No One Panic, but the Wheel May Have Just Been Reinvented

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I’ve covered a lot of Kickstarter projects on this site, as the crowd funding behemoth proves to be an infinite source for the latest, and most interesting, projects currently out there.

But of all those Kickstarter projects, few have ever been so bold as a seemingly simple invention called the Shark Wheel, which claims to have reinvented the wheel.

It’s origin story is much humbler than its aspirations, as the story goes that one day creator David Patrick was playing around trying to get six pieces of interlocking cable to fit into a cube (which is apparently how eccentric geniuses entertain themselves), when he realized that upon dropping his created design, the shape he’d formed not only rolled, but rolled smoothly over a long stretch of ground.

As a lifelong skateboarder, David immediately realized the potential of this design, and modified it to create the Shark Wheel, a somewhat warped interpretation of the standard wheel that is designed to specifically reduce the amount of direct contact with the ground. Among other things, the benefits of that approach includes faster speed, better grip and control, and the ability to provide both of those features in wet or uneven terrain. In other words, by shifting the model of the traditional wheel slightly, it manages to provide the most desirable aspects of the regular skateboard wheel in a way that the old design cannot.

Now, the term skateboard wheel is being thrown around here, because that is the sole intention of this design’s function at the moment, as the Shark’s kickstarter campaign will net you 4 longboard wheels for a $50 donation.

While the inventor insists this design is not currently intended for use on an automobile or any other wheel dependent vehicle, it is nonetheless impressive that someone out there has managed to accomplish what was previously only referenced in terms of a joke and has actually improved the wheel, even if it is only in one specific capacity. It does go to show though that there is an infinite world of creative possibilities still to be explored, and, on its own, looks to be an impressive piece of design that any skateboarder should be intrigued by.

  

Keep in Touch, Without Needing Much, Thanks to the Good Night Lamp

With…well…every single bit of technology available to us, more than ever it is easier to stay in contact with one another, and know exactly what another person is up to. However, at times it’s a power that’s almost too great, as it feels like you can constantly be in touch with someone, and in their lives, to an intrusive degree, removing a great deal of charm from the entire idea.

Maybe that’s why I’m taken by an idea like the good night lamp. A new Kickstarter project, it’s a set of houses (big ones and small ones) that light up, and use WiFi connections to allow the user of the big house to turn their light on and off, causing the same action to the paired up smaller house. The idea is to provide a simple way for a user to alert a group of others as to their availability and location via the status of the light, and is marketed towards homesick family members, couples living apart, household members wanting a simple communication method for certain events (say dinner or bedtime), or really any situation where a people want an easy, fun way to keep in touch over any distance. There are even color coded housing options to know which of multiple users is making an interaction.

There are a million other ways to provide the same basic information that these houses do with tech most likely on your person right now. However, few of those devices are likely to do so with the personality of the good night lamp, and as Samuel L. Jackson mused in “Pulp Fiction”, personality goes a long way.

Though we Greatly Disagree on the Scenarios in Which to Eat a Pig