The makers of the ZOMM are calling it the “world’s first wireless leash” for mobile phones. From the images on the teaser video on the ZOMM website, the device looks like a keychain Bluetooth dongle that will let you use your phone even if you can’t find it. The puck-shaped device is supposed to work as a wireless speakerphone for incoming calls, and provides a panic button and one-touch emergency dialing if your phone is stuck inside a briefcase or bag when you need to make that 911 call. And in the interest of preventing you from losing your phone entirely, it can automatically trigger an alarm if you walk too far away from your mobile phone.

No word on pricing yet, but word on the street is a retail price around $79 (USD). The ZOMM will officially be revealed at next week’s CES show.

OK, so maybe it’s a bit overkill for some users, but I just get plain annoyed when I have to plug and unplug peripherals from my USB ports. From printers, cameras, keyboards, to hard drives, almost everything that we have needs to be plugged into a USB port.

Of course, I might not use all of the ports, but I’m pretty sure I could find a use for them all over time. Still, it’s not for everyone. What do you think? Do you need 24 extra USB ports?

It’s available from USB Fever and will set you back $70 (USD).

[via DVice]

This black Ralph Lauren RLX Aero Type Jacket features super-resistant double layered fabric and has arm-mounted controls for your iPod, so that you can control your portable media player without taking it out of your pocket. The shell is made out microfiber and the jacket has adjustable cuffs as well as drawcords. The jacket also includes the RECCO avalanche rescue system if you ever get lost while out on the slopes.

It looks like this jacket has other gadget-oriented features as well. PANiQ technology will allow you to remotely use Bluetooth and other MP3 players, not just iPods. Sounds cool.

It’s currently on sale at the Ralph Lauren online store, discounted from $1,290 (USD) to about $780. I guess that’s about the price for some regular ski jackets.

[via Uncrate]

The pair of dragonflies use a solar-powered motor and a mechanical wire rig to make their wings beat. And while these dragonflies don’t actually fly anywhere, I think that’s a good thing. Have you ever tried to get a good look at a dragonfly up close and personal? They don’t like to stick around for long. Here’s a video clip of the solar dragonflies in action…

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

You can catch the Tamiya solar dragonfly kit over at Amazon for about $36 (USD).

The WOOF Dachshund speaker plugs into your computer or MP3 player’s audio port, and lets you listen to your tunes through a pair of tiny, tinny speakers. If that’s not enough for you, the dog starts nodding his head and barking along to the music – a feature that will certainly have you either throwing the thing across the room or packing it back up in its box and re-gifting it to someone you don’t really like. See the musical wiener dog in action here…

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

So if you like your cute coated with a dose of irritating, you can get the WOOF speaker over at Brando Toys for $25.99 (USD).

The Batman logo-esque Posimotion Helix clips onto the back of your iPhone or iPod Touch, and adds large hand grips on either side of the device. The grip is designed to provide improved gameplay on accelerometer-based games like racing, FPS and flight sim games, and works in either landscape or portrait modes.

While I like the general ideal of iPhone gaming control accessories, I’m concerned the added bulk of something like this defeats the purpose of having a gaming system you can always keep in your pocket. I plan on checking out the Helix in person at CES next week and will let you guys know how well it works.

The Posimotion Helix ships sometime this Spring and will sell for $19.99 (USD). You can pre-order one now over at the PosiMotion website.

The guys over at Brickarms make a variety of custom-molded miniature weaponry to put into the hands of your minifigs. Whether you require an RPG or a gatling gun, an AK-47 or a pistol, Brickarms has you covered. Heck, they even offer knives, swords, grenades and baseball bats so your minifigs ca really do some damage. Check out the photo gallery below to see a variety of accessories they offer for your LEGO enjoyment.

You can check out the full collection of Brickarms accessories and custom minifigs over at their website, and you can find a number of them for sale over at ToyWiz. Prices start as low as just $1 for some single weapons, so what’s not to like? They also make complete weapons packs that let you outfit your entire LEGO army all at once. Turn your LEGOs into deadly weapons today!

Even the set-up is a bit DS-like. Users write on a whiteboard, using ordinary markers; a webcam then takes an image of the written word or phrase. The real magic is done by the software, which “analyzes the image and interprets the handwritten words into different output modalities.” In other words, what you write is what you get.

