Carbon fiber and titanium are materials that are often used in the racing and aerospace industries. The materials are used because they are strong and very lightweight.

You don’t often hear of carbon fiber and titanium being used in the coaster market though. A company called Black Badger has unveiled just such a coaster. Each of them is made from a patterned roll of carbon fiber and titanium.

Summer. It’s a time of sun, fun, bikinis and…bike thieves. This concept from designer Steve Hunt looks just like a halo. It’s designed so that the connector cable is housed within the frame of the lock itself, which makes it harder for thieves to cut your cable.

The coolest feature however, is that Hunt wants to have an integrated wireless card inserted into the lock itself, so that when your bike gets stolen, the lock will notify you.

Check out this iPad Camera Case design by Chet Rosales. It makes sense to put the camera in a case since you want a case for your iPad anyway. It’s actually a swiveling camera.

If you are worried that a front-facing camera will drain the battery, there’s extra room for an extra battery or two in this case as well. The least Apple can do is approve this thing and give people a camera, but you know they never would. Too much bulk on the left side.

Before James Dyson started constantly advertising his new vacuum cleaners, I never gave a thought to a vacuum. I bet there are many people out there who are the same way. Dyson has now also changed the way we think about fans, for the more expensive.

Dyson also runs a design award program called the James Dyson Award. The contest is to find the most innovative design and the winner may see their design put into production. One of the entries is too geeky to pass up and is called Treadway Wearable Mobility.

When it comes to smartphones most of us want them to be large enough that we can get a big screen for viewing content. But small enough that they are lightweight and fit easily in a pocket. This new concept phone called the Gravity Phone is a bit strange.

It looks good, but the device appears to be a bit bulky. The designer says it would have a 1080p resolution HD screen and HDMI output. Those would be nice features.

The Digital Wallet concept might just change the way you look at transactions. This digital device lets you perform safe and fast money transactions wherever you happen to be, no matter what time of day or night it is. Just connect the two devices to transfer money from one account to another.

Identity verification comes from placing your thumb on the outer ring, then after confirmation, you can transfer an amount by using the screen. The LED stripe will light up to confirm a successful transfer. This probably won’t be the new thing since we have several similar ways to transfer money already, but it’s interesting.

Now you can take your bike shopping and also take your shopping cart for a ride thanks to the transforming Ville concept folding bicycle. It’s a bike/shopping cart hybrid vehicle for eco-friendly shoppers. It is bicycle and grocery cart in one.

The idea is that thanks to the bike’s shopper-friendly design, you can take it with you inside the store, so you don’t have to have it stolen. The fact that it will actually hold your groceries is a bonus.

I used to work with a guy that was really into bicycling on the highway. He had a bike that was as expensive as many people’s car. The idea was to get as light a bike as possible so you can go faster.

A new bike concept on Yanko Design uses technology from aircraft manufacturing to make it light and strong. The bike is called the spider and is made from square aluminum tubing welded together.

This self-standing toothbrush concept looks great. Plus it eliminates the need for those tacky toothbrush holders. The DEWS toothbrush, designed by Ryan and Harc, has a nice fat, weighted handle that keeps it upright, even if you try to knock it down.

This is such a great idea I’m surprised it doesn’t exist already. Hopefully someone will make this happen. Now, if it could only automatically dispense toothpaste, it would be perfect.

If we can harness the power of childhood energy, especially those who play jump rope, we could do very well. This concept aims to take that jump roping energy and make it useful. It’s called the E-Rope and can generate power to charge a pair of AA batteries in each handle.

According to the designer, 20 minutes of jumping would fully charge all four AA batteries. Not sure if I believe that, but anything that promotes exercise and gives you charged batteries is a good thing.

Coffee makes the world go round. If we had no coffee, none of us would get out of bed in the morning. So it makes sense that we are always looking to improve coffee making technology. This new coffee machine concept is a bit different. And we aren’t sure it really improves things much.

It has a dock for an Android powered smartphone on top. Apparently the phone runs an app that would play music when docked, so you get have some tunes with your coffee. It has a QR-code scanner that reads the barcode-like tags on top of the coffee cartridges and plays music to go with the brand/flavor.

Concept phones are cool, but not always practical. Check out the Flutter. It was an entrant for LG’s recent Design the Future contest. The design didn’t win, but it did snag the Prop Master’s Choice Award. When the phone is closed, the Flutter has a nice sleek design with only the keypad showing.

And when the phone is opened, it reveals a display that fans out, with a user interface that looks like the one on Apple’s iPhone. Pretty cool.

I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on TV, but these headphone stethoscopes could make me a hit with the ladies. You know how they’re always on the lookout for doctors.

These are from creative agency Antrepo Design, but sadly they are not actual products. Not yet. Hopefully we’ll be able to buy these someday soon though. Take a deep breath. Again. What is it Doc? I’m not sure, but this Pink Floyd song is rocking.

It’s just a concept at the moment, but David Boyce’s flOw has a lot of potential. The five-speaker set can be arranged into an iPod docking station, but unlike other docks, any of the speakers can be taken somewhere else while the music follows wirelessly.

The real interesting part is that each ball has integrated gesture sensors and accelerometers, allowing you to turn down the volume by turning it over or you can switch tracks simply by shaking the speaker. Shake it lightly and you get a soft jam, shake it hard and you get Heavy Metal.

This interesting concept will let you know visually when your batteries are low. Designer Mac Funamizu came up with the Hungry Batteries concept that has the batteries physically slim down more as they hold less charge.

Great idea, but it’s cheaper to just include one of those strips that can tell how much juice is left. If our gadgets also shrank, this would be great. No idea what they are made of or how long they would last.