Shown at the Holon Institute of Technology industrial design department's "Next Exit" exhibition in Tel Aviv, these "Pencil Case Rings" replace the standard jewels with tiny pencil and eraser nubbins. Looks like a great DIY project for someone with some casting skills.

It might be awkward to use, but if someone made a ring with a smaller writing tip — a gel pen, perhaps — I could see myself replacing the pen I always keep clipped to my shirt with something similar.

Pencil case rings [Flickr via Coolest Gadgets]

Over at the Design Observer blog, Michael Bierut waxes poetic about a triumph of industrial engineering... the ubiquitous Brannock Device. Never heard of it? Your sweaty, calloused trotter has been crammed into one by a disgruntled shoe salesman at one time or another...

Charles F. Brannock only invented one thing in his life, and this was it. The son of a Syracuse, New York, shoe magnate, Brannock became interested in improving the primitive wooden measuring sticks that he saw around his father's store. He patented his first prototype in 1926, based on models he had made from Erector Set parts. As the Park-Brannock Shoe Store became legendary for fitting feet with absolute accuracy, the demand for the device grew, and in 1927 Brannock opened a factory to mass produce it. The Brannock Device Co., Inc., is still in business today. Refreshingly, it still only makes this one thing. They have sold over a million, a remarkable number when one considers that each of them lasts up to 15 years, when the numbers wear off...

Having such an exotic bit of machinery at my disposal took a job that's actually sort of demeaning — after all, I literally had to kneel in front of each of my customers — and transformed it into something akin to brain surgery. What people today feel about their iPhones, I felt about my Brannock Device.

Fitting [Design Observer via Core77]

A tailor is making a suit that will protect you from cellphone broadcasts. Electromagnetic sensitives rejoice: hucksters are treating your condition as an opportunity! You know you've arrived when, eh?

"Clothing company Remus has cut a gents' suit with an interwoven metal frame that’s claimed to reflect Bluetooth and mobile phone radiation, despite the jury still being undecided about the dangers such signals may or may not pose to our grey matter.

However, a spokesman at one of the suit’s stockists told Register Hardware that the so-called E-Blocker suit doesn’t mean the wearer’s mobile phone reception will be hampered. He said that the suit is “purely designed to stop any potential radiation” and is suitable for “someone who’s a little sceptical about the risk of such rays”."

So, let's get this straight. Firstly, we are to accept that "phone radiation"—radio waves, in other words—is dangerous. Then we are to accept that this E-Blocker suit and its weasel-worded marketing will protect you from it, even when you're using your own cellphone. Doesn't accepting the former as a fact only make the latter proposal seem doubly ludicrous? Unless they make it like the one in the photo here, of course, from the photoset of "Mr. Rubber Bear."

Product Page [Douglas and Grahame via Reg]

I don't mind "World's Most Expensive" items when the companies behind them acknowledge their nature as promotional stunt. Before this shirt from Eton will be auction off for charity it will be taking a tour through some of the company's stores in Europe. Brandish details the opulence:

Features the finest Egyptian cotton yarn. The studs and cufflinks are diamond encrusted, the studs have coloured diamonds and the cufflinks have the plain old normal diamonds, yawn!

So just jewels and nice fabric; surely for £23,000 they could have woven in a little tech trickery. Bullet resistance? Nipple de-chafer? The blood of campesinos?

This reminds me: I need to start putting all my cheap clothing in individual black hard-sided cases.

Eton release the world's most expensive shirt [Brandish]

Tim Dubitsky's hood.e garment has speakers unobtrusively sewn into the hood, making it possible for the wearer to listen to music without shutting herself off from the world. These are unpowered speakers, one hopes, making it possible to remove them for the dry cleaners. The thought of using these to inflict a little noise on others—so they may enjoy the thrill of outrage, of course!—has its charms.

Can you not see young w1n5t0n in this?

