Tag Archives: Mobile Tech

Insert Turns Car Cupholder Into Fry Holder

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Eating fries in the car: it’s a daily occurrence for some of us. And, if I’m being completely honest, a bi- or even tri-daily occurrence for me. But enough about my doctor always frowning when he looks at my lab results, the Car French Fry Holder (affiliate link) solves a longtime problem: where to rest your fries while trying to eat them and drive.

The Amazon product title calls the fry holder a “funny novelty white elephant gift,” but this is far from funny or a novelty to me – this is exactly what I’ve been waiting for. Gone are the days of dropping precious fries on the floor, trying to fish them out of the bag in the passenger side footwell, or risking grease on my pants, holding them between my legs. This truly is the golden age of mobile fry consumption.

Now they just need to add a ketchup bowl clip-on accessory, and you’ve got the total package. I mean, provided the total package is an embarrassing sight for a first date when you pick them up, especially if you have the fry holder in active use with a carton of days-old fries. Just please, whatever you do, don’t point at it and ask if you can interest them in an appetizer.

[via DudeIWantThat]

These Wireless Charging Mats Look Like SEGA Game Controllers

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Back in the day, I was a serious SEGA fanboy. The SEGA Genesis and Dreamcast are still two of my favorite video game consoles of all time, the Japanese brand offering an outsider’s approach to gaming, releasing offbeat and edgy titles that Nintendo and Sony wouldn’t have dreamed of at the time. Sadly, SEGA isn’t in the console business anymore, but they still make some pretty cool video games for other consoles and mobile devices. If you’re a fan of classic SEGA gaming like me, check out these sweet wireless charging mats.

Numskull teamed up with SEGA to make these “Charging Matz” because any word that ends with “z” is cooler than a word that ends with “s.” They’re available in four styles, including Mega Drive and Dreamcast controllers, a Dreamcast console, and the Sonic the Hedgehog logo, complete with his wagging finger. The picture above also shows a Saturn controller, so I assume that’s on the way too. Each mat offers 10-watt fast charging for Qi-compatible wireless devices and has a non-slip rubber base. I like how the Dreamcast controller even has the VMU there in the middle. Now can I use it to play some Shenmue?

All four SEGA Charging Matz are available for order in the EU and UK via their official SEGA shops. If you want one in the US, check back here and we’ll provide an update when we know when and where you can buy them.

Finally, The Heated Outdoor Folding Chair You’ve Been Waiting For

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Because the great outdoors are best enjoyed while warm and seated, this is the Heated Outdoor Folding Chair available exclusively from Hammacher Schlemmer. I can already feel my butt sweating around a campfire.

The $180 chair has a heating element woven into its seat and has three different temperature settings: 113ºF, 122ºF, and 131ºF. Am I going to hack mine to go up to 300ºF so I can use it for cooking hot dogs? Warranties were made to voided. Its AC rechargeable battery pack provides about six hours of heat on a full charge or about a half-hour of grilling time for me.

Alternatively, just sit on one of those hand warmer packs in a regular folding chair. Sure it might not be as elegant as a heated folding chair, but it’s also not as expensive. If I’m going to spend $180 on a chair, you better believe it’s going to be one of those fancy Japanese toilets with all the bells and whistles.

The JingPad A1 is a Feature-packed, Flagship Level… Linux Tablet?!

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An 11″, 2K, 4:3 AMOLED touchscreen. A 1.8GHz 8-core ARM SoC. 8GB of RAM. 256GB of storage. USB-C. An included stylus. Sounds like an awesome tablet right? But the thing that makes the JingPad A1 truly special is that it’s running JingOS, a Linux-based operating system.

The idea is simple – to have access to Linux applications in a slim, light, and powerful tablet. The JingPad is the first hardware product from a company called JingLing. They actually started with the operating system first – a smart move, considering they’re sourcing the hardware components anyway. In fact, you can download JingOS right now. The OS supports multitouch, has basic apps and widgets, and has a desktop mode similar to Samsung’s DeX. Arguably the most important feature of JingOS is that it can run Android apps, although it doesn’t seem like you can simply sideload them. JingLing will have a dedicated app store for Android apps.

As I said, the JingPad A1 comes with a stylus. But it also has an optional keyboard and trackpad accessory. I like the integrated kickstand. That’s a neat implementation.

Here’s the JingPad A1 pitch video:

And here’s a brief demo of the tablet running popular Linux apps:

The touch response seems a bit iffy, but it looks like a polished product. If they can nail the compatibility with Android apps, I think JingLing has a winner in their hands. Pledge at least $549 (USD) on Indiegogo to get the JingPad A1 with the stylus. Pledge at least $699 and you get the keyboard too.

Man Watches Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet’ on Game Boy Advance

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To spite Christopher Nolan for wanting people to visit movie theaters in the middle of a global pandemic to watch his movie Tenet, YouTuber WULFF DEN managed to put the movie on five Game Boy Advance cartridges so he could watch it the way it absolutely was not meant to be: super pixelated and at four frames/second. I can already feel my eyes drying up like raisins.

According to WULFF, “This movie was intended to be seen on the big screen. So let’s put it on a really tiny Game Boy Advance screen and blow those pixels up so we can barely see anything :D! This is quite possibly the worst way to watch Tenet and still be able to see what’s going on.”

I actually can think of worse ways to watch Tenet and still see what’s going on, but they do all involve me watching the movie from jail, and I ain’t going back to jail just to prove my point.

