Here’s an interesting concept in speed bump design. This speed bump flattens out when you cross over it at low speeds. The idea behind it is that it would reward careful slow drivers who cross over it at speeds below 15mph by giving them smooth ride over the speed bump.

Those who are speed demons will get hit with the bump and really feel it. Drivers traveling at safe speeds can drive right over the speed bump without having to slow down at all. Very clever. That should help keep everyone safe. The downside is that it forces everyone to slow down. People are speeding because they hate slow. Slow is slow.

By now you must have a zillion fake plastic instruments taking up room in your home, thanks to the endless Guitar Hero type games that have entered your life. You might want to check out the Korean-made Funny Band, which takes a guitar and shoves drums on the back and a keyboard on the front for some reason.

I have no idea how you’re supposed to use this thing, but I’m dubbing it The all-in-one, one-man-nerd-band plastic-ono experience. If you think this weird mash-up lives up to it’s name, you’ll get a kick out of reading the press release below where we learn that Funny Band “will be loved by dance game to lots of users who just fall in to rhythm game.” and that “there was no game like performing on on-line such as funny band.”

Chocolate and Peanut butter, peanut butter and jelly, hemp and video games. Some things just go together. Modder DHRECK has moded the first ever WiiMote ensconced in hemp twine. It’s fully functional and covered all the way from the tip of the Nun-chuck all the way to the sensor on the WiiMote.

Stoners and hippies now have a new folk hero in DHRECK and are wondering how to give it a slow burn for intense gaming highs. Naturally, you have to wonder about the response of buttons and the stick, but if you’re using this thing, chances are you are more interested in your bong water levels then your game score.

In what could be the first step toward recording your dreams, researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor. That means it won’t be long before you can share your thoughts and dreams with others the way you share your flickr pics. They’ve successfully displayed simple images produced in the human brain on a computer screen.

The device converts electrical signals sent to the visual cortex into images that can be viewed on a computer screen. In the experiment, they showed test subjects the six letters in the word neuron and successfully reconstructed the word on screen by measuring brain activity. So, is this awesome or scary as hell? I vote scary.

It seems like everyone has an iPod today. When I take my son to school, even the second and third graders are listening to them. Many people like the iPod but wish for better sound, which is what SRS Labs is promising with its new iWOW products.

Two products are in the iWOW family with one being an adapter for any iPod using a 30-pin connector. The other product is the iWOW software plug-in for iTunes. The iWOW devices are intended to improve the quality of sound form iPod and iTunes.

I know many gadget fans are looking forward to the day when fuel cells power our gadgets so that we can be free of AC outlets for good. Fuel cells will eventually make their way into our notebook computers and mobile phones. An interim step is a fuel cell charger for mobile devices.

MTI MicroFuel Cells has announced its prototype Mobion fuel cell charger that is hand held and can charge an average mobile phone for up to a month on one fuel cartridge. When the cartridge runs dry, you simply snap in a new one and keep charging.

Apparently HarperCollins thinks there’s too much Zombie shooting, Mario Kart racing, Tetris blocks falling and puppy petting happening on the DS, and they’d rather you do some fancy book learnin’. Or at least reading. So they’ve teamed up with Nintendo to make classic books available to read on the Nintendo DS. This 100 Classic Book Collection will at first only be available in Britain for £20. Turning pages will be as easy as brushing your finger across the screen.

Depending on the success of the service, Nintendo will expand upon the available choices at readers stylus’. The service will compete with reader devices like the Sony Reader released in September, which holds about 160 book titles. If the service expands to other countries, it is going to be hard to go up against Amazon’s Kindle, which even offers subscriptions to newspapers as well.

Denon has the world’s universal Bluray player that can playback CD/DVD/SACD/DVD-A and of course Bluray, with the DVD-A1UDCI. It’s got all the high-end features you want, including an Ethernet port, SD card slot and BD Live support. A 10-bit Silicon Optix Realta chipset enables simultaneous 1080p scaling to two different outputs and the Advanced AL32 processor upscales 16 and 24-bit audio signals to 32-bit.

Outputs include 7.1 channel analog outs and two HDMI ports. Obviously you’re gonna pay for all of those features. The DVD-A1UDCI comes with a price tag of $3800 when it becomes available in February.

Casio’s watch calculators were all the rage back in the day. That was a few decades ago. Casio is hoping that those days might come again and so their Databank series now comes in a whole new variety of colors including black, green, orange and white.

Of course, these timepieces are not just watches, they also feature an 8-digit calculator, an automatic calendar and 25-page data storage. They’ll cost you $59 a piece, but if you like the classic pure-black version it will cost you another $10.

The battery is one of the key points of improvement technology wise for a range of devices from electric cars to our notebooks and cell phones. As battery technology improves, we can get longer runtime from our gadgets and smaller, more attractive designs as batteries take up less space.

Boston-Power announced its Sonata battery technology a while back that promises to deliver like-new performance for up to three years and recharge much faster than comparable batteries available today. The biggest claim that has notebook user excited about Sonata batteries is that they can recharge to 80% of the full capacity in only 30 minutes.

My iPhone came with a junky pair of Apple earphones that were not only uncomfortable, but didn’t sound very good to boot. This is true of most all earphones included with music phones and MP3 players, which is why the aftermarket for earphones is rather large.

Typically I think earphones are expensive if they push into the $50 price range, though I have tried sets that run into the hundred dollar range before. Ultimate Ears has announced a new set of earphones called the TripleFi 10vi that carries a price more expensive than your iPhone.

There have been gamepads on the market for a long time now from Saitek and Belkin to name a couple. The idea behind a gamepad is to place fewer keys in an arrangement that makes them easier to reach and removes extra keys not needed when gaming. The reality of a game pad is that you often end up having to use it and the keyboard to play complex games needing many keys.

Logitech has announced its first entry into the gamepad market with the G13. According to Logitech, the gamepad is intended to complement the mouse and keyboard, ideally the Logitech G15 keyboard and G9 mouse. The G13 offers three game modes with 25 programmable keys each and a programmable analog stick.

The Jabra BT350 Bluetooth Headset is equipped with many likeable features. It has easy access volume buttons, an external LED which indicates charge level, and also has a vibrate option to keep your on-the-job calls on the DL. The multifunction button on the face of BT350 operates power, controls calls, and readies it for pairing. The ear loop is particularly flexible, allowing for a very customized fit. In fact, I could have sworn I spotted Dumbo marching on along LaSalle Street speaking to some unidentifiable source…

The Jabra BT350 …

Lisbon based Portuguese designer Nuno Teixeira designed this ultra slim Digit MP3 Player concept. It’s user friendly and comes with a wireless stereo headset and 20GB of built-in memory. Design-wise it’s a thing of beauty. And it does away with wires completely.

Just look at those sleek curves and soft, shiny surfaces. Plus it’s slimmer then a model who just went to powder her nose and lose her dinner. It’s damn sexy, that’s what it is. Too bad it’s only a concept right now. But it will happen soon enough as the wireless headset thing is already here. We just need more of this kinda sexy.

Remember the Tomy Xiao TIP-521 digital camera with built-in Zink printer? It’s available in Japan now, and the above video illustrates how they’re trying to convince you to buy one.

Have you watched it yet? Good. Still want to buy one? If the commercial has sold you on it, the Xiao will be available for $350 in the US in Q2 of 2009. I don’t know. He seemed to be struggling a bit there. He might need some fiber.