These days, the incandescent light bulb is soon to be a thing of the past.  More and more, people are turning to LED lights and compact fluorescent lights to illuminate their home.  They use less electricity and are generally cheaper to produce.  They don’t provide the same type of light, but they’re better than candles.  Unless, of course, that candle is shaped like an incandescent bulb!

The light bulb candle comes from systemdesignstudios, a great group of designers.  The faux lightbulb is very well designed.  The wick burns on the inside of the bulb, allowing the bulb to keep its shape all the way to the bottom.  The candle’s light coming through the bulb allows it to cast light more like an actual bulb, rather than a candle.  And, of course, the bottom is screw patterned, in order to allow the bulb-candle to fit into any standard lamp.

I’m not sure how the wax would harm the lamp, but if I had a cool old lamp I couldn’t rewire, I’d definitely do this.

It’s an interesting idea in theory.  Basically, you’re recycling wasted indoor light (or light from the window sill) and using it to power your gadgets.  It’s called the CubeTube, from Solar Road Technologies, and it’s designed to fit comfortably over the top of the outlines of your average cubicle and turn your average fluorescent overhead lighting into energy.  Well, back into energy, I guess.

However, like the poster at TreeHugger, I don’t see just how much it could possibly gather, aside from eventually filling its small battery and maybe being a decent trickle charger for a cell phone or rechargeable battery device.  Maybe, if you’re lucky, you could gather enough energy to power a USB device.  I’d rather see one made to sit on top of a computer tower, or a computer monitor rim.  That’d be a flatter surface, and one that could support a whole lot more photovoltaic panels than the rim of a cube wall.

Still, I’d give it a shot.  Something is better than nothing, right?

It’s a one-stop morning machine.  With one wireless unit, you can crank up the morning weather report, check your email, AND make your morning cup of coffee.  It’s the iMac Coffee Sub casemod from designer Klaus Diebel, and it combines a coffee maker, a Mac Mini, and a JBL wireless sound system (complete with subwoofer) in one recycled iMac case.  Each one is hand made and completely designed to your specifications, which makes the price worth it.  Just head on over to the official website and start working on your personalized iMac CS!

I’d much rather have a mini Windows (or even Linux) machine inside the iMac case to save a lot of money off the initial cost, but the old iMac case is perfect for this kind of design.  It’s plenty spacious, yet it has a sleek design and keeps all the pieces together with no mess.  I wonder if I could order the iMac CS, hold the Mini?  It’d be a whole lot cheaper that way, that’s for sure!

While the Amazon review page is home to a lot of goofy comments from people claiming to be pathologists using it to catch up on work during the commute or people using it as a portable bar, there’s no denying that the Laptop Steering Wheel Desk is actually a useful product for people who A) have to work out of their car a lot, B) people who have to eat out of their car a lot, and C) people who drive around with their laptops open, looking for a place to steal wireless internet.  This is definitely a useful product, despite the fun people are having with it.

If I was, say, a real estate agent like our very own Kathy T., I’d want one of these in my car for catching up.  Some days, I’d love to just park somewhere, pop open my notebook, and get some writing done without having to go inside and chain myself to the desk in the basement.  This would be a great way to be able to do that.  A lot of times I find myself grabbing food on the way to/from places and trying to eat while riving.  It’d probably be a lot safer if I just ate off one of those trays, and I’d get a lot less food on myself that way, too.

But enough about my bad habits and love of stolen wifi.

As a devotee of a good cup of coffee every morning (and afternoon, and usually early evening), I’ve often found myself with a critical lack of hand space.  Sometimes I can work around it.  Other times, like when I’m driving to work and trying to back up out of the driveway, I knock the cup over and spill coffee all over the inside of my car, myself, or both.  Granted, the coffee smell is nice, but I’d rather, you know… drink the coffee.

That’s where Tugo comes in.  It’s a cupholder for travelers that attaches to the handle of a suitcase for traveling purposes.  If you can hang it on a suitcase, I imagine there’s some way to design a portable cupholder that hangs from the window or the dashboard of a car, too.  For example, my center-mounted car ashtray would be perfect for a cupholder.  I just have to figure out a way to make that happen.