[via BoingBoing]

The WOWCube Is a Rubik’s Cube-like Gaming System with 24 Screens

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What do you get when you combine a Rubik’s Cube with mobile gaming capabilities? The WOWCube Entertainment System, a $250 gaming platform with 8 processors powering 24 individual screens that allows players to twist, tap, shake, and tilt the unit to play games and solve puzzles. Well, consider it added to my birthday list.

The WOWCube’s developers bill the system as “the first-in-class immersive-reality innovative console and gaming platform providing a unique experience of interacting with the digital world as if it’s a real object.” So basically the lovechild of a Rubik’s Cube and Bop-It that can play smartphone games.

In addition to 3-dimensional gaming, when placed on its charger the WOWCube also doubles as a widget display, connecting to your smartphone or smart home and being able to display their information, including social media posts, weather, photos, and more. But can it slice and dice and make Julienne fries?!

I’ll be honest: I’m not the world’s greatest puzzle solver. And if I can’t peel off the screens like the colored stickers on a Rubik’s and replace them on the correct sides, I don’t think I’ll be able to solve any of those puzzle games. At least not without my patent-pending Cube Puzzle Solver. Which, yes, is the 2-pound steel hammer I borrowed from a neighbor and never returned.

[via DudeIWantThat]

Someone Made a Fence out of iPhones: iFence

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If you’ve ever owned an iPhone, you know how expensive they can be. So you can imagine how much it would cost to decorate a fence with thousands of them. Apparently, that’s what one guy in Vietnam has done, embellishing the exterior of his house with iPhone after iPhone.

Tech fanatic Nguyễn Minh Hiền created this fence outside of his home by cementing countless iPhones in a variety of colors. Egged on by his nephew, Nguyễn covered the 20 meter long fence with more than 2,000 old iPhones – mostly iPhone 6, 7 and 7 Plus models, spending over $10,000 on the broken old phones.

Of course had the phones been in working condition, the fence would have cost somewhere around $1.3 million, based on an original price of about $650 for each phone. Regardless of the cost, it’s a rather ridiculous monument to technology and excess.

You can check out more of the iPhone fence in the TikTok clip below:

@minhhienapple

Tiếp tục ốp vỏ iphone lên tường đây các bạn

♬ Coffin Dance – Dylan Locke

[Tienphong via Archyde via Design You Trust]

Apple Pencil Patent Hints at Real World Color Sampling

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Since it first landed on the scene back in 2014, the Apple Pencil and its successor Apple Pencil 2 have brought a tremendous amount of creative freedom and expression to the iPad. Now, it appears that a future Apple Pencil might add a great new feature, the ability to sample colors from the real world.

According to a recently revealed U.S. patent application, Apple is working on a technology which could add a color sensor to the popular iPad stylus. The patent was written to cover a variety of different configurations, including placing sensors in the Apple Pencil’s tip, rear, or connected to the tip using a light guide. The device would use LEDs or OLEDs to illuminate and reflect colors off of surfaces back into a collection of photosensors. A single white light source or separate red, green, blue, and infrared light sources are mentioned as possibilities, along with whatever number of photodetectors are needed to ensure accuracy.

The data gathered by the color sensors could then be used to create a color palette or immediately set the paint color within iPad art applications. While this wouldn’t the first color sensing device on the market – take the Nix Pro and Color Muse for example- the idea of integrating one into the Apple Pencil could definitely add a whole new dimension to drawing and painting on the iPad.

There’s no indication that the color sampling feature is headed to the Apple Pencil anytime soon, but the patent application is a good start towards Apple eventually including the feature in a production version.

[via MacRumors]

This AirPods Case Looks Like a Mini Cooper

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So you have a pair of fancy and expensive AirPods. You could just carry around them in the standard, nondescript white case that Apple ships them in, or you could dress them up and make them your own. I choose to go with a more personalized look. Being a gearhead, I can think of no better place to store my overpriced earbuds but inside of a tiny car.

elago’s silicone AirPods case is designed to look like a Mini Cooper, and I think they did a damned fine job achieving that goal, capturing the shape of the classic British subcompact. It holds either an AirPods 1 or 2 charging case inside, while still working with wireless or plug-in charging via the cutout in its rear license plate.

Even cooler, the headlights and taillights glow in the dark, with a bluish glow up front, and red in the back. And if some other AirPods case doesn’t see them and rear-ends your AirPods, they’ll be okay since they’ll just bounce off of the rubbery silicone.

The elago Mini Car AirPods case comes in Fire Engine Red, Classic White, or a color I’m particularly keen on, British Racing Green. They’re available now over on Amazon for about 15 bucks each. Beep Beep.

[via The Gadgeteer]

Print Your Own Tesla Cybertruck

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If Elon Musk and Tesla live up to their promises, it shouldn’t be more than a couple of years before we start seeing Cybertrucks on the street. But if you don’t have the money or the patience for the real deal, you can at least have a miniature Cybertruck for your desktop.

Thanks to the miracle of engineering that is 3D printing, and the efforts of Thingiverse contributor aaskedall, you can download the files to print a model of the Tesla Cybertruck right this minute. The design looks like a reasonably accurate representation of Tesla’s angular electric truck of the future, and shouldn’t take very long to print given its relatively simple shapes. The model comes in seven parts – one for the body and chassis, two axles, and four wheels wrapped in chunky tires.

Unless you have a dual extruder 3D printer and take the time to color code the STL files, you’ll need to print it and paint it yourself to match the stainless steel body and black trim of the real truck. Now I want to see the guys with the world’s largest 3D printer render a life-size model of this thing.

[via Adafruit Blog]