Product Page [via Makezine]

Kansas-city accessory guys Refinding scour junkyards and flea markets for improbable vintage materials and then craft them into one-of-a-kind wallets, jewelery, belts, purses and watches. The wallets, in particular, are amazing: the Garbage Pail Kid wallet to the right is exactly the style of wallet I, as an eight year old, thought I would be carrying around as an adult. Ex Libris Anonymous of fashion design.

Refinding [Official Site via Uncrate]

Monica Hesse of the Washington Post has written a weird little piece about the Nubrella, an over-the-shoulders plastic dome which is marketing itself as the Umbrella 2.0, despite the fact that it features a five-step opening process and you need to put on a harness to keep it on. It's being described by its creator — who claims he's invested $400,000 into the Nubrella's creation — as the perfect umbrella for the on-the-go cell phone jockey who must always be charging down the street, thumbs a T9 blur as he texts, no matter what the weather. This prompts Monica to inexplicably note that...

Think of the 21st-century possibilities [of the Nubrella]. No more one-handed texting. No more rummaging for the ringing PDA while trying to keep the groceries off of wet pavement. Chatting, waving, toting, umbrella-holding: four tasks that were never before simultaneously possible.

The whole article's clearly a spoon-fed adverstory with some quirky umbrella history thrown in, but that's okay. The tone's hysterical: "Oh, sure, you might think the umbrella's pretty much perfect, but if you're so smart, why don't you tell me something, champ? Ever tried juggling while holding an umbrella? What about taking your contacts out, or defribillating a newborn, or walking on your hands? Who thinks the umbrella's perfect now, Mr. Weisenheimer? You need a Nubrella!" It's like declaring the shopping bag a failed accessory because it can't hover, open up into a dimensional wormhole or travel back in time.

If you would, for any reason, like a Nubrella, though, it's not too dear at $49.95. Think of all the antediluvian pedestrians you'll be able to stupefy into quadruple heart attacks, waving and using an umbrella at the same time like some sort of 39th Century Moon Man.

Need to text in the rain? They've got it covered. [Washington Post]

Imagine that someone advances on you wearing a clunky pair of cheap-looking sunglasses, their head tilted slightly askew so that the accessory's inch-thick rim, sporting a giant lens, has a better view of your breasts. Would such a device qualify as "spy" equipment?

"These camera sunglasses certainly aren't x-ray specs, but they do capture 1.3 megapixel still images (at a resolution of 1280x1024). The included RF remote-control is ideal for easy, stealth-style photo shooting. ... The sunglasses also allow you to enjoy your music via MP3 playback."

"Stealth-style" is a phrase that should not be uttered without wild, ninja-like gesticulation and a correspondingly dangerous facial expression.

Product Page [ThinkGeek via Everything USB]

Bamboo makes a range of durable gear for pets, and sent in its Quick Control Collar with Built-in Leash, its Quick Control Leash + Seat belt latch, and the Quick Control Harness + Built-in leash. This was a year ago.

Why the wait? Well, they all work perfectly, but that's to be expected. Durability is the important criterion, especially when these simple items are made complex enough to qualify as gadgets. And that they do: the control collars have a soft handle that extends out from inside the hollow collar, acting as a kind of emergency dog brake, and the seat belt latch connects a leash to a seat belt, to restrict a dog's movement in a vehicle. They work, and work well—the latches kept our dogs safe but fairly free on a 1,500-mile trip, and the elastic collar-handles work well as a way to stop a pup savaging the postman, though they don't extend far enough to work as leashes, unless you're very short.

A year in, they're a little frayed at the edges, but the elastic on the quick control collar is still strong and the collars themselves have yet to show significant wear. One thing has failed: the little transparent plastic tag-holders. These went quickly, as they're no more durable than the plastic sheaths one might find on a file folder or the inside of a restaurant menu.

Product Page [Bamboo]

These intimidating stiletto boots by Costume National contain a pedometer inserted in the ankle. An overlooked marketing opportunity, surely. The weight loss crowd will not buy these to jog in, Costume National. However, if you say the pedometer actually measures the number of testicles sadomasochistically crushed under heel, you'd have a good in with the stat-keeping BDSM crowd.

