Quotes of the Day

Sporting Life

Step Lively
Computers in your shoes? Believe it. A sensor in the new adidas 1 sneakers measures with each step how much compression you put on the heels of the shoes. Microprocessor-controlled cushioning then adjusts the heels' stiffness so they become more rigid on dirt trails, for example, and softer on pavement or when you're walking. In addition, you can set comfort levels with buttons on the shoes. The lithium-ion battery that fuels the system lasts about 100 hours.

INVENTOR Adidas

AVAILABILITY March 2005, $250

TO LEARN MORE adidas.com

Go Strapless
These Nike swim goggles use disposable adhesive strips to stay in place and keep water out, even after a dive. An extra angled pane maximizes your field of vision without distorting the view, and — serious swimmers take note — they produce zero drag, so they're even faster than the naked eye. The medical-grade glue on the strips is engineered to bond comfortably with your flesh on one side and the polycarbonate lenses on the other. Still, putting the goggles on and taking them off can be a chore.

INVENTORS Rob Bruce, Dylan Van Atta

AVAILABILITY Spring 2005, $25 a pair

Wet & Wild

Surf 'N' Surf
Last spring Intel commissioned a surfboard shaper in North Devon, England, to design a board with an embedded tablet PC. Why? So Intel could tout its Centrino processor at beach festivals around the globe. Equipped with wi-fi, the Wireless Technology Surfboard enables the surfer to send e-mail, shoot videos (using the built-in webcam) and, yes, surf the Web.

INVENTOR Intel

AVAILABILITY Prototype only

TO LEARN MORE intel.com

Daredevils' Delight
If you love water skiing but hate waiting your turn or finding someone to drive the boat, the Solo may be just what you need. This unmanned, 8-ft.-long fiber-glass boat lets you ski by yourself. All controls are on the tow handle, including acceleration, turning and a stop-start button. For added safety, the kill switch is activated when you drop the handle. Legal in 40 states (see website for information), the Solo goes up to 40 m.p.h.

INVENTOR Solo Watersports

AVAILABILITY Now, $10,995

TO LEARN MORE solowatersports.com

Over Board

Dream Boat
The world's fastest yacht with a single hull is a 140-ft. carbon-fiber wonder. With two 148ft. masts and five sails, the silver-colored Mari-Cha IV, owned by billionaire Robert Miller, can travel at speeds of up to 36 knots, about twice what other boats its size can do. It holds four world records, including the West Marine Pacific Cup, a race from San Francisco to Hawaii, which it won this past July.

INVENTORS Mari-Cha IV design team

AVAILABILITY Now, $12.6 million

TO LEARN MORE mari-chaIV.com

Cook Smart

Square Meals
It's a cook's nightmare: you make a beautiful cake or lasagna and then struggle so hard to wriggle a piece out of the pan, it looks like a collapsed mess by the time it hits the plate. Enter the Lock n' Bake pan — a 2004 winner in Hammacher Schlemmer's Search for Invention competition — which solves that problem with sides that fold down after baking and a flat, removable tray for neater serving.

INVENTOR Aneela Rajusth

AVAILABILITY Spring 2005, price not set

TO LEARN MORE locknbake.com

Fresh Ideas

No Need to Squeeze
Judging the ripeness of fruit has always seemed more art than science. Now a firm in New Zealand has developed a sensor that detects when pears are ripe by analyzing the aromas emitted by the fruit. Attached to the inside of the fruit's plastic wrapping, the sensor goes from red to orange to yellow as the fruit ripens. Sensors for avocados, kiwis, melons and mangoes are in the works.

INVENTOR HortResearch

AVAILABILITY December

TO LEARN MORE www.ripesense.com

Visible Ink
The label on the Mar de Frades 2003 Albariño, a crisp white wine produced on the northwest coast of Spain (it's great paired with seafood), uses thermosensitive ink to let you know when the contents of the bottle are suitably chilled. When the wine registers 52ºF (its optimal serving temperature) or colder, a little blue ship appears on top of the aqua waves.

INVENTORS William Grant & Sons, importers, the Mar de Frades winery

AVAILABILITY Now, about $16 a bottle

TO LEARN MORE grantusa.com

Mini-Melon
Behold the Bambino. It looks like a watermelon and tastes like one too, but it's not the hulking mass you've had to lug home from the grocery store for the family picnic. And it took only 10 years to breed. The fruit typically weighs 4 lbs. to 6 lbs., about the size of a large cantaloupe. Seedless, it's sweeter than its larger cousin. The competition: Dulcinea Farms of Ladera Ranch, Calif., grows a similar breed called the Pureheart.

