The Razor Spark Scooter is a sure-fire way for you to get some attention whilst riding about town. Simply step on the rear bar and the scooter’s detachable flint cartridge will come into contact with the pavement, leaving a trail of sparks in your wake.

Built of aircraft-grade aluminum with tough urethane wheels, the Razor Spark Scooter doesn’t just look tough – it’s built tough. The spark-spewing cartridge itself contains four flint bars and will get you over 1.5 hours of pavement-grinding. An extra cartridge is included too in case you get carried away.

Folding up to a size of just 24″ (60cm) x 4″ (10cm) x 7″ (18cm) and with a weight of only 5 pounds (2.27kg), the Razor Spark Scooter – like the Pumgo Stepper-Powered Scooter – should be effortless to carry around and is available now from Firebox.com for $98 | £60 | €69. Could there be a cooler way to spark a line of gasoline?

Source:
Firebox.com

A pair of Spycam Video Sunglasses are a must have for anyone who takes their covert filming seriously. With these new and fairly regular-looking pair of shades, you’ll be able to easily move amongst your friends, workmates or an unsuspecting crowd – recording every move without detection.

Featuring easy-to-use controls right on the frame and a 3-4 hour battery life, these Spycam Sunglasses will record decent-quality 640 x 480 AVI format video to an included 4GB MicroSD memory card (8GB max) for later use (video below).

Rechargeable over USB and including an AC adapter, manual, carry case, cleaning cloth and USB cable – you can pick up a pair of these Spycam Video Glasses for $149.99 from ThinkGeek. You’ll have to be quick though. Once the word gets out, people might become suspicious of you wearing sunglasses inside…if they’re not already.

Source:
ThinkGeek

The Nearest Tube iPhone App is one of the first of the new augmented reality apps to hit Apple’s App Store and offers a brilliant, intuitive way to get around London. Created by iPhone developers AcrossAir, the app takes advantage of the new iPhone 3GS‘s built-in compass to show you not only the nearest tube stations, but the distance and the lines that each station runs.

The Nearest Tube iPhone app is due to launch mid-July for £1.19 ($2) upon App Store approval, but sadly, will only work on the new 3GS. Combining GPS, compass and camera features, the app creates an overlay of information, showing the closest stations to your current location towards the bottom of the screen.

Living in London myself, I feel the convenience provided by this app alone would almost justify the purchase of the 3GS. Being able to find, at-a-glance, which direction to head when in an unfamiliar area and to pick a station that runs your line home (to avoid changing) would be fantastic. The only thing I’d like to see is the incorporation of the real-time Transport For London status updates. That would make this one powerful tool.

To see the app in action, check out the video below.

Sources:
AcrossAir and Crave

The Why Cry Baby Analyzer is a unique device that can interpret your baby’s cries, letting you know via an on-screen emoticon whether your newborn is hungry, annoyed, sleepy, stressed or just plain bored.

Created by engineer Pedro Monagas to interpret his son’s cries, the Why Cry is the result of four years of recording and analysis of the crying patterns of children. His research demonstrated that babies’ cries are universal, regardless of race or gender (video below). The device takes samples of a baby’s cry every 10ms, converts them to a digital signal and compares them with common patterns stored in memory. When a match is found, the appropriate icon displays on the gadget’s LCD screen.

The Why Cry is a small handheld unit you can carry with your baby everywhere and includes a velcro strap for easy attachment to a stroller or crib. It won’t stop your baby crying through the night, but this valuable diagnostic tool should help you appease your tot quicker so you both get more sleep.

The Why Cry is available now, ready to go with 4 x AAs included for $99.99 at ThinkGeek.

Sources:
Why Cry and ThinkGeek

The BodyGard 5-in-1 Emergency Tool is a keychain gadget that could prove itself invaluable should you be involved in a car accident or other emergency situation. It features a glass breaker, seat belt cutter, distress flasher, sonic alarm and a LED flashlight, all within a take-anywhere sized device measuring just 1.75″ (4.44cm) x 3″ (7.62cm).

Touted as the Rolls Royce of keychain emergency tools, the BodyGard 5-in-1 could also prove useful as a way of scaring off attackers with the sonic alarm or simply finding your keyhole in the dark, thanks to the included LED flashlight.

