Have you ever felt the desire to mess around with a Rubiks Cube while messing around on your MP3 player’s menus? No? Same here. While this concept for an MP3 player looks very simple and clean, actually thinking about it presents problems. If you first think about what a Rubiks cube is, you’ll realize that it’s puzzle. That is all a Rubiks Cube is. Why would you want to make any part of any portable media device a kind of puzzle? Menus and functions are supposed to be straightforward. As proven by the iPod, a two concentric circles sells the best. The idea here is that by turning the upper and lower sections (or maybe just the middle), you lock and unlock the buttons and fucntions of the media player. What is wrong with a hold button? This concept should stay that, just a concept. While the pictures are pretty and the blue on white probably made Apple balk for a second, there is no reason to have to think hard about your menu system. Working any portable device should be easy as pie. — Nik Gomez

Rubik Cube Mp3 Player [via OhGizmo!]

LG has unveiled a new concept laptop they call the ‘e-Book’. No, this isn’t an eBook reader. It’s a forward-thinking laptop, sporting an OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) screen (which is much more energy-efficient than an ordinary LCD screen), a second OLED screen for the keyboard, and a fuel-cell battery. Here’s where things get confusing. Some sources report the battery uses ‘blue methyl alcohol’ (Engadget), while others claim the e-Book uses ‘natural gas, methanol, and other eco-friendly liquid fuels’ (Laptoping).  The concept received a ‘Red Dot Award’, a German prize for industrial design, and has us here at Gearfuse eagerly hoping the e-Book makes it into production soon. — Mike Payne

[via Laptoping]