tech e blog

Spinning Disc CD Player

This strange gadget "simulates an electric table saw with your CD."

If you're still not quite enamored with online music stores like iTunes and prefer to get your music in hard copy format, here's a ridiculous CD player design. They come with two other wooden walnut speakers, and have only three buttons for playback control

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26-inch TV Fish Tank

Michael Khor took an old 26-inch TV, rebuilt the cabinet, and had a custom tank made to fit snugly inside. Though not cutting-edge technology, it makes for an interesting conversation piece. Here's just one of the problems that Michael ran into:

I was never going to get a standard off the shelf tank to give me the effect I wanted. I had to allow for the height of the light/reflector which is 6 cm. This just allowed me to have the top of the tank at the height of the top of the screen, but unfortunately meant that I could not fill the water level ABOVE the height of the screen

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Olympus' Wooden Camera

Olympus recently unveiled a "prototype three-dimensional camera made of Japanese evergreen wood at Photokina 2006."

The camera is made by three dimensional compression of the wood using latest technology. Japanese cypress wood was compressed for the model. The hardness of the compressed wood exceeds that of plastic. The camera uses microscope lens

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Powerbook Cycle

Here's an interesting exercise gadget: strapping your Powerbook down to a stationary bike -- perfect for those long, boring workouts.

Don't you just get bored to tears while exercising? Well, you've got two options: First, you can do what I do...don't exercise. Or, you can follow OndraSoukup's lead and strap a Powerbook to your stationery bike

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"Invisible" Refrigerator + Washing Machine

Ok, so these items aren't exactly "invisible", but rather made out of transparent plastic -- still great conversation pieces none the less. One more picture after the jump.

This refrigerator is one of many new home electronics displayed at National Electronics' Invention Station in Tokyo, a new campaign hosted by three pretty Japanese anchorwomen. It not only displays all your gastronomical delights for everyone to see, but also has a super-low bottom shelf for easy in-and-out of heavy items, and fits more stuff than your fat uncle's belly

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Honorable Mention - Wall-Socket PC

Here's a first: a computer that resides in your wall-socket -- offering a 500-MHz AMD RISC CPU, 128MB of memory, 64MB of Flash memory, and a VGA connector. The JackPC runs Windows CE and is priced at just $392.

The biggest news here -- beyond the size, of course -- is that the unit can actually run off of power-over-Ethernet, just to make your fellow IT buddies jealous

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