For those of you who need a prepaid cell phone, starting Sunday you’ll have another choice.  Best of all, it’s from a company you already know that has locations pretty much everywhere in the US.  That company would be Walmart, via a partnership with Tracfone.

Yes, Walmart is entering the phone service world with their Straight Talk service.  No contracts, no hidden fees.  For $30 a month, you can have up to 1000 minutes of talk time and 1000 texts, or for $45 a month, unlimited minutes and unlimited texts.  When you run out of texts and time, or your 30 days are you, you just buy a new card and continue on using your phone.

There’s not a wide variety of cell phones available, just the LG200, the MOTORAZR, and the MOTO W385, but given that the top end phone is only $100 (and the bottom end $30), you can’t expect a whole lot of selection.  Plus the program is just beginning; if it takes off, I imagine they’ll add any number of phones to the lineup.

Throughout most of this week, I’ve spent a lot of my time talking to friends about what has to be one of the weirdest thing I’ve ever talked to anyone about:  pens and paper.  Specifically, the pen-retaining qualities of Moleskine notebooks.  I always kind of thought I was weird for having a favorite pen, but apparently all the other English major/writer types I know are also equally picky about pens and paper!

Now personally, I’m a Uniball fan, but I’ve heard great words about the Zebra Saransa and the Sharpie pen.  There’s just something about the ink flow from the Uniball that I really like, but I’m always open to trying a new pen experience.  All this reminds me that it’s time to go out and pick up some new pens, and maybe finally splurge on a nice new notebook for writing notes to myself about future blog posts and the like.

So tell me, do you have a preference for a particular pen type, or are you an any stick in a storm sort?  If you like pencils, that’s okay too; personally, I can’t stand writing in pencil, but it has its uses.

Things aren’t built to last anymore.  You’re lucky to get a car over 100,000 miles these days; maybe 200,000 if you’re lucky.  That said, does anyone reasonably expect to get 20 years out of an appliance these days?  Or even 10 years?  I have a refrigerator in my room that is pushing 15 years old, and I count myself lucky that it still freezes and chills now as good as it did when it was new.

Paul and Val Howkins, from Coventry, England, have been very lucky.  They have had the same refrigerator for 50 years.  The model, a Prestcold, was purchased in 1959 for £65.  The crazy part is they still use it to this day; it’s not some museum piece, it’s their kitchen fridge, and they used it to chill the food and drink they used for the 50th birthday party they threw for their machine!

I think the basement fridge is the longest-serving appliance in our household.  What’s your oldest appliance?  Have you gotten 20 years out of a VCR?  Or are you cursed with an ability to kill the hardiest machine with normal use?

The other day I was browsing through Think Geek and I stumbled across their maternity tee shirt with the status loading bar.  I showed it to a friend and commented that it’d be better if you could adjust the bar to reflect the status of the pregnancy.  Make it an actual status bar, maybe give it a little dial to adjust the bar to reflect the time left in the pregnancy.

Then, I stumbled across this progress bar clock from Mintpass.  I think the best part of the clock for me is the fact that you’ve got 24 available alarms.  I generally have several alarms set for myself throughout the morning, and then again in the afternoon when I have to wake up for naps.  If I could just have one clock to know all my alarms (plus a few more I’d like to add so I wouldn’t miss the beginning of The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien), that’d be incredible.

The multi-tool has a long and rich history.  The oldest design on record is the Harp Tool, which was carried by English longshoremen way back in the 1800’s.  Spyderco has rereleased the original Harp Tool design, with a little update for the modern day.  It has a Phillips-head screwdriver, slotted-head screwdriver, punch/awl, saw, corkscrew (probably more useful at lunch, if you catch my drift), file, gimlet, and a mini two-head hammer.

While all that stuff is still useful to the modern manual laborer, except maybe the corkscrew, the design itself leaves something to be desired.  The Swiss Army Knife design is the more common design these days, and with some way to lock the blades in place, would be more useful for the laborer, given the heft of the object makes a decent handle.  It also lends itself a little better to geek-friendly updates.

What would you have in your dream multi-tool?  I’d definitely need a screwdriver, USB drive, flashlight, mini-scissors, and possibly a box-cutter.  The corkscrew would be great, but that’d be in more of a barman’s helper.