While I was snooping round the GRO website I also found that the company has also designed what must be the most stunning table football in the world. A mix of chrome metals (there's a whiff of luxury bath taps) and atmospheric lighting, it really does look stunning. The table is now on sale via this website. The bad news is that it takes 12 weeks before they can ship it to you. Got to be worth the wait though. Take a look at these images.
Click on the image to start the gallery
We don't known a great deal about it except that it has been designed for Samsung by London based design team Gro. It is very cool the way it looks of futuristic yet kind of retro at the same time. You can almost imagine this lot using it.
Take a look at the gallery and you'll be able to see that it can used horizontally or vertically and customised to the user's requirements. Cool stuff and almost as cool as this fridge. Just a prototype at the moment, but here's hoping it gets made one day.
Spotted by this lot.
Click on pic to look at other fridgey images
There was time not too long ago when if you bought a pair of hi-fi speakers you almost certainly bought British. Unfortunately many of the British speaker makers have scaled down their activities over the last few years and cheap, but often good quality speakers from the Far East, Europe and America, have mopped up some of their market share.
So it is good to see that there are still British speaker companies doing interesting things. Like Ferguson Hill, which this week announced the arrival of two new products - a home theatre system and a mid-sized version of the company's signature horn shaped speaker unit.
The FH009 Home Theatre set up pairs a class A integrated amp that is compatible with any audio out enabled device. It comes with horn speakers that can be wall mounted or free-standing and are made from transparent acyclic. It will sell for around £800.
The FH010 is a cut down version of Ferguson Hill's FH001 high end speaker system. It comprises four speakers (two bass speakers and two mid-high frequency horn speakers) and can be used with music servers, hi-fi systems and TVs.
It will be on sale soon and is priced at £6000.
Click on the pic below to look at some rather cool lifestyle shots of the speakers in situ
Normally, we wouldn't bother reporting about the release of a hand-held vacuum cleaner. They're just not that exciting. But Sir James Dyson - the man who revolutionised the vacuum cleaner and washing machine industries - has claimed that the DC 31's motor is the "fastest motor in the world, by a long stretch".
104,000 revolutions per minute make the motor ten times faster than the one found in a Boeing 747 and five times quicker than an F1 car's motor. I bet the plane and the F1 car could still beat the vacuum cleaner in a race though.
Dyson has stated that the DC 31 is just the first of a long line of products that will include the new motor. He said: "It's radical. It's completely different technology. We are the only company in the world producing a switched reluctance motor."
Get your Dyson DC 31 here. It's £129.99. Or £149.99 for the Animal version.
(via The Telegraph)
We poor old Brits must have the worst AC plugs in the world. Well, us Brits and also the 30 or so other nations who use the old type G, BS1363 AC power adaptor. Not only are they bulky and ugly it also hurts like hell if you accidentally tread on one.
But, we may not have to put up with the old bulky adaptors for much longer if the video below is anything to go by:
It proposes a new design, measuring just an impressive 1cm thick that works by folding the three copper prongs into a nice, neat parallel line.
It's just a concept at the moment, but surely someone has got to pick up on this and mass manufacture it. It looks brilliant. I'm going to go home tonight and hack of all of my old bulky plugs in anticipation.
(via Engadget)
To be fair, "waterless" is a slight exaggeration, but only slight because a company named Xeros has managed to develop a washing machine that uses just 10% of the water of a normal houselhold unit.
This utility room game-changer employs reusable nylon polymer beads to wash your undies. They clean the clothes faster, using 30% less energy and each cycle only requires a single drop of detergent too. What's more, expensive eco-enemy tumble dryers need less time because you're linen will be less wet too. Therefore saving a few inches more planet. Sounds pretty marvelous really.
The trick has been working out a way to get the beads from your togs at the end of the wash but, now that's sorted, Xeros reckon they'll have commerical units in hotels and other such large operations by the end of the year.
