The CD-ROM drive was king for quite a while, but it seems like more and more they just kind of hang around in our laptops, taking up space. This brilliant design from Taewon Hwang makes use of the CD drive once again by storing a flat-pack mouse in it. The mouse is full size and comes with an integrated USB dongle, all in a CD-sized package.

The design, an entry in the 2012 iF Design Talents competition, is only a concept – but it’s an incredibly impressive one. The mouse starts out flat but pops out, origami-style, into a full-size optical mouse. When you’re done using it, it unfolds right back into its CD shape and you stash it in the CD drive again.

This mouse, if it ever makes it to store shelves, would fix once and for all the dilemma that laptop users have been facing for years: is it better to use that stupid integrated trackpad or carry along a mouse in the laptop bag? The Flat CD Mouse would make that question obsolete – at least for people whose laptops still have CD drives.

The post Transforming Flat-Pack Mouse Lives in Your Laptop CD Drive first appeared on Gajitz.

Sleep deprivation will do all sorts of terrible things to you – things like decreasing your attention span, making you cranky, and even causing you to gain weight. Obviously, the best remedy is to get your recommended seven to nine hours of sleep every night, but not all of us have time for that…especially those of us whose job it is to comb the interwebs looking for interesting stories about technology and science.

The Vertical Bed is a solution (albeit a strange and kind of crazy one) for people who just can’t seem to get through the day without a nap. It is a nap contraption that lets you sleep standing up on a city street, supported by a subway grate and sturdy armature.

The armature supports the user’s body weight and attaches to the ventilation grates in the sidewalk to keep the user upright. Light-dampening sunglasses and noise-canceling headphones help the napper block out the world’s distractions to get a little public shuteye. When nap time is over, all of the pieces fit neatly into the included briefcase and the sleepy business person can go back to the office refreshed. You get the benefit of a power nap without even having to sneak a blanket and pillow into the little space beneath your desk…though you may have some ‘splaining to do if your boss happens to walk past your napping body on the street.

The post Power Napping: Catch a Daytime Nap On Any Street Corner first appeared on Gajitz.