Charlie White

Tennis Balls Make Ballsy Benches

Dutch designer Tejo Remy must have decided to give up tennis and sit around all day instead, so he took all the tennis balls he could find and turned them into these benches, selling the idea to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. It’s a prime example of what relaxed dope laws will do…

Samsung Turns Clamshell Phone Into Joystick

Samsung came up with an unusual idea and decided to apply for a patent on it, using the upper half of an opened cellphone as a joystick for gaming on the go. Not a bad idea, since gaming is usually way too awkward on cellphones with their tiny controls and puny screens. Now there’s an…

Capsule USB Fan Puts Coolness in Your Pocket

We’ve seen quite a few USB fans in these parts, but this design concept seems to have a new angle on an old idea: encapsulate the fan blades, the USB plug and its cable inside this pocketable package, and take your coolness with you wherever you go. Looks like a nice self-contained heat relief package.…

Mitsubishi Hiring Out Robots as Receptionists

Robots have long been a mainstay on high-end factory floors, but now they’re getting a lot more socially adept, and are even interacting with humans in the workplace. These Mitsubishi robots, named Wakamaru, are being hired out in Japan as receptionists for $1000 a day or $25,000 a year. It turns out these goofy-looking yellow…

Dell XPS 720HC Over-Overclocked, Orders Canceled

Dell’s been hotrodding its quad-core desktops, overclocking the hell out of Intel’s Core 2 Extreme processors and stuffing in a couple of monster NVIDIA graphics cards just for fun. But suddenly, it appears that the party’s over for the fastest one, with Dell stopping all orders for the $5,939 XPS 720HC “bin +3” edition that…

Mustek TravelFoto Desktop Digital Photo Display/Alarm Clock

If you’re out on the road and you forget what your honey looks like, this Mustek TravelFoto Desktop Digital Photo Display/Alarm Clock will pictorially remind you, and wake you up the next morning, too. However, its 128×128 pixel display is not going to be much for perusing your favorite porn, and given its 1.5-inch size,…

Lomography Ringflash for Four Colors in One Frame

This Lomography Ringflash attaches to the outside of your lens, and its four lighting elements each deliver a different color to your subject. You can use it as a single color ring flash, too, but its makers encourage you to get up close to your subject and flash a picture that has four different kinds…

Magic Stinky Pencil Lead Lets You Smell Your Way to Happiness and Enlightenment

This Ain Supplio pencil lead from Pentel uses nanotechnology to release allegedly mind-expanding aromas, letting you smell your way to smartness while you scribble your meandering prose on a piece of paper. The pencil leads sell for two bucks a bag, and you can get them in three different scents, Refresh, Healing and Positive, which…

Super 3G to Blast 300Mbps, Making EV-DO Look Like Horse and Buggy

NTT DoCoMo is about to make even speedy 3.1Mbps EV-DO (Rev. A) look like a horse and buggy, experimenting with a Super 3G wireless network system that could blast data through the air at speeds of 300Mbps. That’s fast. And somebody do the math, but that sounds like it’s about a zillion times faster than…

Nobel Scientist Creates World Record-Breaking Plastic Solar Cell

Nobel prize-winning scientist Alan Heeger and his buddies have figured out a way to print more-efficient plastic solar cells, boosting their efficiency to 6.5%, a world record for these photovoltaic polymers. Heeger and his colleagues perform this trick by using two layers of different types of plastic, and whenever one layer doesn’t turn light into…

iPod shuffle USB adapter lets you chuck that cumbersome dock, $2.95 with free shipping, was $9.95 before. [My Virtual Zone]

JVC Offers Sneak Peek of GZ-HD3 HD Hard Disk Camcorder

JVC flashed a tit at a few Japanese journalists, giving them a quick glance at its upcoming GZ-HD3 tapeless camcorder. The demo revealed a tiny shooter with a relatively large lens, packing 60GB of hard disk space that will yield five hours of HD goodness at its maximum quality. It should serve as a worthy…

Letterman’s Producer Survives Sparky, Smelly, Smoky Powerbook

Justin Stangel, Head Writer/Producer of CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman was innocently writing hilarious comedy in his New York office, when an ominous odor wafted from the adaptor of his Powerbook. You can actually see sparks and smoke coming out of it. Thank goodness cooler heads prevailed! Somebody opened a window.

Steve Strawn Snaps Glass, Mid-Crash

We show you a lot of videos of stuff breaking, and it’s all cool but it’s all ugly. Well, here’s some breaking news that’s as pretty as it is shattering. Take a look at these photos by master photog Steve Strawn, who not only knows exactly when to release the shutter, he’s probably pretty good…

Multicolor LED Panel Won’t Get You Laid

Indulge yourself in the blinkenlights of the ’60s with this Multicolor LED Panel, harkening back to science fiction movies with computers consisting of panels of blinking lights, and maybe even tossing in a shade of Andy Warhol. And hey, this thing has LEDs in it. It’s not as big as you think, though—at just 10…

Yellow Submarine iPod Forthcoming, Loaded with Entire Beatles Catalog?

Click to viewHi there, Beatles haters. Please skip on down to the next post, and keep listening to that crappy music that will never measure up to the virtuosity and creativity of the musical entity that defined the 20th Century. Okay, now that they’re gone, if you are wishful-thinking rumor hater, please leave too. Because…

Ionic Fridge Freshener Tries to Suck Up Stench

This Ionic Fridge Freshener looks to be the same size and shape as a garden-variety soda can, but it’s festooned with evocative imagery, perhaps in an effort to convince you that it will actually get that horrible smell out of your refrigerator. What are you storing in there, anyway? Dead bodies? This concept of ionic…

Waboba is JesusBall, Walks on Water

There’s something about summer and water that brings out the balls, and here’s a case in point: the Waboba Ball, made of some kind of miraculous Lycra fabric that gives it the power to walk on water. It’s pretty good at skipping and bouncing all over the water, too, and is certain to annoy everyone…

Integra Ships DTR-5.8 Receiver with HDMI 1.3a

Integra is now shipping its DTR-5.8 receiver, its first model with HDMI 1.3a processing. Planting itself solidly in the midrange of receivers of this ilk, it’s certainly not as full-featured as its formidable big brother, the awesome DTX-8.8 that’s so far going to be available in Japan only. This $800 DTR-5.8 receiver can also handle…

iPod User Gets Struck by iLightning

A 39-year-old dentist from Vancouver had a shocking experience while he was out jogging and listening to his iPod. Lightning struck a tree next to him, and then jumped over to him, throwing him 8 feet and resulting in second-degree burns on his chest and left leg. There were also a couple of burns exactly…