The LED Door Handle might only be a concept, but it’s just so damn brilliant we can’t see why it wouldn’t go into production.  But before we get into the details, lets consider the following scenario.

Your power goes out.  The room is pitch black and you can’t see more than an inch in front of your face.  You know you’ve got a flash light stored in the junk drawer, but navigating your way to it and not stabbing yourself in the hand with a rusty nail is slim at best.  Ask most people and they’ll probably have no problem finding their way to a door since they can depend on the walls to guide them, not to mention it’s a much larger object than a puny, under powered flashlight.  And that’s why the LED Door Handle makes that much sense.

But that’s not the only reason we’re all giddy about this concept.  A built-in light sensor can detect when to turn on the night light (the ring around the handle) and detaching the handle from the base converts it automatically into an LED flashlight.  But wait, it gets better.  The very action of opening and closing the door -turning the handle – charges the the integrated battery, though we’re a bit skeptical to how effective it could be.  Nonetheless, this is a sick idea that needs to come to fruition and adding it to any home will look rad as all get up.

The LEDoorHandle is a 2011 Spark Awards Winner.  It’s designed by Kun-hee Kim, Kei Shimizu & Nguyen-vu Dang.

No matter how you prepare your garlic for cooking – chopping, crushing, mincing or grating –  your hands are either sure to smell or the clean up takes more time to complete than the task itself.  So what’s any self respecting chef to do?  You could invest in one of those clunky and heavy garlic crushers.  They’ve come a long way in terms of design since the 80s, but despite many of them boasting a self cleaning tool, garlic still gets stuck and you’ll spend hours of your life scraping the remains from its holes.

The Joseph Joseph Rocker, Garlic Crusher crushes garlic by simply rocking back and forth.  The shape is designed such that you can scope directly from the crusher, allowing you to easily distribute the garlic as you see fit.  It made from stainless-steel so it will never smell.  And when you’re done destroying your kitchen you can just pop it into the dishwasher.

Amazon sells it for $15.

Cooking your kids, while great if you’re a cannibal with a penchant for Casey Anthony syndrome (she’s so guilty), is probably not a good idea if you wanna remain in the good graces of society, not to mention on the other side of the steel bars.  So to insure you don’t burn your kids with boiling hot water you should probably take a close look at this handy gizmo that fits over most faucets and provides a digital temperature read out.  It’s even color coded in the event your vision is acting up from all the late night partying.

We’re not entirely sure if this product can be purchased separately since it is included with ThinkGeek’s infant bathtub, which features a built-in clean water reservoir for rinsing off the young tike.  But heck, it’s just $89.99 and ships with a rinse cup.  Now that’s value!

Lose your keys much?  The best way to combat that short coming is to place your keys in the same place.  Most people tend to opt for the dish or a hook by the front door.  But come on, that’s boring at best.

The Sparrow Key Ring is straight up adorable.  It attaches to your keys using, what else, a standard key chain ring.  The birdhouse sticks to the wall using a self adhesive sticker or included screws.   When you come home you place the birdy back in its house.  After all, home is where the heart is, and God forbid that tweetie bird be without one, and you without your keys when you’re flying out the door.

The Sparrow Key Ring costs $18, and comes in black, lime green, pink, yellow and a few other colors.  It also doubles as a whistle.  How appropriate.

Sometimes brilliance comes in the most simplest of forms.  The Magnetic Light Switch Cover really needs no explanation, but for the sake of posterity (and driving some traffic to this post by way of a search engine), we’ll provide one.  It’s a standard sized (USA) light switch cover that incorporates a high powered magnet.  So it’s logical, right?  The first thing you do when you enter your home is flip on the light switch.  Next you toss down your keys.  Rarely would you do that in reverse order.  But how often do you lose your keys because you don’t make a mental note as to where you placed them?  Now with the magnetic light switch cover they’ll be in the same place again and again.  However, this style of light switch is pretty old school, but if you’re rocking those in your home you can grab this handy device for $24.95.

