Fancy trusting your life to a piece of plastic no thicker than a pencil as you weave in and out of buses, taxis, alpha males in white vans, lumps of broken glass from previous cyclist-crushings and pot holes?

That's supposed to be a rhetorical question, but if you just nodded "Yes" here's the solution to ending the life you're so very tired of - the Backpack Bicycle. It's designer Chang Ting Jen's entry in the International Bicycle Design competition.

The orange is nice, we'll give him that. But there reaches a point where any further miniaturisation of existing things just isn't practical. What sort of tiny journey along extremely flat surfaces would this bike cope with? Even though it folds down to a 60cm backpack and weighs just 5.5kg, wouldn't you be better off walking than trundling along at a very low speed? Surely you'd be there in the time it takes to unfold it?

(Via Design Blog)

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I was lucky enough to spend a night in the brand new CitizenM hotel, Holland, designed in conjunction with Philips for the modern day business traveller. Prices start from £55 per night and make sure you take a closer look at the room after the jump.

If you're looking for a way of getting revenge on society without actually breaking any laws or getting yourself hurt, try this - it's a way of projecting hidden text into other people's photographs.

The "Image Fulgurator" uses a flash sensor to activate itself and beam your text onto walls, works of art and groups of innocent tourists at the exact moment someone's shot is taken, so, hopefully, your target remains completely unaware you've just projected the word "tosspot" over the front of the Tate Modern in a superb piece of guerilla art that'd have "Banksy" going green with envy.

Two large bottles of lager + Image Fulgurator + public space = several hours of marginally evil but not actually illegal amusement.

(Via Core 77)

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Clearly the next step in human evolution is to develop a sixth sense that makes the hairs on your arm stand up or your belly button flash green when in range of a wi-fi signal - but until then we're stuck with rubbish novelty items to let us know when there's some stealable internet nearby.

And now it's wi-fi shoes. Or, at least, it's a concept piece, in which a pair of trainers have had a miniature wi-fi detector stuck on them. This is not really "wi-fi shoes," it's just some normal shoes which some idiot has pretended to stick a wi-fi detector on. That's an important distinction to make. This is not a product - it's an idea. A very poor idea.

The chances of a pair of wi-fi-sensing trainers ever popping up in the JJB Sports sale are rather remote.

(Via DVICE)

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My goodness, this is a great product. It's rare that I rave about sub-£100 products, but having used an iTrip for iPods in the past, I can only guess the iPhone version will do the job just as well.

Now, my car is old, the cassette player barely works, and a CD player? Fuggedabbait. The iTrip charges your iPhone and allows you to control it at the same time, plugging into the 12V power port on your dashboard. You've probably used something similar in the past, but this is the first product compatible with the iPhone.

So it turns out that the helicopter backpack isn't just the preserve of Wile E. Coyote. Yes, the good lunatics of Technological Aerospacial Mexicana have got the theory together and now it's their mission to make the world's lightest personal chopper.

Backpacks with blades have always been a tricky one because helicopter rotors create torque and that has to be controlled with a tail rotor but tail rotors would make a personal unit unbalanced. So, they've found an ingeniously suicidal way to solve that problem.

Eurostar and Google Earth have teamed up today to unveil a brand new, interactive experience at the recently revamped and damn sexy St Pancras International Station in old London town.

Explore Europe brings two large displays, packed with LCDs and plasmas of the touchscreen variety, where travelers or would-be but skint ones can get both a bird's eye and through-city view of a host of European destinations.

You can have a total 3D cruise through London, Brussels, Lille, Avignon, Bourg St Maurice, Paris and Disneyland Paris, if you really must, and, of course, it's all free. Well, they'd look really stingy if it wasn't.

If you missed the cheap bank holiday flights or you're just furious with Ryan Air and their stealth charges, how about a good old fashioned road trip with a web 2.0 twist?

Good food and good tyre company Michelin are launching their new travel website ViaMichelin which combines all their motoring knowledge with the best places to stay and eat on the way, but for that extra touch of community fun, they've created a social networking angle called My ViaMichelin.

You may have climbed Everest, you may have crossed the deserts, you may even have survived weeks in the jungle with only a sharpened mango for protection, but today we offer you five gadgets your life just may depend on, should you have to brave the toughest environment known to man - Heathrow Terminal 5.

1.)Bluebird luggage tracker - an ingeniously simple idea to keep you from the carousel-kicking until strictly necessary. The Bluebird, sadly only in concept at the moment, is a little bluetooth keyring attached to your luggage. When it comes into range, it sends a message to your phone letting you know your bags have arrived. With 28,000 bags already missing at T5, it'd be a godsend.

