If Tom Joad had some of these grapes, he could have moved out of hicksville and into the Ritz-Carlton or some shit. This bunch of deliciously sweet grapes went for $1000 at a recent auction. For $1000, a hotel owner was able to procure 30 of the sweet, succulent grapes that are a little smaller than a CamBall. These just weren’t any grapes though:

The Ruby Roman variety, developed by the Ishikawa Prefecture Agricultural Research Center, was sold to an upscale hotel owner on Monday. The single bunch, consisting of 30 grapes each slightly smaller than a ping-pong ball, were described as “delicious: sweet but fresh at the same time, very well balanced,” by Agricultural official Hirofumi Isu.

I have a lot of dirty jokes I’m tempted to crack since it’s Friday but I think I’ll leave that up to you and the comments.

Link

Sometimes you stumble across a piece of gadgetry that can really help brighten up your home (both figuratively and literally). Essentially, the Smoon Ombrella is a device that acts as a light source and vaguely resembles a glowing moon in the sky when placed on your Manhattan rooftop or sun room or dungeon, etc. The product of furniture designers Beau & Bien, this LED lamp runs off solar energy and can go a whopping 6 days on just 10 hours of charge.

This Plexiglas beast won’t come cheap. At $2200, it’s most certainly catered to the rich. Something tells me you could design a similar non-solar version for much cheaper.

Link (via)

Centipedes are fucking gross. They squirm around on the floor and scare the shit out of chicks. I’d say a centipede is good for nothing except shitty ’80s video games but I’d be wrong. Seems there is a freaky centipede-inspired lamp you can own for $2600. I can’t tell how big the actual lamp is because the photo has nothing in the foreground for scale but one thing’s for sure: you are not getting laid with this thing next to your bed.

Link (via)

The company that could turn your iPod or laptop any color is back and offering the iPhone 3G in exciting new colors. No longer are you limited to a black or white iPhone 3G purchase. Now you can plunk down $150 extra and get a wacky neon green paint job. It’s similar to T-Mobile’s skinning service except not affordable in the slightest.

You can get combine colors if you want to mix it up and represent your favorite sports team if that tickles your fancy. Unfortunately, the price is just too high for us to recommend it. Each additional option will cost you more and more. You might be better off trying to DIY this one.

Link (via)

Here’s something else, furniture called Ripple Series that imitates rippling mercury just like the Vertibral seating imitates spinal structure. It’s from designer Lee J. Rowland who happens to also be an aerospace engineer. And it shows with this out of this world furniture design that uses a three-dimensional machining process along with sheet metal to make these one of a kind desktops.

It’s no surprise these tables are also astronomical in price, ranging from $45,000 to $268,000. Yowza. Impressive Lee, but no thanks, I’d rather buy a condo then put a bunch of furniture made out of corks in it.

(more…)

Can’t afford an Optimus Maximus? Don’t feel bad, I can’t either. And anyone who can afford it didn’t get rich buying $1600 keyboards. Art Lebedev has announced a numpad-like keypad called the Optimus Pultius.

The keyboard comes packed with 15 OLED keys, an SD card slot and a USB hub. It’ll look great alongside the Maximus you don’t own or with any other keyboard. Come to think of it, if you try putting this keyboard next to any keyboard that isn’t a top dollar Maximus, it’ll just make that keyboard look even shittier. No price announcements as of yet, but look for it at the end of 2008 or early 2009.

Link (via)

I’ve got a problem and it’s with my former employer Michael Arrington. It’s not a personal problem at all, it’s just that he’s not making sense when it comes to his little Firefox Tablet he’s trying to build. Oh, and be warned - the page is bogged down by a gazillion comments, which brings me to my main point:

Michael Arrington owns a blog network, not a hardware distribution company. I have no doubt in my mind that the man is gifted enough to create a piece of a hardware that’s related to the Internet somehow. My main issue is that TechCrunch thinks its little Firefox Tablet can be manufactured for around $200. Wait a second, did I say $200? Oh right, that’s what was originally said and then changed to $300 later on. So already the price dispute is becoming bullshit.

If the price for the tablet exceeds $400, it’s a pointless effort. You can scoop up an Eee PC, Dell E Mini or iPhone for cheaper and they’ll all do a lot more than just browse Firefox. I know you love web apps Michael, but take a breather for a second and think about all of this.

You claim you want a touchscreen and a built-in webcam all for ~$300? Ridiculous. I assume you’re trying to profit off this - after all, why else would you even go for it? After browsing around, I found 12-inch touchscreens online for around $300. I realize that buying in bulk could lower that, but you’re forgetting the guts of this thing: CPU, RAM, and your 4GB SSD you requested. Bro, for $300, you are not getting this. I don’t care if you go as open-source as possible. There is just no way in hell TechCrunch is going to produce a touchscreen Internet browser to run web applications for $200 $300.

The specs he’s asking for, specifically, are:

Here’s the basic idea: The machine is as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone. It will have Wifi, maybe one USB port, a built in battery, half a Gigabyte of RAM, a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. Data input is primarily through an iPhone-like touch screen keyboard. It runs on linux and Firefox. It would be great to have it be built entirely on open source hardware, but including Skype for VOIP and video calls may be a nice touch, too.

Don’t forget the competition from existing Internet tablets like the Nokia N800, Michael.x

Finally, you ask your readers for help in building it. When your product is finished and goes to market, how will these people be fairly compensated for their work? That’s what I really want to know. I could go on and on for hours about this but I think I’ve summed up the flaws in Arrington’s idea quite nicely. Hey, if he succeeds in pulling it all off and shoving it in my face, more power to him. I’d buy a $200 Firefox Tablet.

Before we continue, we need to make sure you’re a black rapper with a ton of cash, bitches and no mortgages. If you meet the criteria, then proceed on to learn about an item that will not only make you look good, but will also allow you to wipe your ass with leather if you ever feel like it. Yes, it’s the Bentley laptop and yes, it’s real.

Unlike other high-end laptops (Lamborghini, Ferrari, etc.), this laptop costs significantly more and isn’t exactly the best computer on the market. Aside from the purse-like styling and fancy colored leather, the laptop features a beautiful Bentley logo, Windows Vista, “a 64-bit CPU” and a really lame 160GB hard drive. The price for the name of Bentley plastered on a shit item? $19,943.
(more…)

So here’s the biggest load of crap to hit the home entertainment market. The Whitelight Glass Fiber-optic Cable made by Nordost is supposed to deliver the best possible audio to your home theater. Your equipment better consist of McIntosh and nothing less, ’cause a pair of Whitelight cables will run you $32,825. Yes, that’s over thirty thousand dollars. I’m sure even the snobbiest audiophile would scoff at that price. Here’s a list of some stuff you could buy if you spent $25 on a set of gold-plated AV cables and saved the rest:

Robotics can be an expensive hobby but cheap robot projects do exist. Instructables member Imadami has made a DIY robot with an Arduino brain that you can build yourself for under a hundred dollars. This remote controlled robot is stocked with a pan and tilt system that could be used to aim a camera or even a USB missile launcher for surveillance and/or scare tactics.

The creator even suggests the option of purchasing additional sensors to make the robot fully autonomous. It’ll sense obstacles in its path, follow a trail of light, smell odors, hear sounds and even know precisely how far it has traveled. You can even turn it into a weapon of mass destruction that slaughters millions.

Link