And if that hasn't got your juices flowing green, then check this - if these nylon polymer machines were as standard in the UK, it'd be the equivalent of taking 2 million cars of our roads. Where do I sign up?
(via Cambridge News)
We've seen these things before; vibrating units that turn whatever surface they're on into giant speakers. The advantage with the amusingly named Kerchoons KBox is that it's not shaped like a butt plug.
This time, what we're looking at is a USB-charged device with around 20 hours of battery life and it's about the size of an iPhone. Do I stutter?
It delivers a slightly bottom heavy frequency response of 40Hz - 20KHz, which isn't massive, but, then, it does only cost £39.99 plus a fiver in the post. It plugs into just about anything you like and uses a patented gel on the underside to make whatever surface it touches vibrate and create the sweet sounds.
Probably not one for the audiophiles but certainly fun, if nothing else.
iMu Vibration Speaker review:
Remember, before we all had mobiles, the days of the home phone. Having to drag the cable across the hallway and under your door if you wanted to have a private conversation without the rest of your family listening in? That mysterious 'Mercury' button?
Those days are mostly at an end, but there are a few people still buying landline phones. As a result, companies are still making them - including T-Mobile who, rumour has it, will be bringing out an Android version next year. There'll be a docking station that lets you sync it and recharge the battery.
On top of that, there's a 7" Android tablet in the works too. There's very little detail being shared, but it'll apparently let you 'check the weather' or 'manage data across a wide variety of devices'. Sounds good. More when we get it.
(via Electric Pig)
Who needs to buy expensive flavoured vodkas when you can turn any piece of fruit into you own personal shot glass? The Lushlife Shot Carver basically looks like a slightly expensive and rebranded version of an apple corer only shaped to give you the perfect volume for a shot. You can, of course, dig a little deeper.
If you're in the habit of spending upwards of $35,000 per year on ice cream then the credit crunch is probably amongst the least of your concerns. Still, if it is you could save money by making limitless quantities of delicious dairy snack with the $35,000 NitroCream machine.
Now, you're probably thinking that you don't need to spend $35,000 to get a good tub, but the reason this little wonder costs as much as it does is because it uses liquid nitrogen to instantly transform cream or yoghurt into smooth, creamy ice cream. You no longer need to take up valuable space with keeping your materials cool and the like.
Yep, that means it's mainly aimed at commercial ventures, but that hasn't stopped the website from extolling its values to the "novice" ice cream maker. To be honest, unless those novices happen to be eccentric millionaires, they're probably better off breaking a £20 note on Mr Frosty instead.
Do you have a mug problem in your office? Where some tosser always steals your mug from the cupboard just as you *really* need a soothing cup of tea? Well here's your answer.
The Plug Mug, from IWOOT, has a removable plug in it that you can keep on your keyring and only apply when you're drinking. That way, it's useless to anyone else. It's dishwasher safe and everything.
Yours for just £10, available right now.
O2 is launching a device for the family home in April known as the Joggler. Horrible name, I know. The idea that arose from some hideous marketing session is that it's dynamic and it juggles all the arrangements so that you don't have to. Bucket please.
It's a £149.99 device with a 7-inch WVGA touchscreen, an AC adaptor, Ethernet port, USB slot, 1GB of internal memory and Wi-Fi connectivity. There is no battery because it's designed to sit in a communal area of the family home, where a calendar might normally go, and stay there without going missing down the back of the sofa along with the DVD remote.
It's primary function is as a hardware device on which to base the O2 Calendar that also comes out next month, but more on that in a minute.
If you spend your spare time perusing Gillette's website, as I'm sure you do, you might notice that the company seems to be marketing a new razor specifically for gamers. The whole idea confuses me greatly.
Firstly, are they trying to say that gamers don't shave much? If so, they're not going to have much need of a razor. If that's not the case, then I can only assume it's all some massive misguided marketing idea. Let's hope it's not.
If you're a gamer, would you buy a "Gamer's razor"? Personally, I've always been more of an electric shaver kind of guy. Let us know your shaving preferences in the comments.
