E-Ball

E-Ball: The spherical computer that has a virtual keyboard, uses a bit of cardboard as a screen, and has the added feature of being able to roll off the table and smash into a thousand very expensive pieces.

Progress!

Pedal-Powered Monorail

No.

The Whistling Beer Cans of Death

Beer: Is there nothing it can't do?

A Sign You'll Never Go Home Again

Whoever designed this horror must have worked at Microsoft in the '90s.

Shape Up

A dumbbell/alarm clock that won't shut up until you've done thirty "reps"–whatever those are.

Alternatively, you can get an excellent workout by taking a hammer to the nasty little thing.

Sowine

EuroCave's Sowine wine bar allows you to keep an open bottle of wine fresh for up to ten days.

An interesting invention, but I'm still having trouble with this strange "not finishing the bottle" concept.

Tape Cassettes: 1958

The Walkmans must have been hell to carry.

PAL-V

Not so much a flying car as a flying tricycle.

The Bat Artificial Kidney

In later years, Batman's utility belt was put to less glamorous use.

When Fridges Attack

I always knew you couldn't trust the frost-bitten little bastards.

Backpack Bike

A bike that folds up into a backpack.

Next: A bike with a rack that you can put your backpack bike in.

Loop

The Loop is an all-in-one piece of kitchen furniture. Just add food scraps to it and it provides manure for a nice little kitchen garden, methane to power the appliances, and even a comfy seat.

Having planted kitchen gardens, tended compost heaps, fooled about with methane technology, and sat in the odd chair, I'd say that some disappointment is to expected on all fronts.

Grass Scanner

Miss Alice Wang presents her idea for a device to tell you exactly how green your lawn is.

The perfect gift for the anal retentive in your life.

Sneaky UAV

The DevilRay UAV differs from the competition due to its remarkable feature of refuelling itself by siphoning electricity from power lines.

The entire principle of this machine is immoral.

Stress shirt

German scientists have come up with a shirt that can detect when you're stressed and if I got one it would be right nine times out of ten.

Why am I stressed? Because I'm wearing a *&%ing shirt that can tell when I'm stressed!

Harold Lloyd, Call your Service

A basin with a slot inside that directs the water wherever you put your hand.

I prefer one that directs the water every place except where your hand is. Much more comedy value.

Super SideBar

The $499 Super SideBar is the answer for the amateur barman for whom lifting those heavy bottles is just too much effort. A touch of a button and you can dispense the contents of any of five bottles stored in its cabinet.

Frankly, I'm voting close, but no cigar. When they add ten more bottles and make it so it can not only pump out the booze but mix it and cut the limes, then I'll be impressed.

Buzzball

Get in the big plastic ball and we'll push you down the hill.

What happens next, we're not sure because we don't like to watch.

Demron

Radiation Shielding Technologies has come up with a material that protects as well as lead for one-seventh the thickness.

I really must dash off a note to my tailor.

Suitcase Bike

The suitcase bike; if this is supposed to be the answer to getting through airports and railway stations, then I'm just riding the bloody thing to my destination and be done with it.

Paper Shampoo

Goes well with the cardboard soap and the plaster aftershave.

AMP

A robot boom box that follows you around.

Sledgehammer to smash it into tiny bits not included.

Atomic Golf Ball

A golf ball you can find with a Geiger counter.

Do not carry these around in your trouser pocket if reproduction is one of your ambitions.

British Challenge

Britain is preparing to break the land speed record with this formidable and slightly International Rescuesque machine.

So?

It's a steam car.

Somewhere James Watt is smiling.

Ovei Pod

The Ovei pod is a $100,000 "personal media experience" that allegedly is the final stage in entertainment and your divorce from humanity. The reporter states that he is "betting" that it is air conditioned. Let's hope so or the Ovei will turn out to be the most expensive sauna cabinet in history.

Plustek TVcam VD100

I never thought I'd live to see the result of unnatural acts between a USB webcam and television tuner.

Pocket Sundials

Mine has Indiglo so I can use it at night.

