There are some people of means who are desperate for everyone to know they are people of means.

They (men and women) wear gold chains to adorn their leathery necks. They (men and women) wear earrings that sparkle like the eyes of an orgiastic llama. And they (men and women) have the undoubtedly enterprising Austrian jewelry designer Peter Aloisson to make gadgets that might remind lesser beings of trinkets from the artist formerly known as Saddam Hussein.

The latest of Mr. Aloisson’s creations is a $2.5 million iPhone. May I quote some of the forbiddingly florid language from Mr. Aloisson’s alluring Web site: “Made of solid 18-carat yellow gold, white gold, and rose gold. A fabulous combination. The white gold line is encrusted with a total of 138 brilliant cut diamonds of the best quality.”

(Credit: aloisson.com)

But wait, this touching work of art has a unique feature. No, it does not polish your shoes while you talk on the phone. And no, it doesn’t have a built-in vibrator to massage your ear. It does, however, have a “home button” that carries a rare 6.6-carat diamond.

The Web site gushes that this button is “integrated in the design, as if this diamond has been made for ‘taking you home.’” In order to make you understand that this phone is probably not for you, Mr. Aloisson has dubbed the device the “Apple iPhone 3G Kings Button.”

I accept that many things are not for me. A Bentley, for example. When I see one floating down the street, I think to myself: “Hmm, well, the driver’s dyed his hair out of a bottle, but that’s a tastefully designed vehicle.”

However, when I look at the iPhone 3G Kings Button, I think: “Wears shoes from a crocodile, smiles like a reptile, and makes love like a cockroach. Oh, and dons Aramis cologne.”

Who knows why I think this? Taste is a highly subjective thing. And you might think that Mr. Aloisson was having an off-day when he designed this homage to catatonia.

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Originally posted at Technically Incorrect

Flickr member Redbeard Math Pirate came across this collection of extremely hard to find Atari 2600 games. See if you can recognize any of them:

For some reason I can’t any find these in my closet between my copies of Pitfall and Adventure. I swear I nearly wore out my paddle controllers playing Zardoz. There’s nothing quite like Sean Connery in a tiny pixelated red Speedo – an image now burned into my memory forever.

Here I was thinking that was the only cheeseburger-shaped household appliance was the telephone from Juno. I guess I was wrong.

Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce, dirty desktops do upset us! Now you can keep your workspace neat and tidy with this mini cheeseburger vacuum, perfect for picking up dust, dirt and crumbs from all those Fruit Loops you’ve been munching out of the box. And that silver stuff left over from scratching those lottery tickets.

Just don’t try to take a bite out of the burger-vac when you’re hungry. I know you want to, but don’t. I already tried, and it’ll only break your teeth.

Available from FredFlare for $20 (USD).

You can grab these DIY paper cut-out Mario, Piranha Plants, question mark blocks and a variety of tasty mushrooms over at CubeeCraft – where everyone has a square head.

[via Flickr]

The Eyeball sounds great, but it looks more like a loose leaf tea strainer than a Webcam.

(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET)

Webcams aren’t the first product to spring to mind when you think of Blue Microphones. The company has a solid reputation in the pro audio world for making …

The Audiophiliac’s primary mission is turning readers on to high-quality audio products and great music, but today, it’s more about super lo-fi.

Google’s YouTube has loads of wacky videos on how to make cheap speakers. Check out my favorite so far, “How to Create a High-Def speaker …

Originally posted at The Audiophiliac

Lowest price ever on a 1.5TB drive.

(Credit: Seagate)

Holy massive storage, Batman! I thought a 1-terabyte external drive for $99 was a killer deal, but Dell is offering a 1.5TB Seagate FreeAgent USB drive for $112.49. No rebates, free shipping, smokin’ bargain.

To get that price, …

Originally posted at The Cheapskate

No matter how beautiful (or in this case, large) a gaming console, it an almost always be improved upon in some way. In this particular case, the marriage of two classics has produced one harmonious construction that provides everything you need to get your Dreamcast on… and it’s all packaged up like an iMac.

The iCast is a Sega Dreamcast combined with an iMac (with the CRT screen converted to LCD). Plug in the controllers on the front of the machine and you’re good to go for a little Jet Grind Radio or Rez. And look, even the controller matches.

Not impressed yet? You can see the iCast in action for yourself in the video below.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[cgcc via CrunchGear]

Some people go in for a regular ol’ security system, the kind with panels and codes and alarms. And you could do that, sure. Or, you could put together some real home security: a paintball turret.

It took two years to build this bad boy, and the finished product can fire up to 34 balls per second. Per second. Also? It’s portable. You can carry it in a backpack and wreak utter havoc. Or, just admire it on the Internet. That’s probably safer.

Want to build your own? The process is well-documented for paintball-loving DIY enthusiasts everywhere.

[Inventgeek via hackaday]

(Credit: Seer Technology)

Ahoy, GPS-stranded motorist. Stop banging the dashboard, and consider this timely reincarnation of dead reckoning to help you find your way out of “GPS-denied environments,” or at least alert others to where you can be found.

Seer Technology is offering a miniature, self-contained, electronic navigation unit called NaviSeer that mixes GPS and DR in a complex gumbo of hardware and proprietary algorithms to deliver user location in real time.

It does this by blending the output from three gyros, three accelerometers (one at each axis,) a magnetometer, and a baro altimeter, and then running it through a Kalman filter.

The result: coordinates accurate to within less than a yard, according to Seer. And no, it “does not require sensors to be worn on the legs or feet.”

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Originally posted at Military Tech