C'n'c... And Sun [Fashion and Runway via Gizmodo]

Though an unapologetic Mac fanboy, I understand people who hate the unwarranted self-satisfaction of the hipster doofuses calling themselves "geniuses." I hate those Apple Store twats.

Never once have I had a conversation with one where I didn't find myself wanting to push my thumbs through the jelly of his or her eyes. One of my major dilemmas in buying Macs is actually helping to facilitate the employment of, oh, say, the Apple "Genius" who told me with infinite contempt that AppleCare didn't cover the laptops of smokers when I brought my MBP in for repair a few months ago, but he'd "try to push it through and hope the tech has a cold." God. Just go to hell, you self-righteous hippy prat.

There's a lot of things Apple Store employees could do to be more likable, the first of which would be to stop wearing their own o-rings as moist, elastic turtlenecks and realize that working for $10 an hour rebooting iPods for a living does not make you a member of the cultural elite. But it doesn't look like Apple's going to do encourage their employees to do that. In fact, it looks like they'll be doing everything in their power to make their employees even more smug, insufferable and loathsome. Now, each Apple Retail employee will wear a different uniform, and their shirt will have different "Punch Me Hard In The Face" slogans according to their position. These slogans are:

• Specialist: "I can talk about this stuff for hours"
• Concierge: "I know people"
• Creative: "All gain, no pain"
• Genius: "Not all heroes wear capes"
• Manager: "My house is yours"
• Back-of-house: "Some artists use a canvas, I use boxes"

Urge to waggle thumbs in gooey "Genius" brainpans... rising. You'd think a single shirt distributed to all employees reading "Douche" would do the same job at 1/6th the price.

Employee Clothing, Titles to be Tweaked [IFO Applestore]

Shoes, especially expensive "running" shoes, fuck up your feet. They ruin a walking gait honed by countless generations of adaptation, and make you look like a fashion victim to boot. Dylan Tweney at Wired Science reviews the research and finds Galahad Clark's Vivo Barefoot, a pricey design that's crafted to match as closely as possible the natural inclinations of the human foot.

"[It's] a $160 un-shoe that is as close to going barefoot as you can get while still providing some protection against the dog shit, hypodermic needles and broken glass that clog the streets of New York (and San Francisco, for that matter)."

My understanding is that the publicly-available excrement in San Francisco is often from another source, but to a jogger, a turd is a turd is a turd. The shoe looks a bit goofy, until you realize that it's basically just a superstrong kevlar sock dressed up to look as much like a sneaker as possible. From fan Josh Samuels:

"Their lack of "arch support" and elevated heel is actually a boon, as it allows you to walk/run normally and regain natural posture. They also have a wide toe-box, to accommodate your feet without crunching, even have a zippered sole so that you can just replace them when they wear out, instead of buying a new pair!"

At $160, it's pricey — so pricey that I think I'd rather wait until they have a less pedestrian design.

Update: Cory links to a New York Magazine article on the subject and offers some thoughts on an alternative brand that's helped him overcome woes anyone with flat feet will understand.

Product Page [kk.org]
Your Shoes Are Killing Your Feet [Wired Science]

I don't think I could wear these "Beauty and the Geek" jeans by designer Erik De Nijs. They've certainly got some serious nerd cred, with speakers sewn into the knees, a special back pocket for your mouse and a joystick controller located behind the zipper.. But they really seem to be designed more for women — for whom typing a long sentence full of titillating "G"s will never be more arousing — than for men (slap that space bar gingerly, champ).

The Geekiest Pants... Ever [Vous Pensez]

Aussie designer Craig Arnold makes these "Re:vision" cuff bracelets out of parts from old camera lenses, perfect for the fashionable photographer. (Or pretenders to both, like myself.)

They're AU $190 and up, which ain't cheap, but they look well made. Or if you're handy with a saw and grinder, you've got a fun new DIY idea.

