Surely if there’s a tree, there will be a bench, because we may simply convert a tree into a bench with an axe… Or we can choose another simpler way: tying a board with some binders onto the tree. Designed by Rogier Martens, the clever and practical urban furniture piece is especially made as a temporary sitting unit for a public park.

Designer: Rogier Martens

Quite commonly we say that there’s valuable knowledge in books, but sometime there’s a comfortable soft pillow inside it too. It is disguised in the same appearance as a dictionary, allowing you to trick others for fun and to enjoy a sleep anytime and anywhere you may want. So how do you like it? Just work hard, and sleep better!

Selling Price: $80

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Because it’s not the first foldable guitar we’ve ever seen or introduced here, this one from designers Shlomi Daniel and Uri Nir must have gotten its own unique features, e.g. its tension release mechanism that promises the guitar a perfect timbre even after it is repeatedly folded and unfolded. Still, like all other foldable guitars, the instrument could be easily and conveniently carried around for a outdoor use.

Designer: Shlomi Daniel and Uri Nir

Bondi is a smart little hanger with astonishing multi functions. According to your real needs, the Bondi can be used to hold a wide range of things, including your cellphones, keys, or even your books. With its flexible but practical design, Bondi can be used anywhere too, such as in your cars, on your bicycles, in your kitchen and so on. The possibilities are endless- as you think of a new possibility, the Bondi then manages to make it true.

Selling Price: $20

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Daily practice. That’s the No. 1 principle you need to keep in mind if you ever dream to play the guitar well. But the real guitar is so big that it’s not suitable to be taken anywhere, for you to play with it again and again. Thus we’d like to recommend this PocketString device to you. It’s smart and lightweight, and its tiny 4 fret board would let you practice the fundamentals at any place and any time. It’s going to be available next month for less than $30.

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I’m sorry the LomoKino camera only lets you capture retro 35 mm movies while forgetting to offer you an easy way to share those creations, and I believe the Lomography Company feels sorry too – thus it launched a smartphone adapter that lets you digitize your flicks. Simply attach the adapter onto your smartphone, connect it to the LomoKino (with films inside), get the LomoKino to work and record the videos as they’re played, and then you can restore your retro movies on your cellphone.

Selling Price: $24.90

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Yes, the New York City is no more that safe as it may used to be, and thus the NYPD is looking for newer and better methods to make the city much safer, and one of their solutions is this Mobile Scanner that allows the police to spot armed passerby on the street without ever having to get out of a police van. The device is something like the full body scans used in airports, while it is much compacter and portable, also with a wide range of three to four feet. And in the future, the device may be produced with a range of up to 80 feet, which means that it can reach people on the other side of the street easily. So will this make New York safer? Let the time to tell us the answer.

Designer: New York City Police Department

Made of metallic polyester, Martin Azua’s “Basic House” is a self-inflatable shelter that can offer you a home on the trip. It’s very lightweight and mini-sized when folded, while it can inflate into a huge cube in seconds as soon as it interacts with heat from either your body or the sun. And if it’s too warm outside, you can turn the house inside out so that it could deflect the sunlight.

Designer: Martin Azua

You see it is little, it’s in your pocket, and it’s a piano! Handmade and packs a vibrato synth, harmonic sweeper, two-octave arpeggiator, octave cascade, mono FM synth, and FM arpeggiator, the synthesizer can work either individually or with other devices such as drum machines, sequencers, computers and so on. Since words cannot let you know clearly what the Pocket Piano would make, let’s now show you a video!

Selling Price: $175

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Special tool for special use, the “Rhythm Slim” is rightly something that can combat muscle aches and slack skins. Put it under your chin, push down on the top piston, and hold it down for ten seconds – repeating that process for several times every day, you may then the difference after a period. Will the Rhythm Slim machine really work? We bet it will, if you can persist on the exercise for a long enough period.

Selling Price: $136

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Tool Tank, just as its name implies, is a portable gadget that offers three different kinds of tools, including large and small Phillips head and flat head. Any of those heads can be magnetically attached into the turret so that people can use them conveniently and effortlessly.

