Gearfuse

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The level of excitement 12-year-old Kyle Krichbaum gets from vacuums is simply disturbing. He’s had an obsession of them since he was born and now owns over 150 of them. There’s really no reason anybody should know so much about cleaning machines, which is why we bow down to him in humble envy of his fanatic gizmo-loving. Check out his reaction when he recieves the vacuum he always wanted. With that said, I hope I never have to utter that phrase again. — Andrew Dobrow

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Kronos is a watch designed to pleasure us geek men. The Kronos watch features a USB flash drive integrated into the wristband latch for your convenience. The added feature of the flash drive offers companies a much further reach of prospective buyers. We know we’d be much more liable to buy a designer watch if it were to come with flash memory capabilities.

The Kronos watch was designed by Andrew Willkerson in hopes that it will help people avoid pocket clutter while still enjoying portable memory. The men’s analog watch was made as a design project in a Graduate Computer Modeling class. We give him an A. — Andrew Dobrow

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If you ever thought that being lonely was the worst possible feeling, think again. The Lonely Jacket makes sure that instead of being lonely, you have people literally right on top of you. We all walk through the day bumping into people and not uttering a word. We can use our clothing as a social tool, rather than the conformists way to do it, through services such as MySpace. This is the really physical MySpace.

Designed by Aamu Song and Johan Olin, the jacket is made of Velcro strips that have been sewn back to back to create alternating hook and pile stripes. When the material grabs on to another person wearing the Lonely Jacket, sticking together in a style enhanced harmony. Also serves as a nice alternative to putting your kid on a leash. (more…)

From the same people who brought you the Solar Powered Wii kiosk, here is the Solar Powered Nintendo DS Lite. The crazy modders over at Tom’s Hardware managed to mod the Soldius 1 solar-powered cellphone charger to connect directly to the battery cable of the DS. Check out the site for a video documenting the process, which was considerably difficult despite the simple explanation. — Andrew Dobrow

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Thanks to an early shipment of Guitar Hero II for Xbox 360, there’s now hard evidence to confirm that Guitar Hero is adding the use of an effect pedal to the game. A diagram of the guitar controller in the 360 instructions shows a plotted port for an effect pedal. Before you get your gaming panties in a knot, take warning that Konami has been known to add mysterious effect ports to music games in the past without anything to show for it, which they did for Beatmania III.

On the back of this instruction slip, the effect port is labled as still being unavailable for now, as can be seen by the lack of hardware. But Konami might just have something up their sleeves. — Andrew Dobrow

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The fallout was inevitable. What else could you respect from a game trailer that glorifies the slaughter of mass amounts of people and the theft of their vehicles in the streets of a New York City-esque Liberty City? Politicians are almost as hyped up about the GTA IV trailer as tech blogs were the last few days. We suppose the anger is justified, but we hate the idea of gaming being exploited for political gain. *cough, cough* Tipper Gore *cough cough*

NYC councilman Peter Vallone says “Setting Grand Theft Auto in the safest big city in America is like setting Halo in Disneyland”. Halo in Disneyland you say? Now, that’s a good idea! A spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg also spoke out saying that the Mayor condones no game where cops are killed or injured. Well, that’s just odd. Take Two Interactive remains quite on the subject, retaining their duck and cover PR strategy. — Andrew Dobrow

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Some mothers scold their children for playing with their food. Others encourage it. This mother bases her children’s lunch around game playing. This Japanese super-mom packs her children custom made lunches themed as popular animated characters. Most of these lunch creations focus on popular Nintendo games such as Super Mario, Animal Crossing, and Mario Kart.

While some of these meals are made of food that don’t seem particularly appetizing, especially for packed school lunches (although we do live in America), the creations look almost too gorgeous to shove down our gullets. We said almost! *chomp, chomp* — Andrew Dobrow

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Remember these things? They are called “cassette tapes” and were widely used in the 80’s and early-90’s. What was the single most popular music format for over a decade, is now being used as novelty fashion products. Hand-made using real used cassette tapes, the Cassette Wallet screams memories of our old Warrant and Poison cassettes. Made by designer Marcella Foschi, the wallet is made from old Italian tapes pulled from the vault of obsolete technology.

Available in 6 different models, the Cassette Wallet is sure to be a conversation starter. Available for $36 while still in stock. — Andrew Dobrow

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Plans to allow pornographic sites to use the suffix .xxx has been shut down. ICANN members, the company that looks over domain addresses, say that .xxx would put the company in a role to regulate content. “[A] large part of the community thinks that if we approve dot XXX, all that material that we said will magically move into dot XXX, and, therefore, children will be protected, because it will be easy to filter.� Said board member Roberto Gaetano. The vote, which took place in Lisbon, Portugal, was rejected 9 votes to 5 with one abstaining vote.

The argument is that .xxx would help maintain quality control and would provide a safer internet, providing an easy way to monitor children’s internet use. Sadly, this means that Gearfuse.xxx wil never become a working URL. *sigh*…a man can dream. — Andrew Dobrow

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Many men love to show off their glistening muscles at the beach. Our shriveled up excuse for an arm has become lack and lame from its years and years of inactivity. Though, this doesn’t mean there aren’t ways we can use our arm muscles to impress. This mobile controller, designed and developed by Arto Halopainen, allows users to control mobile devices and games using nothing more than the flexing of arm muscles.

When wearing the sleeves, basic commands can be initiated by simply tweaking your bicep, or other corresponding arm muscle. Halopainen hopes one day the controller sleeve will be used for muscle rehabilitation and to aide disabled and elderly users in having an easier experience. We might be out of shape, but we bet you that beach muscle men can’t control gadgets with their flexing. — Andrew Dobrow

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