Catalog Page [Oye Modern via Cool Hunting]

To have a moustache. To join the echelon of hirsute-lipped Olympians like Erroll Flynn and Burt Lancaster. To make women sneeze when you kiss them. To be able to call out, liltingly, at any occasion, "Who wants a moustache ride?" and see a dozen quavering arms raised with passionate, trembling eagerness. To always be able to run your tongue through the follicles of your upper lip when you're hungry, looking for a piece of potato or scrambled egg that you missed. Yes, it's true. The man who has a moustache is a god.

But a moustache requires constant love and attention. This sterling silver moustache comb by Makool hangs from a man-chain around your neck, allowing you to casually call attention to your moustache while simultaneously maintaining it's lustrous sheen. God knows why it says "Morning Cup" on the side, though. And for 120 bucks, you'd probably be better off just paying someone attractive to lick it clean for you.

Moustache Comb Necklace [Makool via Brandish]

Within a decade or two, we might all be wearing clothing with built-in USB ports capable of recharging our gadgets, according to researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology:

The fiber-based nanogenerator would be a simple and economical way to harvest energy from physical movement,” said Zhong Lin Wang, a Regents professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “If we can combine many of these fibers in double or triple layers in clothing, we could provide a flexible, foldable and wearable power source that, for example, would allow people to generate their own electrical current while walking.”

That's all well and good, but my own personal evolutionary goal — a goal which I buy technology to help me facilitate — is to eventually live the life of a completely sedentary goo-back, my every bodily function automated. A shirt that recharges only when I move is going to soon result in a situation where I no longer have a single robotic drone available with enough juice left to clean out my suppurating bed sores.

No, what researchers need to be working on is a way to recharge devices not through motion, but by tapping my inner reserve of self-contempt and hate. That's an equally eco-friendly power source that's just going to keep exponentially growing... even as technology evolves and eventually gives me the luxury of ejaculating my skeleton in favor of an infrastructure made up of a series of interconnected bladders.

Power Shirt: Fiber-based Nanotechnology in Clothing Could Generate Electricity by Harvesting Energy from Physical Movement [Georgia Research Tech News]

This otherwise generic flash memory card reader includes a small mirror, the better to give your makeup a little touch-up before you load your self-portraits into your laptop. Or if you're a girl, to adjust the fit of your engineer coveralls.

It's $15, plus shipping. And unbelievably, it doesn't come in pink. I would never buy this unless it came in pink.

Catalog Page [Gadget4all.com via Oh Gizmo via Pocket Lint]

While other gadget bloggers are running prissily around, flapping their hands around their downy cheeks in what can only be described as the hysterical, bladder-evacuating pirouette of the techno-prima-donna, I have to say I quite like this functional but decidedly pat laptop-carrying strap.

Okay, its certainly not going to protect your laptop from anything. And perhaps it is just my upbringing in Mississippi, squelching barefoot through the Delta mud to school every morning with a corn husk crammed between my gapped teeth, an unhappy frog stuffed in my back pocket and a leather strap filled with books thrown carelessly over one sunburned shoulder.

But this isn't a solution for people who want to protect their laptops from elemental ravages, whizzing bullets or fat people losing their balance, tipping over and crashing wildly down hill. Its a fantastic solution for someone who wants to be able to easily sling their laptop over his or her should, but doesn't want to have to pull it out of a bagger for quick, instantaneous access.

A perfect blogger's solution, in other words. $25 will get you one, and for a little bit more will get one with a customized logo on the strap. A mite unfashionable, though, even with a custom design. I'd imagine a Macbook Air on a luminescent spaghetti strand, personally.

The Lapstrap [Official Site (Turn Off Your Speakers) via Crave]

For the addle-brained fiance betrothed to a psychopathic harpy, the Remember Ring: a wedding band that reminds you of your anniversary through a searing blast of heat and the wafting smell of your own charred, decaying flesh.

