Riding your bike at night can be a little tricky, especially without headlights. Regular headlights are great, but the Lumigrid is a conceptual LED light that would kick things up a notch.

It can be difficult for night cyclists to get a good sense of the condition of the terrain ahead, even with a typical bicycle lamp. In many cases, a bicycle lamp will cast shadows on both concave and convex areas of the ground. This can hinder the rider’s judgment of the road surface ahead, and increase the potential for danger.

Lumigrids can project a grid onto the ground. On a flat road surface, the grid will consist of standard squares. On a rough road surface, the grids will deform accordingly. By observing the motion and deformation of the grids, the rider can intuitively understand the landforms ahead. In addition, the luminous grids can make it easier for nearby pedestrians and vehicles to notice the bicycle, reducing the likelihood of collision.

Unfortunately, it is just a concept at the moment, even if it did win Sichaun University a Red Dot Design award in 2012. There doesn’t seem to be any concrete plans for bringing it to market, but given the current state of technology, how hard could it be?

[ The Lumigrids ] VIA [ Technabob ]

The arrival of the summer isn’t a short-lived affair where one moment it’s winter, the next it’s summer, and everyone moves on. For the colder climates, it’s a drawn out period during which you appreciate the long awaited thawing out and celebrate all things summer, all the time. For example, we’re going to get all excited over stuff like the above S’More To Love metal tray for making everyone’s favorite campfire treat, the good ole S’More. The tray locks in the Graham biscuits, the marshmallow, and the chocolate, six S’Mores at a time, so that you can just place them all at once over your fire (or in the oven) and be efficient about your cooking. After all these treats are great when you’re actually eating them, not when you’re crying about how they fell into the fire and now you have to start all over again.

It’s $15.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Uncrate ]

Disney owns the Star Wars franchise now and they can do whatever they want with it, including adding themed attractions to their parks that will let you have a Stormtrooper 3D-printed with your face on it. It’s called the Star Wars D-Tech Me experience and it’ll be available at Disney’s parks starting this summer.

The whole scanning process will take all but ten minutes, but you’ll have to wait around 8 weeks for the delivery of your customized Stormtrooper. The entire thing will set you back $99.95 plus taxes and shipping charges.

VIA [ Geekologie ]

The worst place for your smartphone to be while you’re driving, is in your hands. But let’s face it: very few of us keep it in our pockets. It’s usually lying around in the center console, where you can glance at it if you get a text or a call. The nGage Snap is a mount specially designed to place your phone in the middle of the dashboard, right where you can comfortably see it. It has a specially designed

“microblade, small enough to fit into the slot of your CD player, narrow enough to hide behind your phone, and sturdy enough to withstand the rockiest of roads.

The way we designed the blade is such that it does not go far enough into your CD slot to activate the CD player mechanism, so that means you can still have a CD in your player while the mount is installed.”

Like you, we’re a little skeptical that this would actually work and not break anything, but we’re willing to suspend our disbelief when we consider that we’ve never actually tried it, while the nGage’s designers probably have tested it extensively and found it to be possible. If it works, it’s pretty slick. It does require you to stick a 0.55mm thin, removable, non-permanent adhesive backing on your device, which will snap to the magnets on the mount. If you can stomach that, in the name of convenience, you can head over to the IndieGogo campaign and pledge $25 for yours. It’s fully funded so you should be getting it in July.

[ Product Page ]

The original Kinect became popular among home-brew, DIY tinkerers… but failed to make much of a splash among its actual intended audience, the gamers. For the next iteration, Disney Research is working on one element they feel might have been missing from the original device, and that’s any form of physical feedback. But they don’t want you wear anything in order to feel this feedback, since that would defeat the purpose of the Kinect, so they’re working on a device which basically blows compressed air on you at the right time, in the hopes of making you feel something or other. It’s called the Aireal.

The air coming out of Aireal does so as a vortex, which is capable of traveling quite a long distance without losing much speed or its shape. The Aireal device also moves to track the player, meaning precise placement of the air hits on your body can be achieved.

How well this works is still being worked out, but Disney Research will be presenting a technical paper on the technology at SIGGRAPH 2013 in July. There’s also no word on whether Microsoft is even interested in bringing this to market, or whether even Sony or Nintendo would like to incorporate this into their gaming console strategies. But credit must be given to a desire for innovation, whether it bears commercial fruit or not.

