Even with the new Wii MotionPlus add-on, the Wiimote still provides a somewhat limited motion tracking experience. Sure you can sword fight, or swing a bat, but if you had inspirations to do anything beyond that, you’re out of luck. Unless you were willing to shell out $500 for the Acceleglove that is. It was developed by a company called AthroTronix and features accelerometers on each finger allowing intricate hand motions to be tracked in 3D space.

Now out of the box the Acceleglove can only really be used to track limited hand movements like gestures or pinching motions, allowing you to trigger events on a connected device (as is demonstrated in the video included below) but the glove also comes with a handy open source SDK which means if you have the coding know-how there’s no reason it couldn’t be used to track 1:1 motion.

[ Popular Science - Open-Source, Accelerometer-Equipped Glove Allows for Infinite Control Possibilities ]

With the EcoBlast Rechargable Air Horn not only do you have an economical way to scare the crap out of your roommates at the crack of dawn, but it’s environmentally friendly too! Like the Super Soaker, the EcoBlast uses a plastic tank that can be refilled, with air in this case, from a bike pump or air compressor using a standard valve.

The volume on the air horn is adjustable too, with it maxing out at around 115 dB, and on a single ‘charge’ you can expect to get over 70 blasts. So if you’ve always wanted to be ‘that guy’ at the baseball stadium you can order one from Things You Never Knew Existed for $29.98.

[ Ecoblaster Rechargable Air Horn ] VIA [ Craziest Gadgets ]

The easiest way to carry a handful of NDS games with you is to use one of the many ‘less than legal’ flash carts currently available. But we all know that Nintendo frowns on such devices, even if you’re only running games you’ve actually purchased. So the ‘Blaze’ Game Selector available from Superufo for just $13.42 is unfortunately the next best thing. It’s a rather clunky accessory that piggybacks on the DS’s top screen and allows you to carry and switch between 3 DS lite carts at the flick of a switch. While it’s cheap and probably works as advertised, I just can’t see why anyone would ever opt for something as ridiculous as this.

[ NDS Lite 'Blaze' Game Selector ] VIA [ Technabob ]

At what point does ‘inspired by’ become ‘blatantly ripped off’? Because there’s really no denying where the design for this Stap Man stapler came from. Of course we all know that Pac Man didn’t roam his maze stapling the new cover sheets on TPS reports like this doppleganger will spend his days doing, but there’s no denying there’s a bit more than just ‘inspiration’ with this particular design. Still, for about $26 in your choice of black or white, I want one on my desk!

[ Stap Man Stapler ] VIA [ Nerd Approved ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Remember Pixy Stix? Man, just one of the jumbo stix was enough to keep me bouncing off the walls for a while. As an adult, sugar just doesn’t have quite the same kick that it used to. Luckily candy has evolved and brought us Nixie Tubes.

Nixie Tubes very much resemble the classic Pixie Stix, with one minor upgrade. Each tube has 100mg of caffeine, or about 20% more than your standard cup of Joe. A pack of five tubes is going to run you around $9, which is a bit pricey for candy. If you’re in a pinch and need a quick (and tasty) pick-me-up, then one of these might just do the trick.

[ ThinkGeek ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

By Chris Scott Barr

It seems like everyone and their brother has designed a clock of some sort. I can’t go more than a couple of days without seeing a new one popping up somewhere, so I usually try to limit my coverage to the cool and unusual. The Black & White Clock is definitely both.

The clock consists of four separate OLED digits, which are individually powered and controlled. You then attach them to a wall, and they will display the time. They include a light sensor, so that the normally black digits can light up when the room is dark. It really looks like a cool concept, and the designer is currently looking for a manufacturer, so hopefully we’ll see this one on the market someday.

[ Kibardindesign ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Here’s a funny story to brighten up your Monday morning. A 15-year-old girl was walking down a sidewalk on Staten Island and fell into an open manhole. While that would normally not make for an amusing story, the girl also happened to be texting at the time, thus she was completely oblivious to the fact that there was a gaping hole in the ground. She didn’t get seriously injured, so we’re all free to laugh a bit.