Live Luggage PA

In the old days there were people called railway porters who would meet you at the kerb and with a deferential touch of the cap load your luggage onto a cart and follow you to your compartment while you tucked away your gloves and neatly folded your copy of The Times in anticipation of doing battle with the crossword before making your way to the dining car for a restorative.

I am reliably informed that there was a similar arrangement at the aerodromes where those new flying machines congregate.

Now you are forced to haul your own bags like a coolie along miles of corridor while unsympathetic staff look on with a barely concealed expression of contempt as you try to find your way through the labyrinth to your flying cattle car or sterile airline style seat on a northbound train that will probably be forty minutes late if you're lucky. Hence the need for the Live Luggage PA with its built-in motor to take some of the load off of your harried shoulders.

This is called progress.

Lightpipe

The Lightpipe, a €395 lamp designed to look like a section of red-hot conduit about to explode, is just what I've been looking for. It's a pity that I haven't a boiler I can install it in the vicinity of so that I can solicit little girl screams from meter readers.

Knightrider GPS

The Knightrider GPS; for that all important geek-without-a-sense-of-shame demographic.

Karaoke Cube

Tomy's Hi-Kara karaoke cube: On the minus side, they're harder to find. On the plus side, you can take them out with one blow once you do find them.

Videophoning

Pros and cons of the videophone.

Mostly cons.

Lilypad

"A floating ecopolis (sic) for climate refugees"–or, at least, remarkably well-heeled ones. By this standard of living everyone in Beverly Hills deserves refugee status.

Let us hope that Vincent Callebaut is a better architect that he is chart reader, because this thing has an underwater protuberance that looks about sixty feet deeper than the local water.

The Wasp

Never bring a knife to a gun fight–unless your knife shoots a blast of super-cooled compressed air into your victim.

Icon

There's been a lot of buzz in the last week about this two-seater amphibious plane and I must admit that it looks impressive, though I am reminded of the wise words of Ford Prefect:

Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow.

V-STAR

At Tales of Future Past we see a lot of flying cars, but a "flying Humvee?"

The mental picture is a bit frightening.

Heliophone

A solar powered theremin in an Altoids tin; why did we wait so long?

Doctor Whippy

An ice cream machine that gives you bigger portions the more unhappy you sound.

Marvin was unavailable for comment as he's all sticky.

Blooming Idiocy

From the Design 21 competition comes "Bloom", a device that you attach to your bicycle that blows bubbles containing seeds that sprout behind you as you pedal merrily along in the summer sunshine.

Translation: Not only do I have to contend with bloody cyclists who wouldn't know the rules of the road if they crashed into them, but now those lycra-clad nits will be spewing weeds all over my lawn.

Otto-Bench

It's an Ottoman! It's a workout bench! It's incredibly heavy and hell to shift!

I get tired just looking at it.

Coming Attractions

From orbital fuel depots to electric solar sails; what's coming next in space technology.

Nuclear drive still sitting on the same back burner as that cancer cure.

Why I Telecommute Part MMMCLXIV

The eNook Pro.

Not so much a workstation as a kiosk.

Petraflop Barrier Breached

IBM's "Roadrunner" computer at Los Alamos has achieved an unprecedented one quadrillion operations per second.

At 2:14 AM it became self-aware.

$100 Laptop Mark II

The next generation $100 laptop; all screen and no physical keyboard.

It's being touted as what your laptop will look like in five years, but us touch typists will probably stick with the old clicking keys.

Foot Power

Britain is looking into ways to using pedestrian footsteps to generate electricity.

This reminds me of an idea I had years ago for using methane to power the university campus, but that was rejected as it would have meant changing the student dress code to kilts and infringing on the personal freedoms of first-year students.

Office in a Box

The Swiss Army Knife of workstations.

As depressing as it is efficient.

CPR Torch

In the close-but-no-cigar department we have the LED torch that gives you basic CPR instructions at the touch of a button. Not bad, but if you have enough forethought to carry one of these around, then surely you'd have enough to take a decent first aid class.

Now if they put this function into something the average person carries around all the time, like a cell phone or butane-powered soldering iron, then you might have something.