communications accounts into one portal. For example, you can view Facebook status updates, read tweets, check your Gmail and update your MySpace profile without the need to log into separate applications. You’ll need to create a MotoBlur account to use the service, but it’s free and all content and data is pushed live to the handset.

Though the idea certainly has its merits, we feel Motorola’s execution isn’t perfect. Setting up Facebook, Twitter and Google log-ins for MotoBlur resulted in a very cluttered phone book — and that’s with only three out of a possible 10 services selected (others include MySpace, LastFM, e-mail, Picasa, Photobucket and Yahoo Mail). MotoBlur automatically synchronises your contacts, but the problem is that it adds every contact from every social-networking service you use, including Twitter. Though you can sort by regular contacts, it’s still overwhelming; we can’t think of anyone who would want Twitter contacts in their mobile phone book. The MotoBlur service also quickly becomes hard to follow if you have a large number of Facebook friends or followers on Twitter — it’s not as advanced as many Twitter iPhone apps, for example.

Among the more positive features of MotoBlur on the Motorola Quench is the unified «happenings» menu, where you can see at a glance updates from all connected social-networking services, and a universal message inbox that displays SMS, Facebook messages, direct Twitter messages and e-mails. We were particularly impressed with the last of these, although it can become cluttered if you are using more than one e-mail address.

The Motorola Quench also has an upgraded music player, placing it ahead of most other Android smartphones. The Quench’s music player integrates TuneWiki, an application that displays lyrics for currently playing tracks, and you can also search quickly for the artist or track title on YouTube in the music player menu. A 5-megapixel camera with a single LED flash doubles as a video recorder but photos taken are only good enough for the odd happy snap. A microSD slot handles memory cards up to 32GB in capacity.

The rest of the Motorola Quench is mostly standard Android fare and that is good news, with access to the Android Market for third-party applications a highlight. We also felt the Quench was slightly zippier than the DEXT during general use, but there is still a slight pause when applications open and close, so it’s not as fast as more expensive smartphones on the market.

Being separated from the one you love can be a sad and lonely time, especially if you’ve grown used to sleeping next to each other and find it hard to sleep alone. This beautiful project from Interaction Design student Joanna Montgomery helps to connect lovers separated by any amount of distance who want to feel as though they’re still right where they should be: together.

The Pillow Talk design consists of two wirelessly connected pillows and two chest straps. When one part of the pair lies down on their pillow, the other pillow emits a soft glow to alert the other partner to their presence. Each partner attaches the chest strap to his or her body when turning in for the night so their heartbeat can be transmitted to their beloved.

Inside each pillow is a thin panel containing the control circuit, speakers and a small light. The speaker allows each partner to hear their lover’s heartbeat while cuddling up to the pillow at night, simulating the comfort and relaxation that we feel when spending our sleeping hours next to the person we love.

Novero will be launching various necklaces for both women and men that feature built in Bluetooth headsets, and they have created some in a range called Victoria which features five pieces made from precious jewels and metals, one of these will set you back around $120,000.

«We have created pieces of delight that open the mind to the possibilities of the future — where devices deliver far more than pure functionality. No longer will those who appreciate the finer things have their sense of style disrupted by unattractive accessories.”

You can find out more details about this Bluetooth Jewelery over at Novero.

Originally created for their National College of Art and Design course in Ireland, Ben Millett and Alan Harrison’s Kug project looks likely to hit stores this year. Inspired by arthritis sufferers who find it difficult lifting a kettle heavy with water, they designed a mug which heats cold water, with the outside layer of the mug holding the heating filament. When docked to the charging-base, it boils the water-and by the looks of their video it could potentially charge ‘n boil by USB as well. If Millett and Harrison haven’t thought of that yet, that’s a freebie from me.

The «Minput» project, funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) enables such devices to serve as their own mice by rubbing them against a flat surface, clothing or even your hand, but also enables the devices to provide input by flicking or twisting them.

«Minput turns out to be a fairly intuitive way to navigate through menus or photo galleries on a device’s display without fumbling with tiny buttons or obscuring a small touchscreen with your fingers,” said Chris Harrison, a third-year Ph.D. student who developed Minput with faculty adviser Scott Hudson, a professor at CMU’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. «Because we use a pair of sensors, it can respond to a wide range of gestural commands, much like an iPhone or other multi-touch device.»

Harrison recently presented a paper on Minput at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.