INVENTORS Seminis (Bambino), Syngenta (Pureheart)

AVAILABILITY Year-round, $3 to $5 each

TO LEARN MORE seminis.com, dulcinea.com

Hot & Cold

Boiling Point
Smokey Bear would love the Jetboil Personal Cooking System, which cuts the risk of forest fires by allowing campers to prepare soup, pasta, rice and beans — any single-pot dish — quickly and safely. How? The flame is contained within the Jetboil's patented Flux Ring, which channels the heat from a butane burner directly into the vessel. (Fuel canisters sold separately.) Bonus: a neoprene cover insulates the food while protecting campers' fingers from the heat.

INVENTORS Dwight Aspinwall, Perry Dowst

AVAILABILITY Now, $79.95

TO LEARN MORE jetboil.com

The Big Chill
When ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's asked a Penn State scientist to build a freezer that won't contribute to global warming, the result was like a frat-house experiment gone right. The apparatus uses sound waves to compress and expand helium, which in turn chills a liquid cooling agent — in this case, vodka. Bizarre, but it works: the stainless-steel canister was used last April to cool pints of Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey at a New York City scoop shop.

INVENTOR Steven Garrett

AVAILABILITY Prototype only

TO LEARN MORE benjerry.com

Light Touch

Lost in a Cloud
Swedish designer Monica Förster says that she often stares at clouds outside her airplane window and wonders what it would be like to step inside one. After learning that cumulus clouds form in the morning, then dissipate at night, she decided to create a nylon "cloud" that could serve as a quiet meeting space by day and collapse at night. Förster's Cloud is 8 ft. tall and 18 ft. long. A fan inside its carrying case inflates it in 3 min. Total weight: 33 lbs.

INVENTOR Monica Förster

AVAILABILITY Now, $5,900

TO LEARN MORE urbanpeel.com

Magic Material
Mixing glass with cement may seem strange, but that is what Aron Losonczi, a Hungarian architect, has done to create a transparent concrete called LiTraCon. Glass in the form of fiber optics allows light to filter through the material, creating a surreal effect. Available in sheets 2 in. or more wide, LiTraCon is as strong as regular concrete and can be used for walls, flooring or sculpture. It is on display at the National Building Museum in Washington through Jan. 23.

INVENTOR LiTraCon

AVAILABILITY Now, $1,828 per cu. ft.

TO LEARN MORE litracon.com

Safety Net

Bug Barrier
Dangerous malaria-carrying mosquitoes in Africa have a new foe: the next-generation Olyset bed net, which is made of a durable plastic weave impregnated with the insecticide permethrin and stays potent for five years. Lighter, cheaper and more colorful than previous versions, the Nguvu ya Ajabu (Swahili for Magic Power) is being manufactured in Tanzania for cost-effective distribution. Also new: curtains and door screens cut from the same material.

INVENTOR Sumitomo Chemical

AVAILABILITY Now; free from some relief agencies and clinics, or $7 to $8 per net

TO LEARN MORE acumenfund.org

For Your Health

Smooth Operator
U.S. soldiers who return from Iraq missing a leg from the thigh down are getting back on their feet a lot faster these days, thanks to the Rheo Knee. The new prosthetic joint, developed in Iceland, is designed to learn the nuances of an individual's movements and adjust itself. An innovative control module — made up of sensors, a computer chip and software — reacts instantaneously to changes in the wearer's gait, so there's less strain on the hips and back.

INVENTORS Ossur, M.I.T.

AVAILABILITY Now, at select clinics

TO LEARN MORE ossur.com

The Light Stuff
Here's something nobody wants to think about: bathrooms are a great breeding ground for bacteria, and so are toothbrushes. No, rinsing them doesn't do much to help the situation. Enter the Violight toothbrush sanitizer, a high-tech toothbrush holder. Pop your toothbrush inside (it holds four), push a button, and the Violight bathes it with ultraviolet light, which eliminates 99.9% of germs and bacteria on the brush within 10 min.

INVENTOR Violight

AVAILABILITY Now, $49.95

TO LEARN MORE violight.com

Taking the Blinders Off
You're sick of wearing glasses, but the LASIK people turned you down. Here's help: the new Verisyse corrective lens, which treats nearsightedness too severe for laser surgery to fix. The lens is implanted between the cornea and the iris through a 6-mm incision. If there are complications (infection, cataracts), it can be removed. A competing implantable lens, the Visian ICL, developed by Staar Surgical, still awaits FDA approval.

