Vibrating Laser Balls Organ
Didi Vardi enjoys bringing the smart and the useless together as much as we do. The "Vibrating Laser Balls Organ" is a wonderful, real musical instrument inspired by the Animusic's virtual Pipe Dream. Didi and his son Guy schlepped the 400 pound golf-ball-and-aluminum Stradivarius all the way from Israel to perform at Gadgetoff. We wept when we heard the sweet sounds of Titleists careening off extruded aluminum - what other music could possibly soothe the savage geek?
From The New Yorker -
“How long did you work on your vibrating balls?” Yossi asked.“Four months.”
“And why did you work for four months on this useless piece of equipment?”
“We loved it.”
Imagine speeding through an intersection at high speed; now imagine everyone doing it - this is exactly what our brilliant friend Peter Stone likes to think about. Peter showed the automobile intersection of the future at this years Gadgetoff. He and his colleague Kurt Dresner have come to the realization that vehicles of the future will be autonomous and as such don't need the traffic light shuffle that we've all grown so weary of. Their intersections do away with traffic lights completely and instead rely on vehicles receiving instructions from the intersection itself. Clever queuing algorithms allow all of the lanes to be active at the same time, even turns across traffic are handled safely. The result is an intersection that handles tons of traffic with minimal delay. Check out 
It's a t-shirt, it's a spectrum analyzer, it's both! 
If you were one of the selected few to attend Gadgetoff 2006, you would have ended up with the most wonderful gift book for the holidays. Our friend, Charlie Melcher, who published other books of great social importance such as Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", has created a book of equal (or greater) significance. "The Pop-Up Book of Celebrity Meltdowns" book features embarassing moments of "the beautiful people" richly-animated in 3D. Melcher, and his design team, finally allow readers to fully reinact OJ Simpson's epic Ford Bronco "chase" - where your finger-pulls bring the action to life. Also, celebrated are Janet Jackson's "Booby Trap"; Tom Cruise "Jumping for Joy"... and Paris Hilton rear-ended. Smart and useless...
Designer Neal Ormond is far too modest. Some see their name in lights: Neal sees names in fire. He has built the a 96-inch flame display screen, called the "Infernoptix Digital Pyrotechnic Matrix." Using computer-controlled jets of fire, Neal's massive 12 X 7 array presents a visual fire-ballet of words and images synchronizred to music. You have to see it and FEEL it: this metal matrix screen of flaming nozzles has a percussive mode, where scrolling letters actually send shock waves at the audience. Neal's experiments with flame have included many other radical designs: a fire helmet, a flaming "battle tank", and many other vehicles and devices of explosive merriment. I want to be Neal when I grow up.
