Dedicated to inspiring designers, inventors & the creative spirit in all of us.

Dahon has debuted an ingenious gadget for bicycle riders at this year’s Eurobike Show. The Biologic FreeCharge, a kinetic powered bicycle adapter, harnesses the energy created as your wheels turn while you ride. This is a means to an end for diehard cyclists who travel great distances and want to avoid having to charge GPS, cell phone or electronics at hotels or public places after a long day’s ride. Available in 2010.

You are probably gazing at your screen thinking this is the next Apple product. You think this is a pre-pre-release image, leaked out to verify the latest rumor. Well, this just happens to be a TV tuner plug-in for your iPod Touch or PC. The Seg Clip, from Japan, for Japan, is due to come out later this month, in Japan. I hope this makes its way across the pond because it seems to be a cool idea for a low price of $70.

Apple has dominated the multimedia market with laptops, phones and MP3 players so much that they have opened the doors to a lot of new products and accessories, many of which are carriers, cases and applications. But once you have that protective cover, you buy that favorite song and and want to share that video, where do you go? What do you do to take your media to the next level? Here are two well designed, innovative devices that do just that. 

For the video portion, I love this Pico Projector design. With 12 lumens, up to 60” image projection, 1 GB flash drive and being pocket sized to boot, this is the ultimate iPod accessory right now, as far as I am concerned. It seems to be the perfect accessory to the iPod Touch and iPhone for viewing slideshows and movies. So, if this is the bees knees for watching video from your iPod, what about listening to it?

PodXtreme claims that they have the boost to boast. This lithium battery-operated gadget can produce a sound from your iPod like no other. The speaker charges via USB connection and operates the same way as a quality sub-woofer. Ideally, you could plug in and pound out some loud beats for all to hear, virtually a 21st century boom box.

With the Apple brand designing so many gadgets for the i generation who want to keep their media to themselves, it is nice to see some crowd-pleasing accessories like these. Sharing your video and audio has become easier, cheaper and more accessible to the masses more recently. These two gadgets are good examples of that.

These ThumbTacks by StitchEasy are an ergonomic delight for iPod Touch owners looking to upgrade their device. The ergonomics of the common thumbtack have been applied to this plug-in accessory that adds the microphone feature. Using the shape of the thumbtack is like using the handle of a gallon milk jug, the cap of a 20-ounce beverage, or the ridges on the side of a quarter. By making the form familiar, users are not intimidated by unfamiliar shapes. Priced at about $13, they come in a variety of colors, just like office thumbtacks.

There is a lot of hype about the sleek new design of the iPod Shuffle. People are eating up the re-design, paying much respect to the size with little regard to the true benefits that have been incorporated with the new speaking feature.

The iPod Shuffle is being drooled over for all of the wrong reasons. The ADA-friendly music device has bridged the gap between the visually impaired and the audio aficionado. Never mind how the speaking feature can be used for the blind, say design blog authors, look how small it is!

Bloggers and gadget geeks are abuzz because the Shuffle tells you what you’re listening to in a cool robot voice. But, have you heard that if you use a PC to load music, you get the lesser of cool robot voices (think Marge Simpson’s sisters) telling you what track and artist you are listening to? No, but you have heard many times over about how it is the size of a house key.

There is no doubt that a bunch of people are going to race out and buy this device blindly, paying no mind to the new features other than they are new, it’s Apple. There are people who will have to have this, using it as nothing more than an accessory or as a status symbol for coolness.

This design’s best achievement, making music more accessible to the blind or visually impaired, is what should be hyped by the press. The fact that the display-less mp3 player can be controlled using a toggle on the wire of the ear buds is where it’s at.

News for all of you Apple-loving design bloggers: the smaller a gadget gets does not gauge how cool it is. Look a little deeper, think a little harder. A lot of what is designed goes further than just size.