Gillette Fusion Gamer (via @the_b)
There's a whole bunch sissy Shrove Tuesday pancake making gadgets out there like this one for flip cowards and this one for the plain gullible, so I thought I'd bring you the ultimate in batter mixture cookers so that you can get the correct kit in for next year or alternatively breakfast next week.
So, ladies, gentlemen, let me introduce you to the Crêpière Krampouzk CEBPA4 PRO. You may recognise it from it's usual situation, sheltered from the rain at the end of large queues at British music festivals.
A "light wand" that uses ultraviolet radiation in the UV-C band to sterilise surfaces has been made available by Purelight UK. The wand should be able to knock out 99.9% of bacteria, including the rather nasty MRSA and C.difficile bacteria.
UV-C is higher-energy than the UV-A and UV-B wavebands, and it cleanses viruses and bacteria by breaking down the DNA of the microbes. After exposure of no more than 20 seconds, only 1 in 1000 bacteria remain.
There's three versions of the wand available - the XD, which is rechargable and costs £120, the MD which is more compact and costs just £35, and the more hardcore, industrial "ClearCare" system, which costs £500 and up. None of those prices include VAT.
Google has announced an odd little scheme it's calling PowerMeter - which, it reckons, could eventually save us all 15% on our electricity bills.
How does it do this? Well, it probably can't at the moment - the PowerMeter idea requires you to have a utility company and modern 'smart' electricity meter that gives out streaming power usage data. The main gadget for use at the moment is the AWESOME POWER of the HUMAN MIND, which, by having a plug-in that constantly tells you how much money it's costing you to run the washing machine, Google thinks can prodded into making you think twice before pressing any 'on' switches.
The fully-functional PowerMeter system will eventually be offered on Google's iGoogle home pages, providing real-time, accurate, open-source estimates of energy use, to anyone with the required 'smart' energy meters in their homes.
Imagine how great it'll be sitting at work, pressing F5, desperate to see when your fridge motor has turned on. It will be, I might suggest, ELECTRIFYING.
(Via NYT)
Today, ladies and gentlemen, Canon did not announce a vacuum cleaner. It didn't announce one yesterday either, or one the day before. In fact, it's never announced a vacuum cleaner. That's why Canon's Russian service personnel were a little confused when people started calling saying that their vacuum cleaner was broken.
What seems to have happened is that a major electronics supplier bought a job lot of vacuums that a dodgy Chinese factory had produced with the Canon label, figuring (correctly) that it'd help them sell. Hilarious. If you've got one, then please send it to us - we'd love to review it.
(via EnglishRussia)
Related posts: iRobot automated vacuum cleaners | Roomba vacuum cleaner hacked to become Bluetooth Pac-Man!
According to its designers, the Minutuner is "an attempt to change our perception of time". Frankly, it could be an attempt to change our perception of a packet of doughnuts for all I care about the pretentions of artistic justification.
Let's be honest about this. It looks damn good. I hate the idea of having a bunch of LEDs breaking the pitch dark of my bedroom slumber but this is one clock radio I'd proudly own. In fact, I'd be tempted to move my bed into the living room just so that more of my guests could see it.
Have you ever wanted to unlock the front door of your house via the internet? Have you? Have you?
I doubt you have. If you have, you're MAD. I certainly haven't, but someone who works for lock specialist Schlage has - hence the arrival of the LiNK deadbolt locking system. LiNK, as well as being extremely fashionable thanks to its mix of upper and lower case letters, can send you a text message when your door is opened, perhaps helping you spy on the comings and goings of your housemates. Or, for a fee, you can subscribe to an online service that'll let you allow access to door-unlocking via the internet.
There's probably a serious use for this application. Like shop owners, who could let the minimum-wage employees open up at 6.45am from the comfort of their in-bed laptop.
(Via The Ars)
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From: Top Ten Geeky Valentine Presents: For Him