Want an iPad but don’t have the $499+ to spend on one? Don’t worry if you don’t because I certainly can’t afford one. For all of us less-than-rich folks, we might be able to enjoy something similar.. at a significantly lower price. The PixelPad is a new product being offered at a much lower price compared to the iPad. People won’t have to break the bank because of their need for shiny, new electronics. Instead, designers and developers can purchase this handy tool in packages starting at $24.00, 49.00 and $99.00. All include at least 1 pad, 1 refill, 1 Sharpie marker and a few other pens ready for sketching….

You thought the way the Solar Pebble slapped the sun around was pretty cool, right? Right? Here’s another great way we mancreatures are bringing the sun to its knees as a sustainable energy source. That is, sustainable until the sun explodes in like 5 billion years. But that’s irrelevant. Until then, we have the Sundolier! ‘Bah! I’ve seen this before,’ you say. You would. And, granted, from these photos, the Sundolier would appear at first to be a fairly typical skylight. But let’s not get our lines crossed here – first of all, this thing’s a freaking robot that sits on your roof. …Yeah,…

Continuing today’s apparent theme of excess, we have the Tribulb. It’s an ordinary LED lightbulb. That you plug in three times. How manly. You could call this design ‘versatile’, I guess, if nonsensically so. It looks really awesome in all sorts of cool setups (obligatory video below). Though, while granted these are LED lightbulbs, this probably isn’t the greenest or most sustainable use of a designer’s time. Could have been designing, like, a lightbulb that waters your plants or something. In any case, gone are the days of plugging something once – that isn’t nearly phallic…

We are at war! At war with simplexity — this is where modern day devices are experiencing an identity crisis over their function and form. Gadgets these days are all over the spectrum as far as complexity and simplicity are concerned, and we can’t figure it out, the people that make them can’t figure it, and even the gadgets themselves can’t figure it out. It’s a confusing situation. But let’s start at the beginning. Tools, as we all know, started off as simple machines. Imagine a hammer or a wheel — they served, in majority of cases, a single use: to bash things in or to roll things on. These tools…

If you love creepy crawlies, you’ll love Putrefashion. It’s a bangle-like bracelet that allows living insects to crawl and live within. The bracelet is designed with plastic materials, and it has airholes that allow the insects to breath while also enabling to move around and crawl — likely freaking out anyone around you in the process. In this case, its creator prefers to use mealworms, but you could put whatever you want inside, if it fits. Want to have one of these bracelets for your own? You’ll need a laser cutter, screwdriver, and a lot of patience. It’s possible though — the instructions…

Not to come off as a robotics nut, but I’m not letting this one get away and sleeping comfortably tonight. I’m just not. This is amazing, much to my own chagrin. This robot knows how to draw. And I don’t mean it’s a glorified printer – it actually knows how to draw. Patrick Tesset and Frederic Fol have been developing the Aikon Project over the last six years, the aim of which is to give a robot the soul of an artist – complete with style, interpretation, and aesthetic judgment. The more Aikon II draws, the more it learns, and the more it can artistically extrapolate.
 And the more it can eventually…

Offering the promise of a promise, Adobe next month will formally introduce its next-generation of creative software products, Adobe Creative Suite 5. The routinely expensive software suite will get its first public demo on Monday, April 12, 2010. What do we know about CS5? …

This is the South Korea Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo, designed as a giant display for the Han-geul characters from the Korean alphabet. The whole thing looks fantastic, and post-show the organizers plan to sell each of the 25,000 panels individually to raise cash for a foundation advocating minority and multiculturalism in Korea….

Students at UT Delft in the Netherlands have done something completely inexplicable. They have built a bus. And what a bus it is. Featuring an all-carbon-fiber kit, a lowered chassis, twin 800hp electric engines, and not one, not two, not twelve, but sixteen gull wing doors, this bus looks more like a collaboration between Batman and P. Diddy. …

Unicycles have a history of looking silly. That’s probably because they’re fundamentally so. But this… this… I… I almost have to excuse myself to go weep. This no-nonsense exercise in TOTALLY AWESOME THINGS THAT RULE is the brainchild of designer Liam Ferguson. And by Thor’s hammer, what a brainchild. …