Aliph Jawbone

Hearing is believing with the Aliph Jawbone, a noise-canceling headset for handphones due out in the fall. San Francisco-based design and branding firm Fuseproject has certainly revolutionalized headsets as we've known them, changing the look, comfort and functionality completely. For mobile-toting Singaporeans, the Jawbone should come as a boon as it deploys active noise suppression technology to allow the user to yak on his mobile in any loud setting, while filtering out unwanted noise, whether it's in a kopi tiam or pub. Worn around the user's ear, the device has a jawbone sensor which rests against the contours of the face to sense when the mouth is moving, all the while looking like high-octane ear vogue.

Price: Tentatively US$129
Availability: The US and Brisbane, fall of 2004
Device: Noise-canceling headset
Basic specs: Headset, active noise suppression technology, voice activity sensor to detect when a user is speaking, enhanced incoming audio

Küppersbusch Honeycomb Cooking Tiles

The future of cooking never looked so yummy. While the majority of Asian Chinese probably prefer open fire cooking for wok frying, those who treat their kitchens as showrooms will lust after Küppersbusch's Cooking Tiles. What's cooking is the German company's flush-fitting "honeycomb" cooktops which clearly take the cake for designer stovetops. Hegaxonal modular glass ceramic plates and controls let you comb through any countertop configuration or shape you want, up to 28 possible layouts. Now if they only had it in matte pink.

Price: From US$550 per zone; control unit separate at US$1,750
Availability: In the US and Germany
Device: Electric cooktops
Basic specs: Control unit for up to six cooking zones, nine-level power controls, residual heat indicators, automatic safety cutoff time, child-safety lock, 10.8kW electrical connection for control unit, 1.2kW to 1.7kW per panel

Stanford/Reuters Digital Dirt Bike

Developed more for remote villages with little access to the World Wide Web, the Digital Dirt Bike is still one very cool machine. No surprise it picked up the Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Award for 2003. The handiwork of US-based Whipsaw, a company dedicated to creating innovative products, the Bike is a solar-powered information and communication center on wheels. In rural outskirts where two-wheel chariots are a more practical mode of transportation, the Digital Dirt Bike is the perfect marriage to deliver all the villagers need as a life line to the modern world. Onboard is a notebook computer, printer, camera and satellite phone. The double lid of the weather- and shock-proof box contains solar panels for powering and recharging the equipment. There's even a portable tent for impromptu meetings in open fields. Nice!

Price: N.A.
Availability: On trial in Andra Pradesh, India
Device: Modified computer-on-wheels
Basic specs: Dirt bike, solar panels, notebook, printer, camera, satellite phone, sunshade

Circular Printer

Who says art and technology can't mix? The brainchild of both Samsung Electronics and Seoul National University, this highly provocative circular printer was picked as one of 130 winners from the 2004 Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA). Thinking out of the (square) box, the designers opted for a rotational rather than the traditional linear movement of printers. The result: A printing device that's both refreshing in form and imagination and as portable as it can get at one-third the usual size. Print speed and connectivity issues aside, we'd iterate what one jury member said: "Samsung… please build this!"

Price: N.A.
Availability: N.A.
Device: Concept printer
Basic specs: Rotational movement

Canon Flower Speaker

Flower power has been given a fresh arrangement with a new technology that allows natural blooms to vibrate and create musical sounds. This seed of an idea took root when telco equipment maker Let's Corp and satellite radio station Music Bird decided to cross-fertilize their efforts, germinating a series of vases and flower pots that use an amplifier and an acrylic resin tube to make flower petals and leaves vibrate and transmit sounds, just like the paper cones of stereo speakers. The only glitch here is the duo's choice of product name--Canon--which could have copyright complications. Whether the Flower Speaker will blossom or fade after the fad dies remains to be seen. Meantime, eager beavers can sniff out the technology if they happen to be in the vicinity when Japan hosts its Hamana Lake Flower Fair (April 8 - October 11) or Aichi World Fair (March 2005).

Price: From ¥5,000 to ¥50,000 (US$45 to US$450)
Availability: Limited sets sold in Japan
Device: Directionless speakers
Basic specs: Vase, oscillation section, acrylic cylinder, internal amplifier version, FM tuner, internal power source

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