I was being shown the ioSafe Solo, a fireproof and floodproof external hard drive that's the first consumer product from a company that's only done industrial and government stuff previously. They threw it in said green pool (sadly sans strippers, and sadly not a pool of champagne). Then they put it in a gas burner, cranking it up to 1600+ degrees F.

The ioSafe guys have a point that, at $150 for 500GB, $200 for 1TB and $300 for 1.5TB, the Solo drives don't cost a huge amount more than a name-brand external that doesn't weigh 25 pounds and come wrapped in many inches of an insulation that I have been told is non-toxic (although my lungs at the moment may be begging to differ).

But here's the thing: I'm more worried about my OEM Seagate drive (which the Solo uses) committing suicide than I am my house burning down or flooding. Add RAID redundancy, then maybe. And there's another word that's important here: co-location. But if for some reason you're worried about your disk surviving an act of God, here you go. As you can see, the horrific photo of me with ioSafe's CEO survived the maelstrom just fine. [ioSafe]

It's a decidedly critical take on Apple, the people who love the company, the people who live and breathe gadgets (*gulp*), and basically technology in general. Of course, many of you would argue that this list includes Pogue himself. However, as my old personal saying goes, if you can't laugh at yourself, then you suck. [YouTube via CrunchGear]

Better yet: the SOLo has LED lighting built in for subtle evening lighting effects, you can check on its charge status on its built-in LCD monitor, and it has a large device drawer so you can safely pop your phone, iPod or even laptop inside to keep it safe. For some reason it also has Bluetooth, allowing it "to collect, distribute and exhibit information on both the tabletop LCD display screen and wirelessly between computers and the internet"... and while we're not sure exactly what that means, it sounds pretty impressive.

It's in stainless steel and tempered glass with silicon solar cells and it's around 43 x 30 x 18 inches in size. No info on its price, but it's available through Intelligent Forms own website and considering one of it's suggested uses is aboard a cruise ship, it's going to be expensive. [Intelligent Forms via Born Rich]

We're liking this gas version of an already-chic design from Eva Solo. If only it were available in a natural gas version, which would make it almost worry-free. Either way, gas is good. Why waste your time futzing with all that messy and unpredictable charcoal or wood when the food just ends up tasting vaguely of lighter fluid? After all, the charcoal-broiled taste is a result of burning fat, anyway. Everybody knows that, don't they? – Charlie White

Product Page [Eva Solo]

"Man, it's like a sauna in here." You'll be making this hilarious joke to yourself on a daily basis while engulfed in the Solo personal sauna. This is essentially a tube-like tent that will get all hot and frothy so you can sweat away all of that negative karma you received from a hooker earlier in the day. The Solo personal sauna can operate for up to 12 hours at a time if you need to get rid of a lot of negative karma from a particularly dirty hooker. – Travis Hudson

Product Page [Via Sci-Fi]

It's got a 7-inch screen, 900MHz CPU, 1.3 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and WiBro. Suspecting this won't be available over here and I'm already kind of getting over my Origami fetish, so more power to them.

New UMPC from Daewoo Lucoms - Solo M1 [UMPCNews]