Not long ago we brought you the Bloom! LED Flower Pots that can be used as accent lights around your home. Today, we bring you the singing and dancing (okay, no dancing) Tubthumpers. Tubthumpers are flower pots with speakers in them for use with your home audio system. Far more discrete than the average fake rock speaker, the Tubthumpers are waterproof and can be left outside year round. Granted, the speakers may survive the winter, but will your plants?
Available for approximately $175 USD per pair.
File this under “weird-but-cool.” Most of the time, tomatoes are notoriously hard to grow. However, the Upside Down Tomato Garden could change that - and it looks “space age” at the same time.
This ingenious planter takes the toil out of growing tomatoes by elevating the planting bed and allowing your vines to grow downward from holes in the bottom.
And, as a bonus, the top side of the planter can be used to grow herbs, flowers, or anything else you might think of putting up there.
Read More | Hammacher Schlemmer
Amazing in it’s simplicity, here’s a suprisingly innovative solution for keeping your plants happy and healthy. Not exactly “high tech” but it does add a certain “steampunk” or “cyber” look to your indoor garden, with all that hose.
This device automatically waters up to 20 plants for up to 40 days without the need for a spigot or power outlet. Up to 20 drippers attach to a 32’ PVC hose that runs from the systems reservoir to your plants and then back again; a single dripper placed in each plant takes care of watering, or you can use several drippers in larger plants. A washable polyamide filter removes rust, dirt, and other impurities so drippers wont clog.
It sells for $99.95 at Hammacher Schlemmer.
Read More | Hammacher Schlemmer
The Square Eclipse is a wall light that uses a series of LEDs to provide illumination. Control is exerted over the lighting scheme with a micro-controller, which can cause its cluster of 24 full spectrum LEDs to display a dizzying array of colors for your enjoyment. The lights move in a pattern suggestive of an eclipse and to quote Orange22, “shift the focus from the center of the object to it’s perimeter.” Considered to be a Limited Edition, each light is signed by the designer and carries a price tag to reflect the intended eliteness. $3000 USD of eliteness to be exact.
When a non-electric toothbrush calls for a product review, you know something about it has to be special, right? Well, just trust us. We have taken the OHSO Marko travel toothbrush and put it through the paces to show what a little ingenious, outside-the-box thinking can add to a practice that we didn’t expect to see much innovation come in to. If you ever have to go somewhere where you think you might need your toothbrush, we tell you why the OHSO is the only solution you will ever need to that problem.
Hidden passageways are the sort of things kids dream of. The ability to sneak from one room to another, a place to hide from your pesky brother/sister, or a cool thing about your house your friends don’t have. Creative Home Engineering creates and installs hidden passageways, and has also designed a DIY kit for those willing to tackle the project on their own.
Imagine every type of hidden passage you’ve seen in the movies, or read about in a book, and the folks at Creative Home Engineering can make it a reality. Revolving fireplace? Check. Stairs that lift to reveal a hidden entrance? You betcha. A candlestick on the mantle as the triggering switch? Piece of cake. In fact, from looking at the movies and animations on their site, you’ll get a glimpse of how varied hidden passages can be. Fulfilling one’s childhood fantasies isn’t the only reason for a hidden passageway. Security plays a major role as thieves can’t steal what they can’t find. Technology also has it’s place with biometrics, optical scanners, and voice recognition as optional items.
Prices can range upwards of $10,000 USD, and the DIY kits start at $1,500 USD.
Walk by your typical window during the middle of winter (assuming you don’t live in the tropics) and you can feel the cold pouring off of it. Even multi-paned, gas filled, low-E windows are still poor thermal barriers and let in as much cold as they let heat out. To increase comfort and efficiency, Engineered Glass Products (EGP) has come out with Hot Glass. Hot Glass is a double-pane window with a transparent film that allows the inside pane to radiate heat. You can set the window to provide just enough warmth to offset any heat-loss, and put the inside of the glass at room temperature. Alternatively the controls can be configured (similar to a standard thermostat) to allow the windows to give off increased heat, helping to warm the room they’re in.
Oh, and that picture of the towel warmer? Well, it happens to be just one of the additional uses of their heated glass technology, and a good looking one at that.
There are those that like to show off their home theater gear, and others who prefer a more discrete approach. For the latter group comes a plasma television cabinet that also happens to be a fireplace. Similar to other motorized display cabinets, the plasma screen is situated on a lift that raises and lowers it on command. Sadly, the included fireplace isn’t really a fireplace by the true definition of the word. Actually, its called a flame effect fire that has no real flame, but does contain an electric convection heater that churns out 2kW (approx. 6800 BTUs) of heat. (So much for roasting chestnuts over an open fire.)
A variety of styles are offered and prices range from approximately $3,700 to $9,100 USD. Ouch.
Of all the
great ideas out there, the USB Air Purifier is one of the latest. One more USB device isn’t going to kill your computer, but it might help clean the air around it. There’s no mention of how it cleans the air, but since there’s not much room for a filter, we can surmise that it operates as an ionic model. If that’s the case, in exchange for supposedly cleaner air, your little air purifier will be sitting on your desk happily churning ozone into your immediate vicinity. Excess ozone is bad for you, but whatever it’s method of air purification, we can all use cleaner air, and for a small area this tiny critter just might do the trick. Priced around $27 USD.
Read More | Product Page
The Reveo MariVac Food Tumbler is bound to keep your canine friend entertained for
seconds as it sits on your kitchen counter, happily tossing a raw piece of meat around in it’s acrylic container. Of course it’s not intended to keeps your pets occupied, and a complete cycle only lasts 20 minutes, but it is designed to cram as much marinade as possible into every nook and cranny of your meat of choice. With only three buttons, On/Off, Vacuum, and Tumble, the MariVac is easy to use. Insert marinade and meat, allow the machine to create a vacuum inside the container, and tumble your way into marinaded bliss. Of course, such happiness comes at a price - $200 USD in this case.
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