If you’re a grilling enthusiast who can’t quite seem to master the finer points of the barbecue, or if you’re just learning to grill, this Bible of Barbecue has everything you need to get ready for summer cooking. Cookware company Tramonitina and ad agency JWT Brazil released the very unusual book to help enlighten would-be barbecue experts.

The book comes equipped with coal, a fire-starting page, a small fan to build the flames, a cutting board, salt for the meat, knife sharpener, apron, tray, and kitchen cloth. They are arranged like pages in a book that you remove one at a time in the order they will be used.

The book can only be used with all of its functional contents once, but the case and some of the contents can be kept forever. Judging from the promotional video, it looks like there may be instructional pages as well which stay in the book to provide guidance even after the charcoal has been smashed and the salt has been crumbled. Copies of the book were first sent to top chefs in Brazil but the company plans to sell it to the public in bookstores sometime in 2014.

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Public transportation is enough to make some people want to go home and never leave again. Buses – and particularly bus stops – are not the friendliest of places, but a cute marketing campaign for Duracell makes waiting for the bus a positively warm and fuzzy experience.

In Canada, in the middle of one of the coldest winters on record, Duracell installed heaters in some bus shelters. But there was a catch: in order to activate the heaters, bus stop patrons had to complete a circuit by connecting the two sides of the shelter. The shelter walls were too wide for one person to reach both sides – so people waiting at the stop had to cooperate.

In order to connect the two sides and activate the heaters, the folks in the bus shelter held hands. The circuit was complete and the bus waiters got to warm up – and maybe they managed to make a small human connection in the process. The campaign is intentionally a bit sappy, but the technology behind the bus stop warmers is certainly admirable – and very memorable.

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If we haven’t already, most of us will probably go through a few dozen MP3 players in our lifetime. Dropped, stepped on or just plain left in the cold, their convenience lends to their flimsiness. One brand in particular is notorious for it’s short lifespan (we won’t say any names.) While marketing their new MP3 player in New Zealand, Sony put a new spin on the durability factor.

They insisted that their new NWZ-W270 (try saying that five times fast) MP3 player was waterproof at its initial launch. This packaging proves they’re serious. Delivered submerged in a bottle of water, the Bottled Walkman is a marketing ploy created by Auckland advertising firm DraftFCB.

The Bottled Walkman is dispensed in vending machines located in specially selected locales like gyms. Its video ad puts an emphasis on fitness, and its pretty cool to see someone swimming laps while wearing earbuds.

The post Sony Proves Latest Gimmick With MP3 Player In Water Bottle first appeared on Gajitz.

As one of the worst winter storms in recorded history battered Canada in late 2013, Iceculture was purposely exposing themselves to thousands of pounds of ice in the name of their cold, cold art.

The ice truck above was once a 2005 Chevy Silverado before the body and cab were removed. Since the finished ice truck would weigh in at over 15,000 pounds, a reinforcing steel frame was installed. Then, Iceculture got to work cutting carefully-designed pieces of ice with a CNC machine.

The team used water to “weld” the pieces together. All told, three of the ice trucks were created: a prototype, a display model, and one that actually drives.

The ice truck was originally commissioned for an advertisement campaign for a tire brand. After the commercial was shot, the truck was disassembled and shipped back to Iceculture for another important project: setting a brand new Guinness world record. It was reassembled and driven for one mile, then left to melt over a period of 40 hours.

The post Ice Road Truck: 15K Pound Truck Made of Ice Really Drives first appeared on Gajitz.

Sony has filed a patent application that will take television to an entirely new, way creepier and more interactive, level in our homes. But the question is: do we really want that? We’ve developed technology to help us skip commercials, and most of us seem pretty happy with that. Sony, however, wants to take us in the other direction by feeding us unavoidable but “fun” advertisements in streaming media.

The patent application is quite broad and can apply to a number of advertising tactics. One of the most disturbing is a commercial that requires you to say the name of the company in the commercial in order to shorten the commercial’s airtime. In the above example, the viewer sees a short spot for McDonald’s and is asked to say “McDonald’s” out loud to reduce the time the advert is on the TV. It’s sort of like an obnoxious test to ensure that the audience is paying attention to the advertising.

The really interesting parts of the application, however, revolve around the possibility of making commercials into interactive games. In one example, a Burger King commercial asks the viewer to hurl a virtual pickle at the hamburger on screen in order to speed up the commercial. The viewer uses some sort of controller already found in the home and could possibly win points in the game which could be sent via text message. In fact, Sony wants to involve every gadget possible in this system, along with social networking sites for good measure.

While the interactive advertisements are interesting from a technological standpoint, they are sort of alarming from a consumer’s viewpoint. Do we really need more invasive ads, particularly ads that force us to show we’re paying attention to them? Making commercials into games seems like a dangerous pursuit, particularly where impressionable kids are involved.

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