Filed under: Ask Engadget, Portable Audio

It’s true — hunting down a waterproof MP3 player is a cinch, but finding a decent pair of waterproof headphones to accompany said player can prove challenging. Have a look at Melinda’s question, and after you’re done providing your best advice, send over an inquiry of your own to ask at engadget dawt com.

“I am an almost-daily lap swimmer, but lately I have been suffering from “lap boredom.” I’ve been looking into the latest ways to take my MP3 player into the pool with me, and I need a set of waterproof headphones in order to do so. I’ve found waterproof earphones like H2O Audio and Aquatunes priced between $30 and $100, but I’ve also read many negative reviews. Before I spend this much money on waterproof ‘phones, I want to know what I am getting. What brand / model do you recommend?”

Climb on out of the kiddie pool and toss in your advice, swimmers. What ‘buds do you use to listen to music while submerged?

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Filed under: Household

Sure we’ve seen glorified dehumidifiers like this before, but we’re a sucker for any aquatic wonder which claims to solve the world’s drinking water shortage. The wall-mounted Watermill from Element Four is the latest “water from thin air” contraption and produces up to 3.2 gallons of water a day, pumped through a trusty ultraviolet sterilizer. But more importantly, it offers to hydrate your family of 6 for a mere thirty-five cents a day in power, not including whatever price Element Four decides to sell it for. Or you could just stick a bucket on your roof and be done with it — we hear it rains occasionally.

[Via Gadget Review]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Hard to say if this solution will be cheaper than the bordering-on-free LifeStraw, but a team at the University of South Australia has developed a low-cost method for removing bacteria and other contaminants from water “using tiny particles of pure silica coated with an active nano-material.” Professor Peter Majewski is pretty proud of the all new system, stating that it can “remove bacteria, chemicals, viruses and other contaminants from water much more effectively than conventional water purification methods.” Due to its ability to function sans additional energy and its low overall cost, the team is hoping to see the creation bring clean water to developing countries. The best part? It should be available within two years.

[Via Protein OS]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Yep, just like we’d heard, the Phoenix lander has identified water in a soil sample it collected in Mars earlier, and NASA’s extended the mission for another 90 days to go look for more. There’s no analysis of the ice yet, but it doesn’t look like there’s any organic materials in the sample, and it’ll take another three to four weeks before there’s any more data to reveal. Hopefully that means we’ll be packing up our silver go-go boots and taking off for our fabulous future lives on Mars in a month, but we’ll see how things go.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

It’s only fitting that the glorious news of water ice on Mars was broke over Twitter this evening, via the Mars Phoenix lander’s own first-person ramblings. Apparently Mars Phoenix was keeping an eye on some white patches it uncovered the other day, only to discover they’d disappeared today. According to the scientist folk over at NASA, that means those white patches must’ve been ice, which dissipated once uncovered. Now Mars Phoenix still has the considerable task of uncovering more ice and sampling it, but the mission is ahead of schedule and NASA has already identified a hard patch of ground it wants to dig into. Congrats to Mars Phoenix and all the fine folks at NASA, now be sure to watch out for the cave-dwelling little green men!

[Via Wired Science]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Continue reading Dean Kamen aims to clean water, generate electricity with Slingshot machine

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Filed under: Cellphones

We’ve seen quite a few prototype fuel-cell powered mobile devices, but Samsung’s upping the ante by predicting that we’ll all be running our phones on water by 2010. The company says it’s developed a method to generate hydrogen by exposing water to metal, but the details are a little shaky — we’re guessing it’s similar to the system used in the HydroPak generator, but it’s hard to tell. Still, we’ve got no reason to doubt Samsung’s engineers, who say the system currently provides about 10 hours of use, or about five days of average cell usage, and will eventually allow users to simply top off and go. That’s every traveler’s dream — let’s get this to market, Sammy.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Apparently, water is all the rage these days if you want to get a message seen. In Tokyo Bay Monster-fashion (sans holographic video monster), a designer named Julius Popp has created a system of displaying moving text and images using falling drops of water, thus creating a kind of virtual billboard that appears to be hovering in mid-air. The system — called AquaScript — works by utilizing magnet-valves which expel single drops of water on demand; proprietary software syncs the valves into a “freely definable bitmap-muster” which produces blocks of images with the falling liquid. Check the video after the break and see the wetworks in action.

Continue reading AquaScript paints words onto water

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We’ve seen our fair share of diminutive power generators, but rather than worrying with vibrations or hyperventilating, Millennium Cell and Horizon Fuel Cell have teamed up to deliver an iteration that’s water-activated. The pair has been working together on this technology for some time now, and apparently, it’s readying a beta that will be demonstrated at next year’s CES. The portable power generator incorporates a “unique water-activated cartridge system,” which is designed to quietly provide clean energy to consumer products in emergencies and when far, far away from an electrical outlet. Reportedly, the device will provide an AC socket alongside two USB connectors, an operating time of over 16-hours, infinite shelf-storage life and 400-watts of instant juice by just adding H2O. Regrettably, we still have no idea what this thing actually looks like, but considering that CES is less than two months away, we’ll soon be seeing what this $400 gizmo can do up close and in person.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!