Gadget Lab explains:

If you're prone to memory lapses -- or simply have too many secret second families on the side -- then you may want to consider the Remember Ring. Here's how it works: A full 24 hours before your special day begins, a "hot spot" on the ring's interior will begin to warm up to 120º F for approximately 10 seconds. And in case that doesn't do the trick, the ring will continue to warm up every hour, on the hour, all day long!

I'm no stranger to burning sensations reminding me of important dates — this is how I remember to get my yearly penicillin shots on the anniversary of a particularly lamentable youthful transaction in the jasmine-scented brothels of Chiang-Mai — and I suppose the Remember Ring's solution does beat forgetting your anniversary entirely, which I would assume, not being married myself, would have something to do with the maiming of your genitals.

The projected price, should this ever actually be crafted (which seems unlikely) is $760 — a bargain, surely.

Product Page [Alaska Jewelry via Gadget Lab]

We've all been there: staking out a Little League game, trying to get photographic evidence of the neighbor kid picking his nose. (The only saving grace of blackmailing families with no vices is that even an inconsequential social transgression can be all it takes to shame them into mowing your lawn for the rest of their lives.)

But what if you've misjudged? What if Father Jones notices your telephoto rig hidden inside your giant foam "We're Number 1!" hand? What if as his brings the tiny aluminum bat down onto your noggin you realize your ball cap disguise offers no cranial protection?

Before you go after the Smiths — their strong work ethic exactly what it will take to get three coats of paint on your house — invest in Spycatcher of Knightsbridge's "Protective Insert for Baseball Cap," a polypropylene helm that slips under a standard baseball cap. It's charmingly abbreviated in the product code as "PDLCAPINS," which I can't help but parse as "Puddle Captains."

It's £5. A landscaper wouldn't even start your lawnmower for that.

Catalog Page [SpycatcherOnline.co.uk via Red Ferret]

These wooden cuffs from Bentwood are made from cast-off architectural veneer and are molded to double as a sleeve for hot coffee cups. They're lovely, as wood so often is, but at $70 CAD about $60 more expensive than they should be. I'm all for not wasting paper, but something about using an expensive zebrawood cuff in lieu of a nickel's worth of cardboard seems strange to me.

Product Page [Contexture.ca via Gadget Lab via Book of Joe]

Boy, I've been traveling. It's not likely to ease up this year. I've got the short trip down to an art, if I may be so bold: I'm regularly doing two-three night stays, with full-sized laptop and often cameras, in just a standard-sized backpack. (Protip: Always wearing jeans is your new fashion.)

As well as this nylon Gravis backpack has served me over the last three years, it's starting to have some problems. Small tears — my fault, mostly — and not quite enough capacity to really meet my needs for longer trips. I think I can do a full 7-day trip with a single carry-on bag — if it's the right one.

Buying a bag would be too easy, and my new philosphy when it comes to clothing and accessories is that I'd rather spend the money to get exactly what I want, something I'll treasure. That means bespoke. Fortunately, I am also a skinflint, so bespoke means "hope to heck I can find a talented crafter on Etsy." (If you know of a crafter who could do the job, though, I'd love a recommendation.)

Here are my tentative requirements for your criticism and elucidation:

• Solar power – It should probably be hard panels, which are more effecient. I may actually sacrifice my old Voltaic solar bag for parts. (it's a great bag, but mine was a pre-production prototype that use a cloth on the back that made it majorly sweaty, since fixed.) Provided the Voltaic's storage battery still holds a charge, I'll probably incorporate that, too, although something able to store slightly more power might be worth the encubrence penalty. If I use the Voltaic battery, output to whatever voltages I need is simple — and nearly everything I use now uses vanilla 5-volt USB.

• A separate laptop section – For the forseeable future, I'll be toting a full-sized laptop around on trips. (Although, damn it, the Air is starting to call to me.) Most backpacks put the computer next to the spine, using it as a way to add stability to the frame. I like this fine. I also spend a lot of time whipping it out — as well as removing my computer from my bag — so single-zipper access is a must.