Hit the jump for another picture, a video, and links.

(Relevant portion is at 44 seconds)

[ The Aireal ] VIA [ Geek.com ]

Would you pay close to $60,000 for a blinged-out pendant featuring Psy in his signature Gangnam Style dance move? I wouldn’t, but some celebrity went ahead and commissioned this very expensive piece from Brilliance.com. It features 636 pieces of round and oval-cut diamonds that add up to 6.25 carats set in 18-karat white gold and yellow gold.

The pendant kind of looks like an egg with glasses and a body stuck on it, but maybe that’s just me. Sixty thousand definitely seems like a ridiculous amount of money to spend on Psy and his horse dance. What say you?

VIA [ Chip Chick ]

Now this is one roarin’ motorcycle!

The Red Baron is a souped up bike that had its engine pulled out and replaced with a Rotec Radial R3600, which is a 150-horsepower, nine-cylinder engine. This type of engine was most commonly used as a replacement engine during the World War I-era airplanes. The bike is Frank Ohle’s baby, who spent 18 months turning it from concept into reality.

The Red Baron makes a lot of noise down the road and looks impressive with its huge and all-too-powerful engine. You can see it in action in the video above.

VIA [ C|NET ]

Microsoft has finally unveiled the Xbox One, which comes nearly eight years after its predecessor was released. It took a long time, but the question is, was it worth the wait?

The Xbox One is touted as an “all-in-one” entertainment system for your living room. Aside from being a video game console, it’s also a television and entertainment platform, with emphasis on providing a rich television experience.

The Xbox One runs on a 8-core x86 CPU and comes with 8GB of system memor, plus a Blu-ray drive, 802.11n wireless with Wi-Fi direct, USB 3.0 and HDMI In and Out. Underneath, it is equipped with a new console architecture with three core subsystems: Xbox, Windows, and an integration and interaction layer.

The system will come packaged with a Kinect sensor that has a 1080p HD 30 FPS RGB camera, with upgraded microphone arrays and “Time of Flight” technology that can process up to 2GB of data per second.

The controller didn’t undergo any dramatic redesigns, although it now offers grippy edges on the thumbsticks and features more defined ergonomics. It also comes with a more responsive D-Pad and ‘Impulse’ triggers that are basically force-feedback for your trigger digits.

The system can also be controlled with Smartglass. It also comes with voice control features, and you can turn it on easily by simply saying “Xbox on.” When you feel like watching some TV, you can say “Xbox, watch TV.” As for the Xbox One’s television features, you can access a full TV guide through the system and flip through channels using the same voice control system.

Microsoft hasn’t revealed any specific information about the pricing or the release date for the Xbox One, although you can expect more details about it and its launch titles in a few weeks at E3.

VIA [ Technabob ]

Some parts of the world still use spinning discs of plastic to enjoy their movies. Brazil is one of those places, and Dominos there decided to partner up with advertising firm Artplan for their latest campaign. They recruited 10 local DVD rental stores and replaced the labels on popular films with a special heat-activated one. It looks like a regular label when you pop it in the DVD player, but as it spins and heats up the label changes and is replaced with the image of a pizza, while simultaneously releasing the smell of a fresh pie, right out of the oven. Also printed on the new label is the following: “Did you enjoy the movie? The next one will be even better with a hot and delicious Domino’s Pizza.”

That’s as crude as advertising gets, but it’s also creative and probably effective. If we were the type of people that still pop discs in machines and someone dropped this on us, we just might pick up the phone for an order.

VIA [ DVice ]

The Burj Al Arab in Dubai claims to be the world’s most luxurious hotel, and despite its own protests, has had the questionable moniker of the “world’s only 7-star hotel” attached to it since its opening. Regardless of the validity of that star rating, there’s no question that its guests stay in utmost comfort and extravagance, showered with perks like being chauffeured in a Roll-Royce to and from the airport, to being tended to by personal maids and chefs, to now being able to use a 24-karat Gold iPad for the duration of their stay. “The iPads, meant to act as “virtual concierges,” are loaded with Interactive Customer Experience (ICE) software that gives guests information on services such as dining options at the landmark property.” And guests that like their device enough can get one for themselves at the hotel’s boutique for the modest sum of $10,200.

[ CNet News ] VIA [ LuxuryLaunches ]