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Styr's system of health gadgets exists to sell you supplements
I'm the kind of guy who can always stand to lose a few pounds. The Styr Lab regimen seemed like a great way to do so. When I first saw it at TechCrunch's Disrupt event in San Francisco last September, I was genuinely excited to give the fitness-tracking system a try. After three months using the regimen, however, I find myself just as pudgy and unmotivated as I was beforehand. Maybe even more so.
Smart liquor bottles can keep tabs on your bourbon collection
A close friend of mine returned home from vacation to discover his house sitter -- his brother-in-law -- had downed an entire bottle Pappy Van Winkle 20 year bourbon. A tragedy, really. However, if an alcohol tech duo in Europe has its way, keeping tabs on your stash while you're away could become much easier. Diageo (an alcohol company) and Thinfilm (a printed electronics maker) teamed up to create a "smart bottle" that serves up cocktail recipes and can detect when a bottle has been unsealed. Thinfilm's OpenSense label sensor tags pair with a smartphones NFC chops to run the system that's also capable of tracking supply chain, in-store stock and promotional offers for brands and retailers. The pair constructed a prototype Johnnie Walker Blue bottle that'll be on display at next week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but there's no word on when a similar solution could make its way to your local liquor store. Maybe the final version will be able to determine how much is left in a bottle, keeping sneaky house quests at bay.
Heineken Ignite concept imagines a future of interactive, LED-laden beer bottles
It's not the first time Heineken has found itself at the intersection of beer and technology, but the Dutch brewer's latest effort has resulted in a first of sorts for the company: its first "interactive beer bottle." Revealed at Milan Design Week, the Heineken Ignite is a beer bottle replete with LEDs and motion sensors, which let it light up with various effects when you knock bottles to say cheers with someone or take a drink. The LEDs can even apparently be remotely activated by a light source and synchronized with music. As you might expect, this one is set to remain only a concept for the foreseeable future, but you can see it in action in the video after the break, and find more details on how it was built at the source link below.
Eight ways to get a killer 'iBike'
Even though the "iBike" is nothing more than a patent application, the folks at Unplggd have described how they'd outdo Apple's offering to the world of bike computers. We must admit, the result includes some seriously geeky, tricked-out options. For example, this DIY USB charger uses a dynamo attached to the rear wheel to keep your devices charged. I say "devices," because this rig produces enough power to keep two devices running. Additionally, this DIY waterproof iPhone cover is as brilliant as it is simple. Basically, it's at 20oz. soda bottle with the pouring end sawed off. It slips over the mounted iPhone with the open end facing the rider. They also went on to list the gizmos you'll always want to bring with you while biking, including a GPS device, phone and camera. Fortunately, the iPhone is all three. There's more to the article, of course, and we suggest you read the whole thing. If you do trick out your bike like this, be sure to send us pictures! That bike patent is about a year old, and big companies like Apple often patent ideas that will never see production. But hey, Nike+ was a surprise, too -- maybe we will be riding around one day on a two-wheeled Apple product.
Happy Hour watches open bottles, doors unto new worlds (video)
Ready for your daily dose of ingeniousness? That word is actually real, and so is the Happy Hour Timepiece -- a watch that doubles as a bottle opener, because as the tagline reminds us, "it's 5 o'clock somewhere." It has just become available to buy from Time Tap's website, and its black leather-strapped awesomeness can be yours for $49.95. Click past the break to see video of it being demonstrated -- the watch even has dual digital and analog time displays, so much value!
