OSIM, better known for its advanced massage chairs, has begun selling a US$170 thumb-sized USB massager which uses Electronic Muscle Stimulation (EMS - the same technology you first witnessed in biology when your teacher made a dead frog's leg twitch using electrical current), to deliver a suite of specialized massage programs from your laptop. It's a pretty good fit of technologies because you can synch the massage to your computer’s music player and massage away stress, and tone up using the tapping, squeezing and kneading of the uPixie on specific muscle groups … while you are working. You can even write and store your own massage routines. Read More

Snowshoeing has long been the poor stepchild of winter sports. It's actually a really fun way of getting out in the snow to exercise and enjoy nature, but it's just not quite as exhilarating as skiing or snowboarding and, in many places, has a secondary status in the grand scheme of winter sports. One German company believes it's time for snowshoeing to step out of the shadows and share that same sense of visceral fun that skiing and snowboarding imbue. Hive (Hike + Drive) has designed a unique pair of snowshoes that double as a sort of short ski or glider. Read More

BMW launched its X6 in 2008 dubbing it "the world's first ever Sports Activity Coupé." The SAC moniker was adopted because the vehicle combined the high ground clearance and all-wheel drive attributes of an SUV, with the body styling of a coupé. Despite mixed reviews regarding its styling upon launch, BMW says the vehicle has since racked up sales of over 150,000. Now the German automaker has announced it is giving the X6 a facelift - although you'll have to look pretty closely to pick the changes. Read More

Two things are certain in this crazy world - unicycles are cool and unicycles are seriously hard to ride. Well no longer. Now anybody can clown about on a unicycle and what's more, you don't even have to pedal. Thanks to Focus Designs and several years of development the learning curve required to master the unicycle has been reduced from several weeks to an average of 20 minutes, making it a viable and incredibly cheap-to-run personal transport. Read More

In the face of potentially catastrophic effects on global food production, some have proposed drastic solutions to counteract climate change such as reflecting sunlight away from the Earth. A new study from the Carnegie Institution for Science examining the effects of sunshade geoengineering has concluded that such an approach would be more likely to improve food security than threaten it. Read More

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Mercedes-Benz SL and to celebrate the occasion, Mercedes has completely restored the oldest surviving example to its original condition. Introduced to the press on 12 March 1952 on the autobahn between Stuttgart and Heilbronn, the prototype 300 SL (Super Lightweight) was powered by a 3-liter, six-cylinder in-line engine canted at 50 degrees with an overhead camshaft, three Solex twin carburetors and dry sump lubrication, which put out 170 bhp for a maximum speed of 143 mph (230 kph). Not bad for 1952. Read More

If you’re getting weary of trying to wrap your head around things like smartphones that answer questions, self-driving cars or microscopic machines, perhaps this might be more to your liking ... a wooden box. Well OK, the DUBE isn’t just a wooden box. It’s actually a percussive musical instrument, that caught our eyes and ears last week at NAMM. Read More

Whether it’s touch-sensitive skin for robots, clothing made from smart fabrics, or devices with bendable displays, stretchable electronics will be playing a large role in a number of emerging technologies. While the field is still very new, stretchable electronic devices may have come a step closer to common use, thanks to research being conducted at North Carolina State University. Scientists there have recently developed a new method for creating elastic conductors, using carbon nanotubes. Read More

Wall-mounted bike-hanging hooks are certainly a good way of keeping a bicycle off of the floor and out of the way, but let’s be honest ... they’re also often used as a means of displaying a particularly nice bike, almost as if it’s a work of art. That being the case, some cyclists might find it a little counter-intuitive to use plain old hardware store hooks for showing off their masterpiece of motorless transportation. That’s where the Bike Valet comes in. Not only does the bike-hanging device look pretty snazzy, but it also incorporates some practical features. Read More