Selling Price: £9.99

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Coming from Hannes Harms, the “Sono” is a concept of a mobile and wireless sonography system. It enables both an uncommitted handling of the probe and an unlimited connectivity to almost all already-installed screens in hospitable wirelessly, making it quite ideal as a portable and versatile diagnosis device for doctors.

Designer: Hannes Harms

Ever felt that you’re in lack of sunshine? If so, you may have a try of Sunset Laboratories’s Solar Pills. Obviously they’re not suitable for oral use, but instead substitutes to nightlights or other kind of lamps. Whenever you need some light, “take” some pills and you can then feel reenergized, will you? Available in a wide range of solar radiation, Borabora, the Maldives, Haiti and the Bahamas, these pills should not replace natural exposure.

With CES 2012 finally opened today, many innovative gadgets will soon spread on the internet within the following days, so have you already been ready for the CES? Let’s start with Tamaggo’s 360-imager then. It is claimed the first consumer device that can take full 360-degree panoramic images using a special “panomorph” lens, and built with an LCD viewfinder on the bottom too. The egg-shaped device can provide images with better quality, and it will shoot fully navigable images with a single click. Pity that the device cannot shoot 360-degree panoramic videos currently, and there’s still no information about its pricing or release date. That’s a pity too.

【More Information Here】

Flaca, which is Spanish for skinny, is an ultra-thin foldable lamp completely laser-cut from a piece of stainless steel. It’s easy to assemble in just five steps, requiring no other tools but only your bare hands. The lamp is adjustable too, offering various heights to meet your different needs.

Designer: Masiosare Studio

I’ve known of many people, especially those in love, getting used to making a copy of their SMS and IM messages as the commemorative. But that really costs them too much time, unless they’ve gotten the “BlackBox”. It provides a convenient and easy solution for people to keep their valuable messages on hand, printing SMS and IM messages out via a standard, noncarbon receipt printing system. It can even print a message twice so that the user can share that conversation with others.

Designer: Joe Doucet

Install the Clipp to any wood or plastic plates and then you can create your own tables… When not in use, the Clipp is also smart enough to ensure an easy storage.

Designer: DLF

Work smarter, not merely harder. FLEXiT is an ultra-flexible light that can be wrapped around tubes, bent into tight corners or magnetically fastened onto metal objects to serve as different types of lights: table light, camping light, work light, directional light and so on. Except for it adjustable shapes, the FLEXiT’s light functions can be changed too, offering low, medium and high light according to your various needs.

Selling Price: $29.99

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Diaper for men? Sounds bit of ridiculous, it is real product recently showcased at the Eco-Products 2011 in Tokyo. The pas has a cozy penis pocket, an electronic urine sensor, and a suction tube that’s hooked to a bedside vacuum with a tank. Whenever the diaper detects urine, the vacuum then starts sucking until the pad becomes virtually dry once again. That means the diaper not only features an outstanding ability of absorbing urine, but also quite ideal for reuse. According to its demonstration on the Eco-Products 2011, the vacuum can suck up almost all the urine, leaving merely a maximum of 0.5 cc (0.01 ounces) in the pad.

【More Information Here】

In cold cold winter, we’re likely to do almost everything in bed, including studying, working, playing and of course sleeping. But before that perfect plan for the winter holiday, we firstly need to find a best bed desk that is both practical and comfortable, and my choice? It’s undoubtedly the Scribe! The modular desk can hang anywhere when not in use, while holds books or laptops steadily to prevent them from rolling. Apart from its outstanding functions, the desk features a sleek appearance too, making it quite ideal as either a personal possession or gifts to others.

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The snowy winter makes you yearn for skiing while its cost is too high? Never mind, you may try another kind of sport: walking on the snow wearing these Foldable Snowshoes. It prevents your feet from sticking in the snow, but can bring you much closer to the beautiful scenery.