Cellar 2.0 adds handy email hooks to wine manager
What cheers the soul more on a cold winter's night than a fine glass of wine? An app to keep track of that wine, perhaps. The new 2.0 version of the $2.99 Cellar for iPhone [iTunes link], out now, adds more fun and new sharing options to the good-looking wine management tool. If you're a high-level oenophile looking for a hardcore wine research and cellar inventory app, Cellar may not be for you (I'd recommend the powerful and savvy Drync for $4.99, or the free ad-supported version), but for casual imbibers and wine fans, it's a charmer. Cellar is simple to use and fun to show off. You add bottles one at a time to your collection (slotting them into the cellar, the garage or the wishlist), customizing the look and label of each bottle and adding vintage, price, ratings and other details if you have them. Your bottles are displayed attractively in a horizontal rack, which can be swiped back and forth; turning the iPhone or iPod touch from landscape to portrait mode switches you into a new detail view where you can see your notes and other info about a particular wine. The UI is graceful and well-detailed without being garish; an app about wine, after all, should carry itself with a degree of classiness. When I first looked at Cellar last summer, one of the drawbacks of the app was that there wasn't a good way to share your wine collections or favorite bottles with friends, nor could you easily back up your cellar data. Both of those issues have been amply addressed. You can now create 'bottle links,' very long encoded URLs (amenable to abbreviation by URL shorteners like TinyURL) that, when opened in the iPhone mail app, Mobile Safari or popular iPhone Twitter apps, auto-launch Cellar and load the bottle into your collection, label and all -- magical. You can also backup and restore wine libraries from your Mac or PC, or merge libraries with other users in the vicinity using the app's built-in Web server via Wi-Fi. New searching, sorting and statistics options add to the improved/introduced feature list with 2.0. Cellar 2 doesn't have the wine search capability of Drync or some of the other wine apps on the store, but it does have panache; it's a showcase app for my iPhone on looks and functionality, and it's perfect for keeping track of the bottle you drank out on the town that you want to remember for purchase later on. Check out more of the Cellar interface in the gallery below. %Gallery-80305%
Worley Winery loses stock, BioShock 2 gains promotion
We have to imagine that the marketing team for BioShock 2 is split into two warring factions, each one trying to outdo the other's promotions. "We're going to make an online pseudo-ARG site." "Oh yeah? Well we're going to give away characters as a pre-order bonus." "Oh yeah? Well we're going to set up an eerie simulacrum of our ARG site in the middle of Comic-Con." Hopefully the escalation will stop before we reach: "Oh yeah? Well we're going to kidnap an actual little girl and take her to the bottom of the ocean."The latest salvo from one of these sects is pretty clever (and legal, we think) -- a number of advertisements for plasmids and Rapture locales tucked into bottles from Arcadia's Worley Winery (an in-game spirits retailer) recently washed up on beaches across the world. Kotaku readers grabbed images from the bottle-peppered shores of Brighton Beach, The Hague, Vancouver and Santa Monica. We also received a video from tipster Lazlo showing the early-morning discovery at Vancouver -- it's posted after the break.If your mainland orientation kept you from checking out the promotion, don't despair -- you can already grab one of these ad-filled bottles on eBay for around $100.[Thanks, Lazlo!]
Space Imbibers
These awesome water bottles would be perfect for keeping hydrated during marathon sessions of a certain notoriously addictive arcade game. Or maybe just for filling up with delicious Tang and sitting down at home with some Space Invaders Extreme. These aluminum bottles feature beautiful, vintage Space Invaders art and come with carabiners, in case you want to carry one up a mountain. NCSX will offer these in April at $12.50 each. The aluminum is apparently quite hardy, so trying to shoot through it to reach Invaders is not a sound strategy.They're also taking preorders on a set of three Space Invaders keychains, each consisting of an Invader encased in a plastic cube for your safety.
BevyTech's Gadget Bottle: it holds water and gadgets
On today's episode of "why didn't I think of that," we present to you BevyTech's Gadget Bottle, which is as self-explanatory as they come. This very standard looking water bottle sports a semi-translucent motif, delightfully vivid orange cap and four bands that keep your gadget of choice strapped into the 4.625- x 2.125- x 1-inch pocket. The bottle itself can hold 22-ounces of your favorite liquid, and the firm's FAQ even states that the bands are designed to not mash buttons at random. Those interested can get their order in now for $8.25, and if all goes to plan, it'll be headed your way late next week. Click on through to take a peek at our favorite example of what this thing can do.
Mario theme done by a group with bottles
We may have seen the theme played on 15 different instruments, however we never imagined a group would get together and do the theme with bottles. The theme is impressively correct and the video demonstrates an equally-impressive coordination from all participants involved. As usual, we've embedded the video past the post break and suggest you check it out post-haste.[via 1P Start]
The Godfather: Blackhand Edition (or, a field day for Jack Thompson)
We're not particular fans of EA, generally lackluster licensed games, or the mafia. Still, seeing this trailer excites us a little, if for nothing else than to beat the crap out of everything that moves. The gesture-based control system includes such perks at beer bottle throwing, choking, slapping, and throwing people into walls. Yep, our buddy J.T. is gonna have a grand ol' time with this one, and to be honest, we're a little worried. If hyper-paranoid parents get a look at this stuff, Nintendo could land in some hot soup. For now, though, simply kick back and enjoy the abject violence.
