Working in an office comes with its share of ups and downs. On the positive side, we get to work with a variety of people who can fuel our creativity and keep us motivated. The downside to that space-sharing, of course, is that not all of us are on the same mental schedule. This weird-looking helmet might just help you escape the noise of your officemates when you need to remove yourself from the din for a while.

The design comes from the creative minds at Hochu Rayu, who call it the Helmfon. The designers envision this bubble-headed haven as a portable fiberglass and polyethylene foam privacy booth. Inside, not only is the noise from your surroundings eliminated; the interior headphones can also pipe in your favorite music or relaxing sounds.

In fact, there’s even enough space on the inside to keep your smartphone nearby for conducting important Skype conversations or watching videos in peace. Thanks to an integrated system board, there’s even the possibility of adding custom functions to the helmet in the future.

The designers even envision the helmet coming in a variety of colors and special designs. You’d have to work in a very special kind of environment to feel comfortable wearing a giant Minion head to escape your coworkers’ noise all day.

As cool as this idea is for a workplace productivity tool, it could easily be adapted to help those with sensory issues adapt to and thrive in their environments. Shutting out audio and visual stimulation can help the person with sensory processing issues “reset” his or her brain and emerge calmer and ready to return to their day.

The post Business Bobble Head Blocks Unwanted Office Noises first appeared on Gajitz.

Meticulously modeled after the stylized heads of hair that one can attach to LEGO figures, this 3D-printed helmet makes you look like an action toy while you ride your bike around town.

The design and innovation firm MOEF created this prototype, basing everything from its size and shape to its color on the toy figure that inspired it.

The idea, in part, is to raise awareness about riding without a helmet, which 44% of children do – perhaps for kids and adults alike this kind of design an inspire more safe biking practices.

The scaled-up version has the same bowl-cut while an attached safety strap turns it into functional protective gear. Currently a prototype, one hopes LEGO might take a look and decide there is a market for these.

The post Helmet Hair: LEGO Figure-Style Bike Cap for Human Riders first appeared on Gajitz.

Just in time to hit the pre-holiday purchasing rush, Marty McFly’s famous footwear from Back to the Future will be available to buy starting at the end of November. The HyperAdapt 1.0 is going to carry a high price tag (yet unannounced), but heck, it will lace itself, too.

Each shoe has a cable system using fishing line and a pressure sensor – when you put in, the cable tightens based on an algorithmic pressures equation. This can be further adjusted via buttons in the tongue.

And yes, it takes power, so LEDs in the heel light up when loosening or tightening but also as a low-battery warning. A single charge will take a few hours but last weeks and can be achieved through a clip-on charger (like the Apple Watch).

So why does it still have laces? Those are just for the visuals – they loosen and tighten but just reflect the hidden mechanism doing the actual loosening and tightening below. Replicas and props have been released before, but these are the real deal: they will work, even if they cost a pretty penny.

The post For Sale: Nike’s Back-to-the-Futuristic Self-Lacing Shoes first appeared on Gajitz.

Breaking the world record for the highest-capacity SDXC card in the world, this design by Western Digital’s SanDisk comes just 16 years after the company shocked the world with a 64-megabyte version with 1/16,384th the storage capacity (and two years after their 512 GB one).

There is a lot of talk about Moore’s Law slowing down, but this prototype shows that there are still limits to be pushed. The disk is not commercially available yet, but SanDisk sees the need for more storage in the face of 4K and 8K footage plus 360-degree video and virtual reality cinematography.

Of course, when it does come out it will no doubt be expensive and somewhat slow – you sacrifice cost and speed advantages the higher you go – but for most of us, well, our whole digital lives could probably fit on this disk.

The post New 1 Terabyte SD Card: Record-Breaking Storage Capacity first appeared on Gajitz.

Pick your toppings, press a button, swipe your card and and receive a fresh-baked pizza from an ATM machine in a matter of minutes.

While brand new to the United States, this novel device has been around for years in Europe.  “The Pizza ATM is not a prototype, it has history. It is the single most dependable, most profitable, and innovative machine of its kind. It is the fruit of many years of research and continued innovation. It has been successfully operating for 14 years and is providing long lasting reliability.” The machine takes the pizza they select from a refrigerated compartment and lifts it into a convection oven.

Naturally, its inventors wanted to put it in the most likely-to-be-used spot when migrating the machine to America, and thus selected a college campus for the first deployment. “Xavier University is winning the hearts of campus pizza lovers with a recent addition to a residence hall. The university put a Pizza ATM in Fenwick Place that serves up a fresh, restaurant-quality pizza in minutes. The bonus: it’s open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” At $9 a slice this is sure to be a hot commodity, comparable in cost to a delivery pie plus tip (and without the waiting time).

The post America’s First ‘Pizza ATM’ Delivered to College Campus first appeared on Gajitz.