INVENTOR Jan Worst

AVAILABILITY Now, $3,000 to $4,000 an eye

TO LEARN MORE visioninfocus.com

Needle Free
Getting an HIV test has never been easier. With the new OraQuick Advance, a health professional simply swabs the inside of a person's mouth along the upper and lower gums and then inserts the stick into a vial of solution that tests for antibodies to the HIV-1 and HIV-2 virus strains. Within 20 minutes, the results appear on the stick. (Two reddish-purple lines indicate a positive result.) The OraQuick's accuracy rate: over 99%.

INVENTOR OraSure

AVAILABILITY Now, price set by clinics

TO LEARN MORE orasure.com

Perfect Aim
Getting stuck with a needle is bad. Feeling like a pincushion while a medic looks for a vein is worse. Thanks to OnTarget, a so-called vein-contrast-enhancement device, doctors will soon be able to navigate your veins with a virtual map. Using a near-infrared camera, OnTarget takes a real-time video image of blood and projects it onto the skin — blood appears dark, and fat and tissue look light — highlighting placement of veins within 0.06 mm.

INVENTOR Conenhill Biomedics

AVAILABILITY 2005, price not set

TO LEARN MORE conenhill.com

Kid Friendly

Baby, Don't Cry
Sometimes all babies need is a little rocking to fall asleep. The Caring Cot, created by an English industrial designer, is a motorized crib that rocks for about a minute if the baby in it cries for 30 sec. If the baby doesn't stop after about 5 min., a signal is sent to the parents via remote. A sensor goes off if the room gets too hot or cold. And for parents fearful of studden infant death syndrome, a motion detector indicates if the baby has stopped moving for too long.

INVENTOR Garry Cho

AVAILABILITY Prototype only

TO LEARN MORE garrycho@gmail.com

Sittin' Pretty
Particularly tall parents sick of stooping as they push their toddlers about town will appreciate the new Xplory. Its push bar can be positioned nearly 4 ft. off the ground, and the seat can be raised high to keep the child above the fray. This stroller can be adjusted to accommodate passengers from a newborn to a 40-lb. preschooler; a special latch turns it into a two-wheeler for negotiating stairs. Bonus feature: a zippered sack for groceries.

INVENTOR Stokke

AVAILABILITY Now, $749

TO LEARN MORE stokkeusa.com

All Tied Up
Problem: during soccer games, your child often has to bend down to retie her cleats' laces or risk tripping during a critical dribble-shot-score. Solution: Shloops. The patented rubbery tubes, which take mere moments to install, keep shoes securely tied all day, no matter what you're doing. Put them on once and keep them on until your shoes wear out. Whether they offend your fashion sensibilities is a separate issue.

INVENTOR Troy Christy

AVAILABILITY Now, $2.99 a pair, in a range of colors

TO LEARN MORE shloops.com

Dirty Work
It used to be that if your kid decided to redecorate the house in crayon, you had two choices: embrace the new mural or repaint. But now there's Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, a block of melamine foam that lets you remove stains and scuff marks swiftly without breaking a sweat. The material's unique chemical makeup makes it a great cleaner. But beware: rub too long or hard on the same spot, and you'll take the shine off a semigloss surface — or worse.

INVENTORS BASF, Procter & Gamble

AVAILABILITY Now, about $4 for four

TO LEARN MORE mrclean.com

Hi, Robot

Walk Tall, Play Ball
One of the hardest things to get a robot to do is walk on two legs, but nowadays bipedal is practically banal. The real trick is to give your humanoid a smooth, natural gait. The J4, above, JVC's 8-in. showpiece at a recent Tokyo trade show, proved it could walk a nice walk and kick a soccer ball to boot. It's controlled via Bluetooth. The Chroino, right — if we didn't know any better, we'd think it was Playmobil's tribute to Marvin the Martian — also boasts a more graceful stride, thanks to new SHIN-Walk technology that allows the 14-in. robot to maintain an even center of gravity and avoid the awkward bent-knee technique common to other walking bots.