You just know some people will run around causing mayhem with a device like this, but it really should be standard equipment in cars, especially with the proliferation of winder-less electric windows. Check out the video below to see the BodyGard 5-in-1 Emergency Tool in action – and for more info, head on over to Vat19 who are stocking these handy gadgets for $19.95.

Sources:
Vat19 via Techeblog

It won’t win you an endurance marathon (thanks to all the blood rushing to your head), but this unique contraption called the Skybike will certainly get you some attention. Created by a student at NYU, the Skybike seats the rider upside-down in order to create the illusion of riding in the clouds.

Resembling the A-Frame design of the STRiDA MAS, the Skybike straps the rider in at a 45-degree angle on the underbelly of the frame – which was made by hand from scraps of metal found on NYC streets.

“In a period where our basic needs are met, perhaps we need to satisfy more abstract, unusual and different needs.”

Unusual and different needs? Read: upskirt kink. Everything has a dark side.

Check out the videos below to see the Skybike in action. The first right-way-up, the second – you guessed it – upside-down.

Sources:
NYU and ITP
Via: Gizmodo

If you’re just itching to get your feet off the ground, but haven’t the patience or the money for a personal flying car, there is another option. Thanks to the Martin Jetpack, you could be soaring through the skies (a la Jet Man) as soon as late 2009 for no more than the cost of a luxury car (video below).

Capable of speeds of up to 63mph, the Martin Jetpack will get you around 30 minutes of flying time from just 5 US gallons of premium gasoline and the best bit, you don’t even need a pilots license to fly one (though the company will provide some training).

I can tell you – if I had a lazy $100K, I’d sooner jump at buying one of these than some pricey ‘leccy car.

Sources:
Martin Jetpack via LikeCool

You know the tune. You probably even cringe when it’s played to death in shops and malls around this time of year. When it’s played by 49 orchestrated microwaves however, it invokes a kind of geeky wonderment.

This video-card (below) was put together by a creative marketing agency called AKQA and when you think about it, must have taken a great deal of effort. Imagine hunting down 49 microwaves with the correct “ping” pitch to cover all the notes and painstakingly setting up timers to order the chaotic chimes into a recognizable rendition of Jingle Bells. Just insane.

Great work guys. Check it out.

Sources:
AKQA and YouTube
Via: Core77

“Long Gone” is a remarkable music video (below) created for the band, Fat City Reprise, by director and animator Casar Kuriyama. The clip was shot not with video, but with 45,000 DSLR photographic stills, pieced together to create a captivating and inexpensive artistic video running at 24fps.

Kuriyama used a Nikon D200 DSLR to capture four images per second in 60 shot bursts. The talent in front of the lens were instructed to move in slow motion during shooting to achieve the effect.

The video took 14 months to create, for a total cost of just $3,000. Kuriyama does note that he put in a lot of personal hours on the project, however. Editing was performed on his MacBook Pro running Final Cut Pro, with all the photos managed with Apple’s pre-installed iPhoto. Effects were created in Eveon Fusion.

It’s an amazing achievement that should really speak to and inspire people interested in this field. It shows that you don’t necessarily need expensive gear to create an interesting, high-quality work.

Sources:
Gadget Lab and Gizmo Watch

Kodak announced its impressive, but expensive, world’s first consumer-level OLED photo frame back on September 17th. We now have a couple of video reviews of this little marvel (one from CNET below), giving us a better look at the 7.6-inch OLED display and its touch-sensitive border.

CNET calls the high-end panel a “vanity piece” with its $1000 price tag. For this you get 800 x 480 pixel resolution with a 30,000:1 contrast ratio. The digital photo frame packs plenty of connectivity with WiFi access to your PC, as well as Flickr and Kodak’s photo sharing service, a USB and miniUSB port, an SD card slot as well as audio-in and out for video playback.

Mac users seem to have been overlooked a little; being limited to USB, SD and Kodak’s online gallery, but you can still get plenty of functionality out of these options.

Note that there is no remote and only the “frame around the frame” is touch sensitive, not the screen itself – though the navigation still looks pretty slick. It comes with 2GB of internal memory which can be expanded via your choice of SD card capacities.

For another video that got in a little earlier than CNET, check out The Gadget Show. If Kodak had managed to curve the display like AUO, then maybe the price would be justified.

UPDATE:
Kodak’s OLED frame is now available through Amazon.com for $883.69.

Sources:
YouTube and Engadget