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How much do you like Facebook?  It better be a damn lot if you hang this Like Hanger in your home.  It’s made from acrylic and every time you walk through your door you’ll hopefully get that warm and fuzzy feeling as if someone just liked your fan page or thumbed up a post that you submitted to the world of social networking.  Each piece is handcrafted, so assuming you order 2 or 3 of them, or have a few from friends that jump on board, you’ll notice subtle differences in the finish.

You can grab one for $30.

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Arcades, to a large degree, may have faded into obscurity thanks to the advent of ultra powerful video game consoles. But that doesn’t mean you can’t slap a piece of memorabilia of the now defunct hang out spot up in your house. The Arcade Light Switch installs like any other household light switch, yet instead of flipping a switch you can tap one. Chances are they’re designed to stand up to the test of time given their roots, and for anyone with a gaming room in their home there couldn’t be a more fitting finishing touch.
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Just when we thought nothing else could be adorned with a touchscreen control, along meanders AGA’S Total Control Cast Iron Oven.

For $15,500  you’ll be cooking with the Top Chef’s of the world thanks to an ultra fast heat up time of just 8 minutes.  It includes a boiling plate, simmering plate, roasting oven, baking oven and simmering oven.  Word is that it will also eventually receive it’s own iPhone app, which means you can now finally set it and forget it until you’re presumably out the door, where upon you can turn on the electric cooker no matter your location.  In the meanwhile, though, you can settle for the included remote.

Like AGA’s classic ovens,  you can choose from a variety of colors.  Checkout the video after the ‘leap’.

Via: GearPatrol

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The Nespresso Pixie is a single cup espresso machine.  Despite its super compact footprint, it can heat up in as little as 25 seconds and brew you a cup of coffee 3 times faster than it takes for the water to boil on a traditional stove.  To brew, just pop in one of Nespresso’s premium coffee capsules, hit the size selector button (1oz, 2oz or 3oz) and the 9-bar pressure pump should produce a picture perfect cup of espresso.  The empty canisters are discarded into an internal respectable that holds up to 10 and the water tank can be easily removed and refilled.  

You can buy the Nespresso Pixie Espresso Maker for $249.95.  It includes 16 shots.

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Chances are if you cook for yourself you ain’t lazy.  However, attending to a pot of simmering soup or sauce to insure the ingredient are well integrated and don’t stick to the bottom can sometimes be an all day affair.  The Self Stirring Electric Pot automatically stirs your meal using a mini spatula integrated into the bottom of the pot that rotates and can be set to stir continuously or intermittently, allowing you to leave the confines of the kitchen.  The 3 1/4-quart pot is made from cast aluminum, includes a glass lid and can achieve a temperature range of 200º F to 375º F.

Hammacher has it for $99.95.

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Strainers, otherwise known as colanders, are more often than not a superfluous kitchen tool.  Their functionality is limited to just removing water from boiling pasta or washing fresh produce.

The Ventu, from the innovative folks at Quirky, is a serving bowl and strainer in one.  It’s crafted from brushed stainless steel and holds up to 20 cups of contents.  By pushing down, or pivoting one of the acacia wood handles, it causes the trap door to open and switches you from serving to straining function.  One the food has been strained you just lift the handle and return to serving mode, where upon salads can be tossed and sauces can be mixed.

They’re looking for 1700+ more committments, but if you jump in now it will cost you $49.99 as opposed to $54.99, that is if and when it officially goes on sale.

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Brita is so college.  So ditch the lame water filter and get hip with the MyWell water faucet.

Instead of retrofitting a filtering system to your faucet you replace the entire kit and kaboodle.  Okay, so it’s not the most practical piece of water drinking kit, especially seeing as it costs over $500, but if you’ve got the ducats to spend, have at it.

Mywell says that it uses a multi–stage water filter cartridge that reduces bacteria, the toxic chlorine, insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals as well as many other contaminants harmful to your health.  A built-in smart controller – a flashing LED light – indicates when the filter needs to be switched out.  Thanks to two levers you can opt for filtered or unfiltered water and a separate pipe insures that contaminants from the regular tap water aren’t transferred.  Each cartridge provides about 600 liters of filtered water.

