Ashes to ashes

By Paul Best
June 2, 2005
The USB ashtray.

The USB ashtray.

USB ashtray, $US22

If you are going to puff away at the computer, then an ashtray that at least tries to make you visible from behind your toxic cloud has to be doing your lungs a favour. This car-shaped ashtray plugs into your computer's USB socket and draws smoke through a filter. It will also work on batteries.

Making waves

Jelly-fish 45 floating house, About $2.6 million

DREAMS of a cruisy life aboard a houseboat were never like this. Italian naval architect Giancarlo Zema's vision of living on and under water is the Jelly-fish 45. The floating structure stands 10 metres high (5.6 metres above sea level) and is 15 metres across with a spiral staircase linking five levels, accommodating study, bedrooms, kitchen, bathrooms and an observation deck three metres below the surface. There's room for six people: so if you all chip in, that's a shade more than $430,000 each, not including towing costs. Expected to go on sale by the end of the year.

In the news

TDK Professional Disc, $50

TDK'S rewritable blue-laser media is designed exclusively for Sony's XDCAM camcorders.

The professional disc system is particularly suited for electronic news gathering because it lets news crews review footage in the field as thumbnails as well as record in both a high and low resolution, which can be sent ahead to the studio for scripting. The disc (PD-RE23CN), which uses a blue-violet laser for recording and playback, can store 23.3GB (about five times the capacity of a regular DVD). The discs also have a proprietary hard coating to protect against scratches and smudges. Available later this month.


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