Unfortunately, the demo video doesn’t go into detail about the capabilities and the limitations of the software, like the number or kinds of languages it can interpret, the types of words (adjectives, proper nouns, adverbs, verbs) it can interpret, the number of words it can recognize, or if the virtual objects can be made to interact like in Scribblenauts.

Nevertheless, this is an awesome project, and preschool and elementary teachers will no doubt fall on their knees and cry buckets of joyous tears if and when WYWIWYG comes out, because it’s a clever way of capturing the attention of kids and motivating them to learn. After all, you can’t make green poop appear if you don’t know how to spell “green” and “poop”. You can watch the demo video at the Interactive Multimedia Lab’s website; be sure to check out their other projects as well.

This design is being made available through a Swedish store and I don’t know if it’s official, but it comes with a matching pillowcase and duvet cover. The pillowcase has got your favorite iPod on it, while the duvet has got a giant screen with all of those nice icons.

What do you think? Do you like it? It beats some more traditional designs, but I’d expect your significant other to complain if you brought this into the bedroom this on a whim. I know that my wife wouldn’t like it.

iPod Touch bed linens are available for 349 KR ($49 USD) at the Ellos online store.

[via PicoCool]

This is called the Mini Wearable Ionizer Air Purifier for Pets and is supposed to help your pets breathe while they are going around town. It might not yet be that much of a problem in North America, but in Asia, some cities are quite polluted, thanks to the plethora of scooters.

That being said, I think that if it gets bad enough for pets to need this, we’d all be wearing gas masks! Thankfully, it won’t cost as much as stationary air purifiers, but is it just another gadget to put on the pile? It comes with different scents so that your pet can be relaxed, calm, and energized.

I don’t know and without further testing and data, there’s not much that I can say. Actually, I’d rather just buy a LED collar for my dog so that I can find him, rather than this thing. It’s available for $17.20 (USD) from Uxsight.

[via Ubergizmo]

The officially-licensed Star Wars Lightsaber Kei MP3 Player (maybe they mean “mou kei“, which refers to a limb-dismembering lightsaber finishing move – let’s go with that) comes to us from the guys over at Japan’s Taito, the same guys responsible for licensing Space Invaders onto every item in the cosmos. These MP3 players look just like the handle off of a lightsaber, and are available in two different designs. Each one measures in at just over 3″ long, and can play songs stored on any microSD memory card. I actually haven’t found an officially-licensed Star Wars microSD memory card yet, but I’m sure there’s one out there. It probably has a picture of Jar-Jar Binks on it.

Want one of these? You’ll have to wait until February to get one. In the mean time, you can pre-order yours over at NCSX for $23.90 (USD).

On the other hand, the generator is a fun timewaster (see above picture). And actually it does have a couple of good ideas.

So maybe you already have a bunch of New Year’s resolutions, but the New Year’s Resolution Generator may make you add one or two items to your list. Especially if you’ve never eaten a mango.

[via The Presurfer]

You’ll never guess what its last weapon is. Brace yourself for 5 minutes and 11 seconds of increasingly absurd weaponry and dinosaur slaughter:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The music was so bad but somehow it made the video much more awesome. And now I can’t get the stupid guitars out of my head. You can still find the Tomy i-SOBOT at Amazon for $250 (USD), which incidentally is $50 more than its price when we featured it almost 2 years ago. Weapons not included.

[via Topless Robot]

Still, some of you may be tempted to ask: Plot holes? What plot holes? Cue keyboards and drums:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Okay so the second half of the song degraded into silly jokes about the movie, but seriously, how did the Joker set up his elaborate schemes? And why the hell would anyone want to be the henchman of someone like that? Care to rap about that?

[via Neatorama]

There’s just something about LEGOs that is completely timeless. Even though it’s been years since I used the bricks, I still love anything that’s connected to them. When I first heard about the app, I had all of these strange fantasies about what it would actually be.

It turns out that it’s an app that turns photos in to LEGO brick mosaics. Initially, this sounds like something that’s got limited appeal, but I have to say that it looks like it’s fun to use.

I know that I’m a bit of a LEGO geek, so this app is right up my alley. Sure, you could just use a filter in Photoshop and get the same result, but this is on the fly on your iPhone! The results look pretty, but it’s a bit sad though that you can’t specify what kind of LEGO bricks should be used in the mosaic.