Designer: James Page

【Via】

Hot egg is the most popular food in my family whenever the winter comes, as it not only warms my hands but also warms my stomach. It’s a pity that the eggs cannot keep hot for a long time, and they usually become cold after my way to offices. Thus I need something to reheat them. The ultra-portable Heater Egg Card seems like a good choice. It utilizes a wire-web and thin skin that envelops the egg to reduce heating time; features a collapsible casing that can be folded as thin as a credit card, thus to ensure us an easy carrying; still, it also comes with a USB charging style, which makes it practical in places without an electricity outlet.

Designer: Jidanjiareqi Limian

【Source】

Despite smartphones’ outstanding functions and large screens, perhaps you still find it not exciting enough to watch films or play games with them? Yes, we all need a device with larger screen, such as the LightPad developed by QP Optoelectronics. It’s a folio-styled peripheral that combines a keyboard with an 11-inch rear projection screen. Once connected to your smartphone, the device’s built-in projector can then light up the screen with a resolution of 854 x 480 (the first generation) or 1280 x 720 resolution (the second generation), offering you a more fantastic experience with larger screens. If that’s still not big enough, the device can even create a 60-inch display on the wall with its built-in projector flipped around. So do you like it? The LightPad is expected to be exhibited next month at CES 2012.

Designer: QP Optoelectronics

Pocket sandwiches developed for the U.S. army now features a much longer guarantee period that what we’ve ever imagined, as it can actually last for 2 to 3 years without refrigeration! Can you believe that?! The new technology to make these sandwiches is announced to focuses on taking care of the entities like water and oxygen that are responsible for decay, so that they can last a much longer time than ordinary sandwiches. What’s better is that the sandwiches will taste still fresh and good even after a long time of storage, and that’s really the best part we appreciate.

Designer: Dr George McGavin & Michelle Richardson

Toshiba’s latest development is a portable video camera that provides real-time visualizations of radiation hotspots. It is built with a radiation sensor and a signal processing device, indicating the amount of radiation in different colors: red for high amounts of radiation and yellow, green, blue for lower levels. The device is not only functional, but also saves large quantity of time usually spent on radiation detection, thus claimed to be quite ideal for detection work. The company will have a field test of the camera in collaboration with Fukushima City within this month and plan to promote its use to the central bureaucracy and local governments in Japan in early 2012.

【More Information Here】

Aha, iPhone accessories again. This time it is a sturdy clip that can attach onto your iPhones so as to allow you to hang your mobiles on bags or necks. Certainly it’s much stronger than a cellphone clipping cord, because the gadget is screwed directly into your phone instead of being fastened onto it. Never worry about that the clip may result in some inconvenience, as the gadget can let you charge phones without removing it.

Selling Price: $30

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Better food with lemon juice, while better lemon juice with Stem Food Sprayer. The Stem is designed to save us out of boring work of cutting a lemon and squeezing it. Instead, it can spray juice directly onto food as you insert it into a citrus fruit and press the button. Just easy as that, but pity it’s merely a concept till now. Well, good news is Quirky is looking to manufacture it in the very near future, and it is collecting advices on the Stem’s price. So if you want to save money, go and leave your suggestions!

【Buy it here】

Foldable, portable and practical, the ‘Radler Trail Camp’ by Timberland is a lightweight and water-repellent shoe quite suitable for outdoor activities. It is especially excellent for the foldable design, featuring a zipper along its sole so that the shoe can fold along its center when not in use. With that unique feature, even with simply one bag you can take almost ten pairs of shoes at one time, as they take up really small space indeed.

Selling Price: $65

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Time again it proves not everything useful should be high-tech, because quite often we see practical gadgets of low-fi tech, just like the Macro Lens Rubber Band made for cellphones. It’s a stretchable band capable of expanding to a diameter of up to 16-inches, thus to convert any mobile phones into a macro lens.

