Whenever you take a look at the keyboard and mouse combo, you’d probably think that these input devices have pretty much achieved the same status as that of the wheel. After all, if something isn’t broke, why fix it? The brains behind the MagicMouse device think differently though, coming in the form of a 3D ultrasonic computer mouse. This unique design is the result of an idea from five undergraduates, and has been chosen as one of the 10 inventions to be honored with the PopSci Invention Awards. What does the MagicMouse do exactly, you ask? Well, it works like a regular mouse except that you wear it on your finger instead of using your whole hand to manipulate a mouse.

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As everyone knows, getting enough sleep is essential in life, even more so for growing kids who need that time to allow their bodies to recuperate after a grueling day at school. We adults love our beauty sleep too - ask any parents to newborns and you’ll probably see that they rank sleep even higher than sex in their priorities, but unfortunately they get little of either while attending to Junior. Whether you get too little or too much sleep, sharing a room with others can be a tricky situation especially when everyone inside has different schedules. Hence, one person’s alarm clock might wake up the rest of the inhabitants way before their scheduled wake up time, leading to a lousy start to the day. How about an alarm clock that works in a rather charming manner, waking you up gently without the rudeness that accompanies most of the other loud ringers? This concept Hybrid Alarm Clock is truly innovative in essence, featuring a big, red, flashing light that pulses and glows as it attempts to arouse you from your slumber.

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The Meizu MiniOne is probably the second-most expected vapor-ware floating around the ‘Net. We’ve totally neglected it until now because we thought it was impossible to make this work. Or, that if it did work, that it would pass by Apple’s lawyers.

This time, it seems to be more than a rumor. I am, of course, truly and utterly unable to decypher the Chinese characters on Meizu’s blog. The guys at Akihabara News could. If you want to see their other products, try here.

Read on for the spicy details:

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Being in control of one’s bladder is a subjective thing, as some of us are born with naturally weak bladders, making us an expert as to which public toilet is the cleanest. Others who have the misfortune of suffering from nerve damage or other conditions also lack the level of bladder found in normal people, which is why Ms. Angelene Ozolins has designed the AssureFlow concept device. This unique device comes with a switchable on-off tap for the bladder which is controlled manually, providing a person the level of dignity and control never available before in an ingenious concept.

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Last year several sites reported on what looked like a fantastic piece of concept design, the Optimus keyboard. Every key would be a separate miniature LED display, programmable from the PC. Want a gaming specific setup, or special keys for photoshop? No problem, just send the appropriate configuration to the keyboard and watch it rearrange itself.

Today I received an email telling me that they’ll be taking pre-orders in a couple of days (countdown here) so it looks like the ultimate PC accessory may yet be a reality. Of course you could buy a whole new PC with the $1500 they want for this, but that wouldn’t have 114 individually programmable, whackable, backlit OLED displays would it?

(No, that wasn’t a typo - I really did say $1500. $1564 to be precise, but who’s counting the change at that level?)

HP presented its new concept for a next generation e-book reader at the 2007 HP Mobility Summit in Shanghai, China. This A4 sized e-book reader has an intuitive interface on which you flip through the virtual pages of the e-book just as you would turn the pages in a real book.
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If this comes into production it will be the ultimate in cult clocks. Based on that immortal scene from “The Shining”, every hour you’ll be greeted by Jacks head coming through the door uttering “Here’s Johnny”

Designed by Chris Dimino, there’s no signs of licensing or production unfortunately.

They call it e-paper, but in reality it is probably neither one nor the other. But whatever it is called, it is most defiantly a next generation display screen. Being flexible it means that there are so many more possibilities for this to be introduced into, something like this if it works as good as they say it will, we can expect to see new ideas for computing and communications.
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