You can grab the LEGO Photo iPhone app here for the low price of… free.

[via Gizmodo]

The 18.5″ tall Speaker Bot is an “assemblage robot”, or in layperson’s speak, a robot made from old junk. This one-of-a-kind robot was created by New York’s Lipson Robotics, and was created from a variety of found objects. I actually think that 289V logo came from an old Ford Mustang. Sweet. And smack dab in the middle of his chest is one of those mini MP3 speaker amps, so he can crank out your tunes. I like the old iPod in the picture too – I wonder if that counts as a retro piece of junk now?

At $550 (USD), the Speaker Bot is not the cheapest iPod dock out there, but it’s clear a lot of work went into his assembly, so I think he’s worth it. You can check out Speaker Bot and a whole bunch of other cool upcycled robot sculptures over at Lipson Robotics’ Etsy shop.

The Asspeaker is a 2.1 speaker system shaped like… your butt. Well maybe not your butt, but somebody’s butt. The speaker features a subwoofer with what could only be described as a “strategically-placed” tuned bass port (between the cheeks). And if one butt isn’t enough for you, the two wireless satellites can be stored together to form a smaller pair of buttocks.

To turn on the Asspeaker, you tap the right cheek, and to adjust the volume, you rub the left one. Did I happen to mention that everything is wrong about this concept?

The asspeaker is the brainchild of designers Javad Yazdani, Mohsen Tafazzoly, and Younes Daneshvar. While the design is still just a concept, Javad, Mohsen and Younes should get their asses on a plane to Vegas next week where both the Consumer Electronics Show and a porn convention are going on at the same time.

Surely, somebody has got to give them a business deal there.

[via Behance]

Why are you still reading this? Okay even if you’re not familiar with Ben Heck and what he does, you can plainly see that this is a PS3 packed and a 17″ widescreen LCD, all in one case that you can lug around. That shot above is from Ben Heck himself; here’s the one on auction:

And here’s the seller, altfeldtoy, who says that he won the PS3 Slim laptop “in a giveaway at a local business.” You live in an awesome neighborhood, altfeldtoy.

Altfeldtoy is selling it because he’s not into PS3 gaming, which is as good a reason as any, especially since the current bid for the laptop is $1,025 (USD), with 5 days to go before bidding ends. Not bad for something which cost him absolutely nothing. Go to eBay and bid on it! Screw 2010! Savings are for wusses!

[via gameSniped]

It’s not exactly a portable PS3, but it’s the closest thing we have for now. Basically it’s a controller with an integrated display in it, which means you don’t even have to have a TV to use Sony’s black beast. The WVI uses a 1.2 GHz transmitter to send controller input to and receive video output from a PS3. Aside from the guts of a PS3 controller and the transmitter, the WVI is also equipped with a 5″ widescreen LCD (I think it’s a PSOne LCD), an unspecified number of 4500maH Li-ion batteries and recharge circuit with built-in LED capacity meter, AV in, headphones and USB mini/charger ports.

I’m sure you’re itching to see it in action, so here it is. Watch it and WANT IT:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

You know what’s even more amazing? This isn’t the first WVI that techknott made! He also made one for the Xbox 360:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

So Sony, please please please hire techknott before Microsoft or anyone else does. I mean all this thing needs is a sexy housing – and decent audio; techknott says that he’s still working on that – otherwise it’s good to go. In fact techknott will sell the PS3 WVI, as soon as he fixes the audio problem. Seriously someone mass produce this thing so we can all play Dragon’s Age even while pooping. A disgusting yet awesome thought.

[via Ben Heck forums via Engadget]

If I was thinking about a watch I wanted to get, I guess that the last thing that would cross my mind would be a watch that has a full-on flashlight built into it. I’m sure it’s useful sometimes, but it looks super-geeky.

There are some really neat watches for cross-training that rock from companies like Suunto and Garmin. They come with GPS and cost between $300-500. But none of them has the pure geek allure of this little marvel.

When you’re not wearing it, this oddity can sit in the drawer alongside your compass watch, calculator watch, and television watch. I have to say that it looks pretty ugly, but the basic concept is something that I think that we could see in more new watches. I think it would be cool if they came with LED lights on them.

The Stanley flashlight watch is available over at Brando for $58 (USD).