Selling Price: $15

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With more and more electrical products coming into our life, our small spaces seem to have been filled with various kinds of USB cables, but obviously we don’t need so many of them, coz what we need is only the Innergie Magic USB cables. It offers up to three different connectors to meet your various needs, and quite specially all the connectors are attached to each other so that you can keep an easy track of them.

Designer: Innergie

Selling Price: $19.99

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Good news for photography fans: the Camera Table Dolly is here to make sure your videos don’t come with a side effect of nausea. Simply twist your camera onto the device, and you can then create videos with smooth and professional look, just easy as that! Its friction arm is adjustable so that you can change the angle to shoot straight up, straight down, or anywhere in between.

Selling Price: $90

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“Ministar” is a portable electric guitar featuring both a smart body and a full function. It’s only nineteen inches long, composed of a neck and head while lacking a guitar body. Even so, the guitar can still perform well in creating beautiful music, just as you can see in the video below.

【Source】

No doubt the nature is always offering good inspirations to designers, and Donghee Suh’s new earphone is just inspired by the suction cups on an octopus’ tentacles. Its two earbuds are each fitted with a silicon flap, which will retract to stick onto your iPods or iPhones to help you wrap up the earphone cord in a neater way.

Designer: Donghee Suh

【Source】

Nowadays industrial designs seem to have gone into a strange circle, which means while someone is trying to make things thinner and slender, others are busying redesign those removed parts into a full-functional accessory. Have a look at all those kinds of gadgets made for your thin smart mobiles and you’ll know what I mean. But anyway, to design something is always better than to destroy something, so when seeing this “LandingZone” I still thought it is a good product. It can sit on your desk, hooking up to power, a monitor, an Ethernet cable and four USB devices, thus providing you with a more convenient way to control both your laptop and other gadgets.

Selling Price: $140

【More Information Here】

Seemingly many manufacturers are designing and producing unique and practical accessories for the iPhone, iPad and other devices from the Apple Company, and shown here is just a new one added to that long list. It is Mobislyder, a combination of a roll track and a skateboard that offers low-level roll track for filming and a steady support for photographing as well. Announced as a portable roll track especially designed for iPhone by many websites, the Mobislyder actually can be mounted to many kinds of smartphones, camcorders and compact cameras.

Selling Price: $127.38

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Your Little Printer, unveiled by the Berg, is a smart portable printer that helps you to print out simple content. It can get connected to your cellphones, gathering the information sent out from your mobile and printing the pictures, puzzles, coupons and other stuff out. Well, I’ve already seen the happy days of printing out coupons and using them anytime and anywhere, but pity that the tiny printer won’t be available until sometime in 2012.

【More Information Here】

Quite frequently we see common things endowed with new functions or totally changed into other devices when designers try to use them in a different way, and these smart phone stands are rightly the result of innovative redesigns. As the lenses are replaced with transparent cups, these glasses then performs well to keep electronic other devices in place. They’re still foldable too, thus ensuring an easy transportation.

Designer: Nendo

Really small and cheap, the seemingly ordinary device actually features a surprisingly 30X magnification, always helping you to observe animals and flowers at close hand.

Selling Price: $6.5

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These glasses are not unnecessary toys as you may have thought, as they can help to focus your eyes without lenses due to the 1mm holes. Hence when your real glasses suddenly get broken, you can use these paper ones for an emergency.

Selling Price: 900Yen

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Time to enjoy a totally different way of photography! Dubbed “Mmi”, the screenless camera can interface with your smartphones to take photos or shoot videos. It comes with a built-in kickstand, an insertable suction cup and magnetic connector, thus you can mount it on a tripod, on the window or other places to get it ready for use. Via an app on cellphones, you can then remotely control the camera, adjust the shooting settings, and conveniently upload your photos or videos to the web.

Designer: Or Leviteh

Certainly it’s not the first time we introduce foldable instruments, however Brian Chen’s Foldable Ukuleles still impresses us. Made with laser-cut bamboo plywood, the ukulele is simple to assemble, costing you merely about half a day. More importantly, with a foldable function, the ukulele could be conveniently transported everywhere: simply fold it up and go on your trip.