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Maybe it’s something you despise or perhaps you’re just looking to add a touch of humor to your kitchen.  Either way these fridge magnets, which look like burned out cigarette butts, sometimes called “shorties”, are hilariously brilliant.

A pack of 3 is $15, which ain’t cheap, but worth it in our book if you like all things novel.  Or you could just believe the retailer when they tell you that it’s a “high quality item”.  Sold!

Via: Holycool

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Yeah, we’d have to agree that the Anatomical Sleeping Bag is, well, kind of creepy, but cool all at the same time.  We’re not quite sure why the picture on the box has a bubble coming out of the guys nose, but who are we to question science.  It measures 7 feet in length, so it should accommodate even the tallest of ‘man children’.  And it includes ‘the head’, which doubles as a pillow.

Provided you reside in Japan, you can pick it up for about $70 (6090 yen).

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You might wanna take a second to compose yourself and block out any idea that this device is intended for sprinkling soap shavings over your salad or pasta dish.  In fact, the designer views this conceptual product from an eco friendly perspective and hence the inspiration for the design.

You see, liquid soap requires much more storage space and thus requires a larger infrastructure for transporting the product to the consumer.  Not to mention the oil implications of liquid soap, which makes it much less Eco friendly.

The “Soap Flakes”, as it’s been dubbed, shaves small flakes of soap from the bar directly into your hand for easy lathering, hopefully comparable to that of liquid soap.

There are two version: one that adheres to the wall for hand washing and one that can be held directly in the hand like a pepper mill grinder. While the latter is much more self explanatory in operation, the other is not.  As you place your hand under the dispenser, much like a soap dispenser in a public restroom, you push the lever which activates the grinder.

The design is a little out there, but we’d love to see a version that allows you to combine your used small bars of soap – the ones that are almost paper thin – such that you can draw out every last shred of cleansing power.

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The joys of interior design lose their appeal as soon as your setup gets old.  The DreiX shelving however, let’s you rearrange the position of your shelves for time to come thanks to it’s rotating wall mount.

The three cubby holds are attached to two metal arms which are subsequently attached to an axis that mounts to your wall.  Unfortunately, for us it’s a one off and doesn’t appear to be for sale.  But who knows, like many gadgets that we’ve seen in the past, this one might garner enough popularity to become available for mass consumption.

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It’s mere opinion that reds go bad after 5-7 days and white 3 days.  But whatever expiration date you subscribe to it’s not easy to remember when you corked your wine.  That is until now.  This wine stop features a set of rotary dials that let you key in the date of opening.  It’s both cool looking and practical, that is assuming of course you can’t finish a bottle in one night.

Sorry, no word on when and if it will be available for purchase.

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Drunk and lose your house keys and you won’t be able to gain entry into your abode.  Or perhaps you’re so trashed you can’t insert said key into said key hole.

Enter the Digital Deadbolt lock.  Not only does it feature a keypad that accepts codes ranging from 3-20 characters long, but includes a key fob system.  Just swipe the included fob past the sensor and the door will unlock.  Each key fob is unique, so in the event one is lost it can be deactivated from the system.

Not only is this thing supposed to be tough as nails strong, but it can lock your door automatically after exit, insuring that your stuff is always safe and secure.  4 AA batteries are required for operation (included) and should last about a year. What happens when they die is a bit unknown, but presumably you’re locked out, or the door unlocks all together (update: there is a back up 9V battery, which hopefully provides enough time to replace the main batteries).

Installation requires a simple Philips head screw driver and cost is a reasonable $280.

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There’s a certain category of small gadgets that, while unglamourous, fix some pretty glaring problems in your everyday life that you didn’t really know you had to begin with. The Silicone Oven Shield is one of those gadgets. It’s really, really simple — just install it on the the outer edge of your oven rack, and you can then pull the oven rack out with your bare hands, no mittens or dangerous food-grabbing required. They’ll stay cold at up to 450 degrees, and you’ll never be nervous pulling stuff out of the oven again. They’re available now for $9.98.

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