Another strange invention from Japan. This one is designed to exercise your facial muscles. Just hold it in your mouth and swing the bars up and down.
Back in the late 1970s, Bill Tolle of Woodlawn, Ohio figured out a way to use empty beer cans to heat his home in the winter. Basically he made a solar heater, with the empty cans trapping the sun's heat. But the beer can angle perked the media's interest.
Apparently, some 75 years on, people are still trying to prove the reality of this perpetual motion machine.
I imagine this is what investment bankers do at parties. Just spray each other with money while laughing maniacally! Available at thecashcannon.com
. Real cash not included.
This sounds like some kind of new self-torture device from Japan. Available at Japan Trend Shop
Masunaga Wink Glasses
These clever specs can detect when you haven't blinked in five seconds and fog up one of the lens. This simple function will then "jolt" the eyes and make them focus, thus waking you up before you drop off fully. Men blink once every three seconds; women once every four seconds. So any longer than this and you are slowing down, which generally means you are getting sleepy.
Vittel has introduced a water bottle cap with a built-in timer. After an hour a little flag pops up on top of the cap, reminding you that it's now time to drink more water. Just in case you forgot. Apparently this is a problem for some people.
The "This Is Me" is a plastic blade that you can put on the end of your finger to help you shovel peas (or any other food) onto your fork. Its inventor, Bob Heller, says he called it the "This Is Me" because that's what he says whenever someone objects to him using his finger to push peas onto his fork.
Heller hopes to start selling "This Is Me"s for $14.95 each later this month. More info at nydailynews.com
A Japanese inventor, Hirotaka Osawa, has created glasses (which he calls AgencyGlass) that display a pair of digital eyes, sparing wearers the burden of having to express emotion with their eyes. The NY Daily News reports
Just as robots can reduce the need for physical labour, the AgencyGlass — which looks like two small TV screens set in spectacle frames — aims to cut down its user's emotional demands by carrying out their eye movements for them.
It sounds like a nice idea. The "SOCCKET" is an electricity generating soccer ball. So children in impoverished communities, whose parents can't afford electric light, can play soccer during the day to charge the device up, and then use it at night to power a small lamp to read by.
Plenty of money was raised
to produce these things and ship them worldwide. Unfortunately it seems that the gadget wasn't field-tested very well, because reports are that most of them promptly stopped working after a few days. So a lot of kids now have an overpriced soccer ball. [pri.org
If holding a camera in front of your face and snapping a picture is too much trouble, then you might be interested in the S.E.L.F.I.E. Mirror (which stands for Self Enhancing Live Feed Image Engine).
When you stand in front of it, it automatically takes a picture of you and uploads it to Twitter.
Although, if it's taking the picture, then is it still a selfie? Or is it a mirrorie? [via slashgear
All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.