Designer: Brian Chen

Selling Price: $75.00 – 87.50（Unfinished）；$250 – $375（Finished）

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The ever-best thing for both babies and mothers, Toob is a versatile baby-care station that is composed of an incorporated storage space and a foldable blanket and thus to ease the “baby changing” process. Additionally, the Toob also features a water-resistant blanket that makes it easy for parents to clean it and ensures it bacteria-free for babies to lie on.

Selling Price: $19.99

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Wish you iPhone, iPod, or iPad more powerful than they are now? Get the chance to change them into a medical device or magnification apparatus with the aids of the AirMicro Model A1then. It’s a portable wireless microscope that can magnify something to 50 or even 400 times the original image. Via a free application downloaded onto your iPhone, you may get a clear view of what you’re magnifying, even including your skin conditions.

Selling Price: $889

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You ever dreamed to own a special tent that may work in the same way as your house? Congratulations, as your dream has come true with the Japanese outdoor equipment company Logos’ Decagon Tent. It is an outdoor modular structure that can be used separately or linked together. Available in four types including ‘decagon link’, ‘link dome’, ‘link screen’ and ‘car joint tarp’, the modular tent each can hold three to four people while the largest tent actually would accommodate up to 16 people. As an additional bonus, the Decagon’s ‘car joint tarp’ is specially designed for you cars, something like the garage for your house. Presented at the “Japan Good Design Award 2011 Exhibition”, the innovative tent has received high praise from the visitors and now launched to the public.

Selling Price: 110,250Yen

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While we don’t need to take a bullet-resisting device all the time, it is still nice to see this Ballistic Clipboard launched by Impact Company. Initially designed to ensure the safety of corps who might get attacked by the violent people, the clipboard is lightweight for easy portability while really serves to stop the moving bullets. Sounds great, right? Check the video below for more information.

Selling Price: $150

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Ever used to look for somebody to shot a video or take photos of you when you’re out for a trip? That’s kind of sweet, but in fact your situation could get much better if you have this Swivl Movement-tracking Camera Dock.

The unit can house common digital cameras or other gadgets from iPhones, Androids to packet camcorders, capable of horizontally rotating 180 degrees or even a full 360 degrees so as to track users and shot a continuous video of them. Notably, the dock can “move faster than you can”, thus it would always “catch” you wherever you go. The company will showcase a fully functional unit at CES on January 2012.

More Information Here

Wanna to get a better control of your physical condition? Jawbone’s UP wrist is the ever best capable assistant you can find. Built with something called MotionX technology, the UP is announced to have the ability of monitoring your daily activities such as sleeping, eating, working and so on. Based on the data it has collected via your activity, the smart wrist can even provide dinner, fitness or sleep suggestions to help you build a better life. So thoughtful…Available in seven colors with a price of almost 100 dollars.

Selling Price: $99.99

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Is this a new piece of sport equipment, for example a rugby ball? Not exactly, as the device by Tae Hoon Jung is actually a portable life rescuer perfect for throwing and using. It can separate into two parts so that two or more people can hold it at the same time and therefore to save the lives of people in emergency situations.

Designer: Tae Hoon Jung

【Source】

Edelkrone’s Pocket Rig is a small stabilizer that can attach to DSLR cameras and offer you a good support of your camera. It is 100% machined aluminum and stainless steel but weighs less just 1.25lb, thus quite lightweight for transportation. Even though it’s not something that can totally prevent camera shake, it at least can ensure a better photography than you gave ever expected.

Designer: Edelkrone

Wanna to know my plan about next August? It is actually quite sweet, as I’ll bring my little fish along with me to go on a tour around the US. But before that, I need to get my pets this portable aquarium bowl designed by Michal Shabtiali. The fish bowl comes with an innovative handle, endowing it with the function of a handbag, and therefore to ensure us users an easy job to bring our pets around… Both my fish and I love the idea, seriously.

Designer: Michal Shabtiali