By Chris Scott Barr If you do a lot of driving in the country at night, you can really appreciate the high-beams on your car. They illuminate a much larger area so you can keep an eye out for animals that might run out in front of you. Of course when another car passes by on the road, not only do you have to turn off the high-beams, but your vision is temporarily impaired by their lights shining in your eyes. Now one company thinks they have... 

By Andrew Liszewski T-fal’s Actifry requires just a spoonful of oil to whip up a batch of delicious golden french fries, but Philips might have just one-upped them with their new Airfryer that uses “little or no oil” to cook traditionally fried items like fries and pastries. The appliance was just unveiled at IFA, so specific details about what foods will require a touch of oil and which can be ‘fried’ up oil-free... 

By Andrew Liszewski It’s not the first ceiling fan with retractable blades I’ve written about. That honor goes to the Air Shadow from Fanimation. But if subtlety is what you’re after, and you don’t want people to actually know there’s a ceiling fan hanging above them, the Fanaway from Hunter is a much better solution. It sports a set of four clear plastic blades that automatically extend or retract when the fan... 

By Andrew Liszewski It’s apparently been around since 1966 and is an official part of MoMA’s collection, but this modern minimalist chess set is new to me and I think it’s absolutely brilliant. The size of each piece represents its significance on the board and their individual designs reflect their range of mobility. The knights are ‘L’ shaped and the bishops feature a diagonal slope. And if that wasn’t enough... 

By Andrew Liszewski Sony’s Bloggie cameras were introduced at CES earlier this year, and while I wasn’t exactly blown away by the lowest-end PM5 model, I have to admit I was quite enamored with the slightly more capable CM5 with its optical zoom and flip out LCD. But here we are just 8 months later and Sony’s already introducing a third member to the Bloggie family with the Bloggie Touch. The most obvious upgrade …  Read More →

By Andrew Liszewski Even though my current commute has me barely rolling out of bed in the morning to get to work, were I required to leave my home I think this half-scale Porsche 356 would be the funnest way to get there. While it’s probably designed with kids in mind, the “6 and up” rating means there’s really no limit to who can drive it, and the seat and pedals are adjustable to accommodate us taller types. It’s... 

By Andrew Liszewski I don’t know the entire back story behind this little contraption, but apparently the mailbox for this home in Independence, Missouri is located at the bottom of a steep hill designed to separate their property from traffic. Taking the long way to fetch the mail involves a two block walk, which probably sucks when it’s raining or snowing. So instead of just building a staircase down the hill they decided to totally... 

By Andrew Liszewski A few weeks ago the internet was all abuzz over Sharpie’s ‘new’ liquid pencil (sorry Sharpie, I used an equally disappointing liquid graphite pencil 5 or 6 years ago) but I’ll choose this Frosting Deco Pen from Kuhn Rikon over a faux-permanent pencil any day of the week. Whether I use it for decorating cupcakes, signing birthday cards or endorsing checks. Powered by a couple of AA…  Read More →

By Chris Scott Barr These days it seems like there are countless options of what to do with yourself once you’ve decided to stop breathing. You can be fired into space, turned into a pencil, fashioned into a diamond or even put into an urn shaped just like your head. But what about being transformed into a vinyl record? Yes, you can do that too. When you bite the dust, you can spend around $3,000 to have your remains pressed into a set... 

By Andrew Liszewski Somewhere a forest of cork trees are celebrating since this electrostatic bulletin board, designed by Jonathan Jordan, could eliminate man’s reliance on corkboards for selling cars, hanging seasonal decorations or storing take-out menus. It also reduces our need for staples and thumbtacks since ‘hanging’ an item simply requires you to rub it around a bit …  Read More →

By Andrew Liszewski It’s definitely not the kind of homemade toy you’ll want to bring along to entertain your kids on a long flight (I’ll leave it up to your imaginations how that would play out at the airport) but if you’ve been trying to lure them away from video games for something a bit more educational, this looks like it could do the trick. Squishy Circuits was developed at the University of St. Thomas by undergraduates... 

By Andrew Liszewski At one time it was really easy to choose a flash-based zoomless camcorder. You just walked into your local electronics store and bought a Flip because there really were no other options. But these days it’s not as easy, which is a good thing since competition has brought more options that are far more capable than the Flip, if that’s what you’re looking for. (The Flip’s simplicity is definitely not... 

By Andrew Liszewski With a price tag of ~$175 (¥14,800) you probably shouldn’t expect too much from Thanko’s HDDV-506 camcorder , but going on specs alone it looks like a pretty capable little camcorder. It’s able to capture video at up to 1080P resolutions at 30fps, but if you scale that back to 320  Read More →

By Andrew Liszewski Here’s another 3rd party in-car AV entertainment system that swaps out the headrests on the front seats for a pair of DVD player equipped replacements. I kind of like this solution since you’re not dealing with ugly mounting straps that never seem to properly hold an LCD display in place, and they have a zip-up cover making them pretty much disappear when not in use. Both units can be paired meaning you can watch... 

By Andrew Liszewski What do you do when you drop your expensive graphing calculator on the floor, irreparably damaging the outer housing? Well since it’s not made of recycled paper like a certain alarm clock , you can either buy a new one or salvage and install the innards in a replacement housing made from custom milled aluminum. That’s exactly what University of Iowa industrial engineering student ‘Howard C.’ did, which...