Or not. I'm easy if there's a good reason to do something different.

• Durable materials – At first I was thinking leather. That limits the number of crafters who could actually make the bag, as well as greatly increasing the price, but as a "lifetime bag" it seemed like the most durable choice. Leather backpacks, on the other hand, are kind of corny, so it would have to be restrained in design.

But perhaps there are better materials to work with. Something less expensive to purchase (and regenerate). Something with a little more appeal visually. Something with some pink. Reclaimed materials would be hot.

Metal fasteners are prefered, I think, if there is a way to make them not squeak. I'm seeing lots of metal on this thing.

• A backpack with stowable shoulder strap – It has to be a backpack, because sometimes I wear my bag for hours at a time. Messenger bags just don't cut it, although a stowable, clip-on should strap option would be nice. Even more difficult, more desirable: a bag design small enough to be slipped under an airline seat, so I don't have to pack another bag with all my in-flight toys and books or keep my computer on the floor. (I'm also just a little bit paranoid about ever letting my bag out of my sight.)

• Special features – This is where you guys come in. I've had a few ideas, like a smart selection of quick-access pockets and fairly predictable stuff like that. But if you were making the perfect bag for you, what would you add? A small pocket with a viewport for a hidden camera, maybe? A place for a water bottle? A programmable display? Speakers? A telescoping antenna tuned for 3G?

Cole Ranze hand-painted these Chuck Taylors with a selection of the most popular Nintendo characters. He's auctioning them off on eBay. They're up to $250 so far, which is a lot of scratch for shoes too eminently radical to ever actually wear.

Hand Painted Nintendo Kicks [Deviant Art via Kotaku]

These bejeweled gas masks were one-offs created by artist Diddo Velema for the "Luxury Show 2008" in Bucharest, Romania. I'm not normally one to be swayed by the gold-and-crystal crowd, but I could totally wear one of these to the club, slipping it on just before hijacking the sound system with some Kompressor and releasing my own VX mood fog.

High Fashion Protection [DiddoVelema.com via DVICE]

Despite mentions that t-shirts from the Experimental Gameplay Project (that cleverly included the games themselves on a bundled CD) were selling out in some Target locations, a developer whose work was featured has told Boing Boing Gadgets that Target will not be continuing to sell the products.

"We have recently found out that target isnt going to go forward with EGP," said our source. "We are going to try a few other places to see if we can get it picked up."

I asked why, since it appeared to be novel idea making a least a few sales to the gaming community.

"[EGP T-shirts] sold slightly less then what Target views as good enough to keep in store. But [the distributors] are going to try the line out at places like Hot Topic and Urban Outfitters in the coming months. We will see how it goes."

Hot Topic or Urban Outfitters do seem like better fits for the t-shirts and games, but part of what made the whole thing so exciting was to see indie games in such a mainstream outlet.

I have not contacted 2D Boy or the Experimental Gameplay Project to confirm this report as they have still not responded to my previous queries about the project in general.

A Japanese uniform manufacturer has created a mesh t-shirt from polyethylene fiber that they claim will protect wearers from knife attacks. And while that may certainly be true for slashing cuts, the rather large holes and flexible nature of the material means it won't do much for the quick jabs that form the bulk of my "Ice Pick Mongoose/Mandrake" fighting style, in which I induce a psychomotor seizure with a whiff of video head cleaner and then pull my own hair from its roots while emitting a paralyzing keen, filling both myself and my assailant with dozens of tiny punctures.* Unlike the full body armor (and ear muffs) that might protect a victim from such an attack, the t-shirt from Nihon Uni is machine-washable.

Prices will start at 19,000 yen for a short sleeved version up to 59,000 for a large, long-sleeved version.

New T-shirts offer protection against knives [Yomiuri.co.jp via Slashgear (Oh ho!) via Engadget]

* Keep in mind I am not a doctor.