Top 10 Strangest Gadgets of the Future

Anonymous Cow writes "This week, the editors of TechEBlog have compiled a list of the 'Top 10 Strangest Gadgets of the Future,' from solar powered LEDs to memory LCD screens, it's all there." Urinal gaming stations! How did no one implement this sooner?

Comments

virtusphere looks quite fun

[bobamu]

all the joys of the varied alien landscapes of fps and maybe practical real world simulation, be it lacking the feeling of jumping/climbing and the feeling of freefall, plus of course the lack of weight.

Maybe if they could make the "sphere" the actual projection screen, mount it on something mobile and maybe have some kind of force feedback bodysuit? Hmm, I feel a patent looming. :)

And the heliodisplay is completely cool, a volume projecting version would be even cooler.

Solar LED light could actually be useful

[vadim_t]

I could use something that doesn't need batteries, charges itself, and has a bright light that doesn't have to last very long. Such a thing would come very handy for messing with computers and such. It's quite a pain that when you just need a bit of extra light for a minute that the batteries have to be always dead.

Only if awesome == craptacular

[brunes69]

Watch the video again, and look closely. That board is going *very* slow, slower than any skateboarder I have ever seen. When presneted with evena small ram it just looks like it falls off the other side, it doesn't jump at all.

No speed == no air. No boarder is going to want these things unless they either seriously beef up th ehorsepower somehow, or allow manual foot intervention to speed them up just before the ramping begins. Otherwise it's just a glorified pre-teen mini-scooter.

Not entirely new

[Deadstick]

I had some stock in a company called Chill Can Corp circa 1965. It had a patent on a self-cooling drink can looking much like the one in TFA...it went nowhere.

A cardboard forerunner of the urinal game, called Whizzers, was marketed in the 70s.

rj

three quick alternatives

[zogger]

you can get various flashlights with instant or close to it light without disposable batteries. Freeplay makes a windup light, which would probably be the best for your purposes-bright and right there- (they make good quality stuff, I have two of their clockwork spring radios), and you can get the "squeeze as you go" light (looks like handgrips) from various online sporting goods places (these would be the least expensive, I have seen them as low as five bucks, but you lose one hand for doing work as you have to keep squeezing), and you can get flashlights that you shake for a few moments/minutes to get some light for a few moments/minutes.

With that said, any of the LED based flashlights you can score most anyplace with good quality batteries will last a LONG time in normal use compared to a normal incandescent styled bulb. The biggest problem there is that they last so long the batteries might corrode on ya before the juice runs out.

Great top 10 !!!

[alexandrecc]

The last time I was so excited about technology was when I got my first Palm in 2000 ! So I need to share my hype with you.

10) Citizen's Memory LCD

"that retains the image even when turned off." and "Practical applications would include watches" That would be very useful for watches. It would always be 5 oclock PM friday as long as it is turned off. Practical.

9) EyeMove PC

Wow they found something even more annoying than cell phone in public transport.

8) Scarpar - The All-Terrain Motorized Board

Thank god the guy in the video didn't fall. Falling from this in rocks with your feets fixed to the board is a bit dangerous no ?

7) 3D Video Game

Professionnal gaming league is not for tomorrow. If they showed their best player for the video demo, I guess that type of game is pretty hard to master.

6) Transparent Toaster

The only thing I have to say about this is : TT

5) Origami DVD Player

For me origami is more a way to create rabbits and birds with paper. I dream since I am 5 years old of listening to a DVD on a rabbit.

4) Self Cooling Beer Can

One question : what is the price of a 24 beer pack ?

3) VirtuSphere

Honestly, that is awesome! I really need this in 10 (or 40?) years in my basement!

2) Heliodisplay M2i

That looks even better than Princess Leia holographic transmission in Star Wars episode IV. I agree it was only in 1977. That is what we call evolution.

1) "On Target" Video Game Urinal

My religion forces me not to comment on this.

Honorable mention Solar Powered LED

I hope they'll find their way to La Paz to buy some batteries in case next day is rainy.

Honorable mention Intelligent Spoon and Bright Walk

Hey do I look like the guy who is having a stupid comment to say about everything ? I am too tired to comment about these.

Re:Great top 10 !!!

[x-caiver]

10) Citizen's Memory LCD
"that retains the image even when turned off." and "Practical applications would include watches" That would be very useful for watches. It would always be 5 oclock PM friday as long as it is turned off. Practical.

You're like the 10th person I've seen make a lame comment on entry 10. I can't take it anymore, and have to respond.

Please think before typing. Right now an LCD watch display is almost always on and updating. Updating many many times per second. Assume, for the sake of this post I don't know the real frequency, that the display is updating 60 times per second. Do you really need to now down to 1/60th of a second when the time changes from 1:45:05 to 1:45:06? Now, turn the update frequency down to once per second, and you instantly save a ton of power, meaning your watch battery lasts much much longer. (If the 'memory lcd' took exactly the same amount of power that a regular LCD took to update you'd see a 60x improvement, for example).

Now, do you really need to know the difference between 1:45:06 and 1:45:07 at all? If you decide that you don't want seconds displayed on your watch, you could lower the refresh rate down even more, say once every 15 second. At that speed their could be up to 15 seconds when your watch was "a minute behind", but generally people don't need that resolution of time out of their watches (especially since the majority of people do not have watches synchronized with that accuracy to a known-good time source anyway). Now, you have increased your battery power even more.

Extra battery power could mean that your watch would last much longer, or it could mean that extra features could be jammed in to your watch. Having a 15 second refresh rate on the watch's main time display doesn't mean that it couldn't increase its frequency for other functions such as the fractional-second timer that people think they need in their watches.

Re:Pot to piss in...

[Technician]

This might be good to potty train kids but I don't see its function in a rest stop.

Knowing my kids, this would hardly be used to improve hygene. When they run out of proper game tokens, they will move on to other things to continue the game such as fingers. Somehow having the kids play games with the touch screen in a urnal does not seem like a way to improve hygene.