TAYBLES tap into our nostalgia for cassette tapes, a love of handcrafted wood furniture and a functional desire to have mood lighting close at hand.

The Los Angeles company creates wooden tables, each shaped like a tape and sealed with clear epoxy. LED lights tucked into the pair of central holes add light and color to the room.

The ‘tape’ part of the cassette turns out to conceal a secret, too: storage space for books, gadgets or, well, tapes, situated in the center of the empty table.

The biggest difference between models (besides the great variety of woods and their associated hues) is, of course, the label, which can be customized to feature your favorite tunes, a hand-written list of songs or whatever you desire.

Minimalist metal supports provide a likewise-vintage and non-distracting structural system to keep your tape table floating on air.

The post Mixtape Coffee Tables Remix Retro Nostalgia & Vintage Furniture first appeared on Gajitz.

Bringing the weather right to your tabletop, this incredible box simulates sunrise, sunset, clouds, rain and even thunderstorms based on real forecasts, letting you see expected conditions in a dazzling new way.

Designed by Ken Kawamoto, the Tempescope puts a world’s worth of weather right in front of you, downloading details from the internet then recreating those effects inside a clear plastic box, including sunshine, fog or even the pulsing illumination of a lightning storm (as seen in the video below).

The project is open source and interested parties are welcome to download the design schematics in order to create their own, or can wait for a crowdfunding campaign later this year to buy a unit instead. The deployment is also versatile – you can select your own city and time delay, reflecting either current conditions outside or near-future forecasts for wherever you want (letting you keep in touch with weather at home or in your favorite city).

The post Temposcope: Desktop Device Recreates Weather Forecast first appeared on Gajitz.

Drawing somewhat abstractly on the work of Albert Einstein, this faux-folding fabric features a warped grid that looks a lot like conventional attempts to represent space-time complexities in two-dimensional formats.

Designed by Japanese studio A.P.Works, the illusion is complete when a plate, fork, knife and (optional) spoon are set in their respective places, appearing to press down on the surface grid the way celestial bodies distort the universe as we know it.

Silkscreen on twill, blue on white or the reverse (sorry, no black and gold), these are a great introduction to astrophysics for kids but also a swell idea for anyone cosmologically-inclined – one must prepare, however, to have them become outdated in the next great paradigm shift in science.

The post Fabric of Space-Time: Placemats Inspired by Relativity first appeared on Gajitz.

Using magnetic fields to hover a small LED disk, this little flying saucer lamp lights up when you slide the disk into place, then dims when you remove it. Functional for sure, the real draw of this design is probably in the wow-factor – impress your guests with science bordering on magic.

The LUNALUXX lamp by Elivatix is sleek and minimal, a curved steel bar connecting the white shade piece above and the lamp base below, but the real magic lies in between – current pulsing through the system at 1,000 times per second to keep the disk in place and lit. You can poke and prod the disk and it will return to its default position in midair unless dislodged manually by physically grabbing and removing it.

From the designers: “It is truly the first of its kind featuring a minimalistic design, generating a smooth atmospheric light with a futuristic touch.
 By combining both magnetic suspension and remote-phosphor lightning technologies, a light emitting disc is freely suspended in mid air!”

More on the technology: “The design also uses remote phosphor technology to administer its light through two LEDs. In the base of the lamp, a blue LED shines up onto the LED disk, which is layered with phosphor. When the beam hits the layer on the disk, the blue light is absorbed and the disk radiates white. This twofold technology allows for a high energy efficiency, with the blue LED consuming only 2-3 watts of power, whilst the LED disk seems to glow with 15-20 watts of light.”

The post Maglev Lamp: Magnetic Floating LED Disc Activates Light first appeared on Gajitz.

The best part of waking up is usually not actually have to, but a close second may be: rising to the rousing smell of a freshly-brewed cup of coffee sitting right next to your bed.

A combination alarm clock and coffee maker, The Barisieur by Joshua Renouf uses steel balls to generate both sound (as they move) and heat (through induction), helping create your fresh hot drink and wake you at the same time.

A small refrigeration unit keeps the milk cool overnight as well, though an non-dairy alternative might make the design a bit more cost-effective.

A nighttime ritual of preparation is required, once that hopefully helps get you ready to go to bed in the first place, but once you have the beans, sugar and milk in place, the rest takes care of itself, and by the time you find yourself groggily reaching to turn it off you will find a coffee in your hand.

The post Coffee-Making Alarm Clock: Wake Up with a Fresh-Brewed Cup first appeared on Gajitz.