Gizmodo: beat the heat

Nike PreCool Vest Is Heatsink For Athletes

Elaine Chow — Sat, 03 May 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Beijing Olympians can count on being cool as cucumbers in Nike's PreCool Vest, a specially designed piece of clothing that lowers the body's core temperature. Much like computers, muscles perform better when they're not dedicating most of their resources to cooling down. Used about an hour prior to a competition, it can help an athlete last up to 21% longer out in the field. The vest is made of two layers of material: the inner one is filled with frozen water and the outer layer is coated with aluminum to act like a thermos, trapping cold in while reflecting radiant heat. Unfortunately, the PreCool is only available for Olympic athletes, so us normal folk will have to find other ways to chill out this summer. [Newlaunches.com]

Strapya Message Fan Proves That Your Personal Message Blows

Charlie White — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 11:45:00 EDT

It's the dog days of summer, folks, so we're going to need to do whatever we can to stay cool. This Strapya Message Fan makes sure you can get blown whenever you want, and lets you express yourself, too. Enter your favorite message into the fan, and there it is, showing up like magic through the miracle of LEDs.

You can get this fan in blue or white, and it's cheap, too, just $8.79 if you can afford the shipping all the way from Japan. It doesn't indicate how you're going to get your message into this fan, but we're betting it's going to take considerable patience to enter text using those ~~two~~ three buttons. Probably involves a lot of counting. [Strapya World]

Mini Cooling Fan Pen Moves Around All That Hot Air

Charlie White — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 12:30:00 EDT

For all those poor souls confined to summer school, here's relief with the Mini Cooling Fan Pen, bringing a blessed cooling breeze to those stuffy proceedings with the touch of a button. It's powered by a single M5 1.5-volt battery, but it's unclear whether its propeller collapses when it's not spinning, for easy pocketability.

There are so many situations in the summertime when a pocket cooling device would make the difference between tolerable discomfort and misery. For $9.46, you can find out if this mini fan really works, but be careful, you could put an eye out.

Product Page [Find Me a Gift, via ubergizmo]