You know, I can’t imagine how anyone might have thought this was a good idea, but in the early stages of design is a product that brings together a clothespin with an LED light.  Dubbed the Lighting Pin, it was never meant to be used for hanging clothes, but rather as a simple, go-anywhere book or task light.  It’s just a clip on light, much like the kind you see in garages  only much smaller and simpler to use.

It’s actually fairly powerful–you can see above that, when used with a bit of paper, you can actually get a tiny lamp out of the thing.  And I believe that, under other circumstances, this might have been a great idea, but no.  Not this one, not as long as flashlights are still cheap and plentiful.

But someday, this may be exactly what we need, even if we don’t know it yet.

Oh, and if you follow those links, try the via first–it’ll actually warn you that the read is a processor-hungry Flash-intensive monster, so you may not want to hit that one unless you’ve cleared some memory first.

[via WIRED]

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