Obviously Motorola hasn't quite grasped that when your company is struggling as much as they are, the worst thing you could possibly announce is that you're going back to manufacturing 1992's technology.

Hoping to remind the world they were once market leaders, and indeed invented the ruddy mobile phone, they're releasing the Smart Rider Car Phone, a slinky Bluetooth-enabled BlackBerry-shaped phone with a 2.8" display and GPS navigation. Perhaps they should've called the Smart Rider a sat-nav with phone capabilities, I wonder? It's launching in June, around the world.

Motorola (via Jalopnik)

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Sony has rolled out a new in-car CD tuner, the MEX-BT3600U, which'll let you play from a USB-enabled MP3 player, stream your choons via a Bluetooth compatible Walkman jobbie, or play from one of those roundy silver shiny discs you have littering the floor of your car. Remember those?

In addition to those features, it can also be used as a Bluetooth headset of some description, with Bluetooth-enabled handsets allowing for hands-free calls via the microphone on the head unit's front panel.

Controversially, the MEX-BT3600U contains Sony's DM+ codec enhancer which inputs 'quality' on compressed MP3 files. Available from May, the price hasn't been confirmed as yet.

Sony

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This is a great little gadget for anyone currently learning Japanese or needing a quick translation during business trips or visits abroad.

Run the pen over a bit of kanji and get either an on-screen or audio translation within two seconds. Very niche, and at £184, very pricey, but incredibly cool. Get one from here.

(via DVICE)

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If you set a date in your diary and let your eyebrows grow in anticipation of an all-day plucking session after Stu's review of Tchibo's 'high-grade stainless steel corrosion-resistant' LED tweezers (storage case with integrated mirror included), you'll be delighted more of the same is now available online for the bargain price of $10.

LED Tweezers

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As a child, I had various bikes stolen, but that was probably my own fault for leaving them unlocked in the street. But for some people, even a solid cycle lock is insufficient for protecting your bike in higher-crime areas. Which is where the Biomega Boston comes in.

The Biomega Boston model turns the entire frame of the bike into the lock - break the lock and the bike becomes unrideable. Obviously, someone can steal bits of your bike or break it attempting to steal it. So while the thought is there, maybe a bit more thought needs to go into the practicality of it.

But in the meantime, this folding 'street' bike can be yours for $1158, which is around £600.

Biomega (via Core 77)

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So there I was, going away for a festive weekend break to the Christmas markets of Brussels in Belgium with the other half. Thankfully, I was taking Eurostar rather than flying and there's no real luggage restrictions. And what else was different about this trip to the dozens of foreign jaunts I've had in the past?

Well, for once I didn't have to lug about 73 different leads and chargers with me - making my bag feel like it's full of bricks and my shoulder cracking under the weight.

Yes, I've finally managed to break out the iGO I've had sitting in my cupboard for a few months and boy, is it one of those little life-changing gadgets that only really come around once in a while.

We spout words like "revolutionary" when it comes to the Apple iPhone but it's just a phone with a music player. The iGo on the other hand, is a total redefinition - look it up in the dictionary and you'll find it stands for "travelling light".

They may be known for their garish orange but Stelios seems to fancy a colour change - his budget airline has unveiled a new fuel efficient plane, The Ecojet.

It's not just a normal flyer with better fuel efficiency, this has two open rotor jet engines at the back of the airplane, which, according to the firm, improve the overall performance of the plane. The wings are swept forward to reduce drag and the body is made with lightweight carbon fibre to reduce the overall weight.

Find out more about it at our blokes' travel blog lostweekend.tv

Emirates Airline - you know, the ones who sponsor Arsenal's stadium - have launched 23inch widescreen tellys on their planes. Ok, so that's only in first class but business class passengers get 17inch screens and those in economy 10.6.

It's no wonder the firm has won the best Inflight Entertainment in the World for the past two years. They say the new system provides an authentic home-cinema experience and took three years to develop. They even come with WiFi touchscreen controllers.

Find out more at our lads' travel blog lostweekend.tv

News has reached our Microsoft-hungry ears - it's been 24 hours since I've heard 'Bill Gates' mentioned, and it was far from pleasant, believe me - and it's mighty pleasing. Even if it does involve Fiat.

Microsoft has announced that they're partnering up with Fiat, who are launching a new range of 500s, being dubbed as 'a technophiles dream car'. The in-car system will utilise a Windows mobile style navigational system, 'Blue & Me', (should be a Pixar film, no?), which will enable voice-activated buttons, Bluetooth connectivity and even USB ports to charge up that HTC Touch with Windows Mobile 6 we're all a-carting these days. Well, wanting to.