The name is misleading. It’s not a desk for your neck. It’s a concept from Krohn Design. The organic and alien looking headgear is not designed to suck out your spinal fluids from the base of your brain while it keeps your heart pumping. Though, I can see how you would get that impression. What we have here is basically a creepy necklace that must have come from alien technology, with a curved tube in front of the eye.

The tube puts a screen in front of your face by projecting a laser through your pupil onto your retina, creating a virtual HUD(heads-up display). Ouch, my aching retinas! It’s thought that the buttons on the necklace part serve as your keyboard and mouse. Could be they just report your actions to a higher power. If I were the paranoid type, I would thank Area 51 for this new technology and hope that no aliens were harmed in it’s making.

Designed by Nuno Teixeira, this curved iMac concept looks like it belongs on a Star Trek bridge and features a giant curved screen and a second built in LCD screen on the back. Nuno believes that every computer should have two sides and more curves. His “iView” of an Apple’s iMac has a lot of sexiness.

Inspiration came from the 1950’s CINERAMA wrap-around movie theatre screens. Hence the giant curved screen that is more compatible with the natural curvature of the human eye. The second LCD screen on the back would help students and graphic designers.

This Softphone concept phone from designer Quian Jiang uses a series of discs that have electronically wired cotton fabric in between. The idea here is that things are soft and flexible. For example, being able to fold up the keyboard would save some space. How about simply squeezing it to initiate or end a call?

The Softphone is a concept device at the moment, so those who absolutely love to squeeze the Charmin will just have to wait. One problem I see with this device is that it would attract dirt like a magnet. Who wants a filthy cotton squeeze phone? You might as well make your calls on a half-used roll of toilet paper.

Probably not a good idea for those with ADD. The Color Cube basically allows users to create their own specific color combination instead of the usual text based password. As a concept it’s brilliant, but it looks like it takes a bit more time and effort, compared to just typing text in. Also, the slow witted among us will be far too easily distracted. Those people have already forgotten everything they’ve just read up to this point.

The idea is that when you need to verify your identity, just solve the Rubik’s Cube. They say that the color combinations are endless since you can even embed little pictures within each tiny screen if you like. Users also have the option of taking the idea further by making it a time based entry and being forced to solve the cube before time runs out and the colors change.

Nokia’s new Morph concept phone is a futuristic beauty. The idea is that it would use nanotechnology to give it a flexible body with a transparent display. It would feature the ability to re-shape itself to the user’s needs, which is a quantum leap away from today’s solid and chunky phones.

The electronics inside would be transparent and flexible as well, so that the whole phone could be twisted and stretched into bracelet shapes or even a tablet. Thanks to nanotech, it would even clean itself. It was developed with some help from Cambridge University, and can be seen at the MoMA in New York. One day even this will seem obsolete, but for now, it’s the future. The future looks awesome.

Zen is all about being calm with your surroundings, grasshopper. When you look at your PC, do you feel stressed? Of course you do, work, work, work. They call this the sandbox PC, and it should help to alleviate such things and put you in a calm state of mind. Users can use it without even looking at it, because it operates using an active surface which changes texture depending on the area or function you choose.

This would be particularly good for the blind or visually impaired. We are used to visual inputs, they are not. It’s quite a learning curve for those of us with sight, but I don’t think we will be seeing it anytime soon anyway. I hope I’m wrong however, because this would be great for a great tool for those who can not see.

The iStick is designed by Alexei Mikhailov and is roughly the size of a lipstick tube, with four touchscreens. The white cube on the end does tend to ruin the look some, but it still manages to look pretty neat. It has Wi-Fi, so you can browse the iTunes Store on a screen the size of your finger.

The designer admits that the iStick isn’t for viewing movies and the screen is too small for effective photo viewing. He thinks of it more as a brother to the iPod shuffle. It’s interesting, and for some reason makes me realize that this is the way that product packaging will be headed in the future.

The loss or misplacement of credit cards is a common worry. No one wants a thief to find it and go on a spending spree. You may not have to worry about it much longer, thanks to this new product in development. It’s a collaboration by Swiss company AXSionics and Siemens.