INVENTORS J4: JVC; Chroino: Tomotaka Takahashi, Robo-Garage, Kyoto University

AVAILABILITY Prototypes only

Robo-Soldier
Insurgents, be afraid. An armed, unmanned ground vehicle that never gets tired, hungry or scared is headed your way. The Sword has night and thermal vision, four cameras and a 7.62-mm machine gun. It can climb stairs and is utterly silent — until it opens fire. A live video feed enables its "driver" to operate the vehicle from up to 1 mile away. The U.S. Army has ordered 18 to deploy in Iraq.

INVENTORS U.S. Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center and Massachusetts defense firm Foster-Miller

AVAILABILITY 2005, $230,000 (military only)

TO LEARN MORE pica.army.mil, foster-miller.com

Fire Fighter

Splashing
It looks like water. It pours, flows and sloshes like water. But it doesn't get things wet. Its name is 3M Novec 1230 Fire Protection Fluid, and its chemical formula looks like alphabet soup. (It's technically a fluorinated ketone, whatever that means.) But you can dunk a laptop computer in it, and it'll come out bone dry and working fine. That makes this wonder fluid perfect for putting out fires in offices, computer rooms and museums. Just don't try drinking it.

INVENTOR 3M

AVAILABILITY Now

TO LEARN MORE tycofireandsecurity.com

Now Hear This

Good Vibrations
Poor reception is the curse of all cell phones. While there is little you can do about your carrier's spotty coverage in any given location, you can make it easier for others to hear you by investing in a better headset. The Jawbone has a sensor that rests on your cheekbone and picks up vibrations emanating from your head as you speak. It then uses those data to filter out background noise. You may not notice the difference, but the person on the other end will hear you much better.

INVENTOR Aliph

AVAILABILITY Now, $150

TO LEARN MORE jawbone.com

Cutting Edge
A LIFESAVER — FOR DISCS

Tired of scratched CDs and DVDs that don't play anymore? d_skin is a clear plastic coating that you can put over a disc to protect it. You leave the cover on all the time, even when you play the disc. The laser from the player simply passes through the cover to read the data it needs. And because the d_skin is so thin — it measures just twothousandths of an inch — it will work with any player.

INVENTOR d_skin

AVAILABILITY Now, five for $5.99 or 20 for $19.99

TO LEARN MORE d-skin.com

No More Fade to Black
Now that you've got that snazzy LCD TV hanging on your living room wall like a fine work of art, it seems a pity to have it go blank when you turn it off. Philips' MiraVision Mirror TV avoids that by turning into a mirror. A polarized coating on the front of the screen reflects light when the set is off. Available in 17-in. and 23-in. models, the Mirror TV also comes in a split-screen style, left, that's already being used in hotels.

INVENTOR Philips

AVAILABILITY Now, $2,799 to $3,999

TO LEARN MORE mirrortv@philips.com

Say It with Flowers
Imagine flanking your home stereo with birds of paradise rather than a pair of speakers. The Ka-on flower speaker, housed in a vase, below, or pot, uses real plant parts — stems to conduct sound waves, leaves and flowers to serve as cones — to fill a 16-ft. radius with music. Its audio quality is closer to that of a vinyl record than a CD, but for some audiophiles, that's a good thing.

INVENTORS Keiji Koga, Hiroshi Shiraki, Let's Corp.

AVAILABILITY Now, only in Japan: $284 for the vase version; $473 for the potted plant

Get the Message
When the Swarovski crystal company asked ultramodern furniture designer Ron Arad to create a chandelier last year, he promptly declined, saying, "Crystal is the epitome of kitsch. It is not my planet." This year he changed his mind and created Lolita, the first text-messaging chandelier. Made of 2,100 crystals and 1,050 white LEDs, the 5-ft. spiral displays SMS messages sent by any phone. Of course, you'd need Lolita's number ...

INVENTOR Ron Arad

AVAILABILITY Now, $138,435

TO LEARN MORE swarovskisparkles.com

Time for Change
Before the Swiss watchmaker Jean François Ruchonnet designed the Monaco V4 concept watch, he lifted the hood of his Maserati, gazed at the engine and thought about the belts. Then he decided to create a similar belt system in miniature to replace the interlocking gears in mechanical watches. Each belt replaces five to six gears, thus simplifying construction. Visible on the underside, at right, the belts are also better at absorbing shock, for a more reliable and accurate timepiece.

INVENTOR TAG Heuer

AVAILABILITY Prototype only

TO LEARN MORE tagheuer.com

• Anita Hamilton; Maryanne Murray Buechner; Lev Grossman; Simon Crittle; Sora Song