Tigers and Cranes

thanko is a japanese purveyor of strange and sometimes downright useless stuff, but are amusing regardless. i particularly like visiting the site, since they sell many things that are for the preternally lazy, such as yours truly. while browsing the site, i came across these usb slippers.

well, quite simply, you plug em into the usb port of your computer or notebook to keep your feet toasty. i’m no engineer, but how much wattage can you get out of a usb port? whatever, it may make a fine gift for those who seem to have all sorts of nifty usb gadgets.

i personally think it’d be great if the wearer forgets that they are plugged into a usb port to go to the bathroom. *crash*

33 clams, at thanko rare mono shop

a metal flap on top of japanese and korean toilet paper roll holder has mytified me for a long time. here’s a picture of what i’m talking about:

a sheer coincidence, one day i put my hand on the metal flap and tore at the paper, and then i thought “aha! so that’s what it’s for. it’s so that you could tear off paper anywhere, not just on the perforation.” on the other hand, it does get in the way of you just grabbing at the paper itself, so i think it’s of dubious value. what toilet paper doesn’t come pre-perforated?

much cooler is this device, a toilet roll holder in a shape of a robot’s head. it’s perfect. paper being dispensed from the mouth of a vintage looking robot… who wouldn’t want it?

available from airyusha, and you can buy it from audiocubes

some phones are status symbols, like the vertu phone which goes for a mere chump change of usd $35,000.

i imagine a phone like that still primarily makes phonecalls and allows you to text message, but at the same time, one can make the same argument that no one really needs a $1.3 million bugatti veyron when something like a nissan Z is plenty fast. but i guess that misses the point. it’s a status symbol thing, like someone owning a $50 million yacht to mainly throw parties. to this i say, when are you going to invite me??

in the same vein, but maybe not as outrageous, is the new “serene” phone from samsung and bang and olufsen. you know samsung; these guys pump out infinite number of TVs and cellies, and for once, they decided to go with a pretty high end cell phone that well, makes phonecalls and stuff.

partnering with bang and olufsen, makers of inscrutable high end audio visual components that are supposedly “high-art”, samsung introduces what can maybe consfuse people with makeup compact.

one thing i wasn’t aware about this particular phone is the fact that the display area is actually where the mouthpiece is located, and one puts one’s ears against the dial pad. i kept wondering when they’d turn the phone around to the correct orientation… hm. this is supposedly done so that the display won’t get greasy. hey, that’s what a pair of jeans are for. i personally like to wipe my display down once in a while with a toilet paper soaked in ethyl alcohol, but that’s just me. besides, won’t all that spittle get on the screen?

the question you really want the answer to is “how many clams?” the answer is: surprisingly “affordable” usd $1000.

read all about it at mobile review

i guess the moniker “sxi” is supposed to evoke the word “sexy”. and i never thought i’d say it, but here is a sexy looking hyundai sonata. according to the article from autoblog, the car is being shown in australia to gauge public’s reaction to a hopped up hyundai.

more pics at autoblog

doraemon has a magical pocket in front of him where he can pretty much pull out any fantastic devices, usually to help that ingrate nobita, who, after being beaten up by his “buddy” named “gian”, comes home crying and begs doraemon to right the injustices of his little world.

and look what a nice… uh, cat doraemon is. despite hundreds of requests prior, he usually helps out the weakling by producing such awesome device as invisibility pills or belt that turns nobita into a sumo king. and speaking of being ungrateful, nobita will often reach into doraemon’s pocket himself, hoping to greedily pull out some gizmo from the future he can use today.

well, it’s not just that little shrimp nobita that doraemon helps now. because what you see is doraemon helping you to groove out by playing music through his… feet.

this awesome doraemon speaker has a battery pack that slips in via a zipper in his back, and it can even get its juice from a car adapter.

forget nobita. doraemon’s here, and he will rock you.

from rakuten

introduction of shiny new cellphones keep marching on in korea.

not content to have a bestseller on its hands with LG “chocolate”, LG has announced “shine”, a large-ish cellphone with brushed aluminum body and 1 gb of memory for your mp3 and photo needs.

the phone comes with a 2 mp camera, and pretty awesome for a cellie, the lens is made by schnider-kreuznach, a well known german optical company, which should allow for some decent photography. as well, it also has the ability to capture video and display it as a moving wallpaper.

it also includes the M-bank functionality, which is similar to japan’s FeliCa, in that you can pay for stuff using your cellphone.

from AVing usa

do you have an ipod? of course you do. we all do.
well, i don’t, because i consider myself an iconoclastic non-conformist. that and those things cost a lot. no, not me… i soldier on with my crappy iriver h10.

the thing takes about two minutes to boot up, and it has no clue about how to do playlists or what my most recently played songs are… in fact, it just knows how to play music in a very disorganized way… it just plays whatever it feels like, usually choosing songs that i’m not interested in hearing. so why stick with it? because it has the best sound of any mp3 players out there. it comes with some sort of electronic hocus pocus that makes even the crappiest encoded songs sound awesomish.

that, and it was cheap.

but, approximately 80% of the population owns one form of ipod or another, and if you are part of that crowd, you’ll be pleased to know that now there’s an ipod dock that doubles as your dinner table. any punk can rock an ipod boombox, but you can proudly claim your mastery of ipoditry with this… thing. it’s called a “concerto table”, and it’s an $8000 ipod dock(950,000 yen).

look at all that wasted space!

oho! but you can eat off this thing.

from engadget japan

i admit it… i think doraemon is awesome. in fact, he, in my opinion, is the greatest japanese character ever created, and the duo that created him are geniuses.

who amongst us wouldn’t like a blue robot cat from the future who can produce almost any gadgets from his pocket?

i think the thing i like best about doraemon is despite his near omnipotence, he has so many foibles. for example, the reason he has no ears and is blue in color is because mice have chewed off his ears. this depressed him, and turned him blue. and to this date, he is deathly afraid of mice. and he can be bribed to do almost anything by his gluttonous lust for dorayaki, a japanese pastry with adzuki(red beans) inside.

here’s a doraemon webcam from a hong kong vendor. it’s a plushy doraemon webcam for your computer.

you can grab it from usb.brando.com

remember radio? before the dawn of mp3, people used to listen to these things a lot. maybe i’m old fashioned, but i still like to fiddle with knobs and dials to tune in to a far flung radio station broadcast. and, since i mostly listen to NPR, this radio is perfect for me.

it’s called “the kiss radio”, and as you can see, it has jolie-esque lips that move to the voices from the radio. i can’t wait to hear and see kai ryssdal on this radio!

from aving korea

3rd street promenade in santa monica can be a wonderful place… or a hellhole, depending on the homeless people’s mood of the day. while the weather is always pleasant and there are many interesting shops, the place has its share of vagrants, pan handlers, and street performers… kind of like upscale berkeley. except berkeley doesn’t have famimart yet…

it is here that helio, a south korean venture by sk telecom, is setting up its first helio store. for those not in the know, helio imports late generation phones from korea and leases american bandwidth(sprint, i think?) to serve its customers. their phone has been getting good reviews, and certainly more interesting than vanilla offerings from the likes of verizon and cingular.

helio phones, hero and kickflip

helio store

from gearlog