It’s in the shape and size of your average credit card, only a little thicker due to the fingerprint reader, an LCD display and a few optical sensors. It works just like a typical ATM or credit card but is far more secure. It will only work in the original card user’s hands. The company claims that the system can be put in place without any additional software on all commonly used PCs or laptops being needed. It’s in the process of being tested by several banks in Germany and Switzerland.

This could very well be the future way to search on a mobile device. This futuristic search tool uses a touch screen, built-in camera, scanner, WiFi, Google Maps, Google Search, image search and what you have is the most comprehensive search experience known to man.

All you would have to do is look at a building through the device and image search results would pop right up. Then touch a floor on the building and you have more even more details pop up. This would help tourists especially. All you need to do is look at any object, a car, animal, landmark, and you are armed with the relevant information. That means you’ll never be lost and you will basically know everything about everything.

This is a finalist in Microsoft’s Next-Gen PC Design Competition, called The Momenta PC, that you strap to your neck. It begins it’s symbiotic relationship with you by recording snippets of your whole life in an active buffer. When your heart rate goes up, it records whatever it is that’s making you excited until you tell it to stop, so you can view it later.

The idea is that it would capture the most exciting moments of your life. You know, the ones you always wish you had your camera ready for. But yes, it is creepy. Sure it would remember all of the fun times, but what about the horrible? Thanks for the memories, now please stop your parasitic relationship with my neck.

The idea behind this tablet/pda device is not to lure the elderly into gaming with a cute device full of pretty icons.(though I’m sure that would work) It’s to track every movement the elderly make. Not because we fear them…they’re old. It’s because Nokia believes this is the best way to keep them around longer.

By monitoring what they consume via RFID tags; from expired foods, medicine, possible allergens and nutritional info. It could probably even tell you if they have been putting toys in their mouths while watching Matlock, like babies do. It’s easy to read and use and that’s the key. This pad hopes to be a vital tool for the upcoming explosion of elderly Baby Boomers.(Which is bound to be a mess. Baby Boomers explode with twice the power of your typical spontaneous combustion.)

When we think of tech we picture a cold metal or plastic in silver or black usually. It’s the material that can be cold and impersonal. Some users would like a more organic natural alternative. Maybe something from nature. Something so simple can affect your mood dramatically, like having a well meaning but cold friend to dinner. The Chute Smartphone is natural, organic, and moody all in one.

The Chute is like any other Smartphone inside, but it’s the shell, designed with bamboo, that makes all the difference. Bamboo is actually lighter and stronger than plastic. Better yet, it’s completely biodegradable and far more eco friendly than plastics and metals.

I have to admit that I mostly like this concept just because it looks cool. Those neatly stacked-together containers would be interesting whether this was a conceptual array of hard drives or recycle bins. In this case they are recycle bins but with some nifty added technology to keep things seperated.

The Barcode Trashcan concept uses the little barcode on your recyclable containers to identify which bin the item goes in. Swiping it across the top will open just the correct bin. This keeps your items seperated appropriately by plastic, glass and metals for those with the combination of being geeky and green. I guess if it doesn’t match or the bar code is worn off it goes in the other bin?

Here’s a pretty cool conceptual idea for a cell phone powered by kinetic energy. The Atlas Kiinetic Cell Phone has a mechanism in the center behind some glass that you can actually see work. As you move the phone around, a weighted piece rotates around to wind up a spring which powers the phone.

According to the designer, only a few times of turning the phone upside down and back will power it up. This same kinetic type of mechanism works great to power watches and is actually not that uncommon. The only difference is that watches for the most part need very little power to run compared to a phone.

Despite the fact that this thing reminds me of the old Nintendo power glove, it’s pretty neat looking, mannequin hands and all. Designer Du Tran Nguyen sees the Verva Vie Sports Glove as the ultimate piece of sporting equipment for the 21st century. How so? The Vie would allow the use of GPS to develop workouts, map routes, and even send out distress beacons(Perish the thought). It has an interface that can be controlled with one hand via strain gauges in the fingers. These interact with an E-ink screen.

It could also be used in sports to communicate plays or share information with other athletes via a handshake. Otherwise known as cheating. On the safety front, it could be used to share health information with a training partner. If there’s danger, a distress signal could be sent to other gloves, or even directly to the police or hospital.(Oh hell, my gloves are tingling, my partner’s in trouble. This sounds like a job for…me! Gloveman!)