In the girl’s defense, there weren’t any cones or markers around the hole, which doesn’t look good on the city. The girl fell down 4 or 5 feet into a mostly drained sewer, got a few scrapes and lost a shoe. The family is planning on suing the city for an undisclosed amount due the physical and mental anguish that the girl has endured. No, not the mental anguish for being stupid enough to not look where you’re walking, but the fact that the sewer was “putrid.”

Yes, I think the city should offer the girl a little money, since they were partially at fault for not marking the area. However, since the girl didn’t actually suffer any real injuries, I think that the family should take any small amount offered. No jury in their right mind would award a large settlement to a girl that was paying too much attention to a phone to watch where she was going. Oh, and you can bet that this incident is going to be brought up by people trying to ban texting while driving. Congratulations Alexa Longueira, you’re going to be famous! Famous for being stupid.

VIA [ MSNBC ]

By Evan Ackerman

Last week on BotJunkie, we revved things up with a video of a transforming motorcycle robot with an attitude, had just a little bit of trouble telling the difference between a robot and a human, hungered for customized ramen noodle soup made by a robot, could barely see the world’s smallest wheeled robot with a gripper, met Sega’s new Dream Cat Venus robotic feline replacement, learned how Willow Garage’s PR2 robot managed to plug itself in to an electrical outlet, saw a prototype robot bat, fantasized about what we’d do with a 15 ton robot grapple arm controlled with a Wiimote, cashed in our 401ks to buy 196 robot shirts, saw some robot soccer videos from RoboCup 2009, got a little bit choked up over a robot tribute to Michael Jackson, watched a team of soccer robots score a goal against a team of humans, found out about a robot that’s deigned to clean up water pollution, watched a home built UAV launching rockets, desperately wanted our own fighting robot space cock, and of course, finished off the week with a Bot With Stuff, which you can catch right after the jump.

So far this week, we’ve posted about a thirsty hexaferretpod, snake robots from Carnegie Mellon, a rolling orbital Bluetooth operated thing made with LEGO, and Penbo, a robot penguin for girls.

Enjoy the Bot With Stuff, and then come check us out.

Confused? Click here.

[ BotJunkie ]

By Evan Ackerman

What with all of the, uh, legally purchased music and movies and games that I download buy, I fill up my hard drives once a year or so. Rather than buying a bunch of external drives, I just buy new bare drives, and swap ‘em out. There are any number of mildly convenient ways (like this, for example) to access a bare drive after you’ve eviscerated it out of your computer, but none of them are as convenient as just having a USB interface on the drive itself.

Now, this particular drive (a 1.8″ drive designed for mobile hardware) doesn’t have any interface besides the native USB, and this is obviously not acceptable for laptop or desktop use. But I don’t see why adding a a standard USB option to most internal drives wouldn’t be possible, and it would make accessing old data much, much easier as well as more robust. Plus, it’s likely that USB as an interface standard is going to be around way longer than PATA/IDE or SATA. This may not matter much right now, but it will in the future, by which time nobody will remember what all of those little tiny pins are supposed to plug into and you’ll just have to forget about recovering your (now vintage) porn stash.

VIA [ Engadget ]

We’ve written about Thought Out’s unique accessories for the iPhone before, but this time they’ve got something particularly useful for photographers and videographers who’ve decided the 3GS is adequate enough for their needs. (Yeah, I don’t get it either.) The PED3-TriPhone and PED3-TriPhone-FORM are a couple of rotating mounts that allow you to connect your iPhone to a tripod or other stabilizing devices. And while the PED3-TriPhone mount ($28) is designed to work with a naked iPhone, the PED3-TriPhone-FORM ($32) will actually accommodate one in a protective case.

[ Thought Out PED3-TriPhone and PED3-TriPhone-FORM ] VIA [ iLounge ]