Light Fingers

by Ami Kealoha

For your next rave (or early 90s party making fun of raves), this glove-like device features five different colored beams of light, a black light, and strobe light. Twenty different pre-programmed light show patterns make entertainment effortless or hackers can mod it to sync with Pink Floyd's The Wall. Light Fingers are battery operated and cost $20 from What on Earth.

Matthew Huber

by Ami Kealoha

Whether mobile phones or silver instruments that look like horror film props, objects through New York-based photographer Matthew Huber's lens pop off the page in sharp, vivid detail. His work's clean, direct visual language has earned him commercial clients like Out, Nylon, GMC, Real Simple, and Metropolitan Home, but Huber's personal work—totally unique images rife with irony and metaphor—are where his style comes to life. Though some pieces, like flattened musical instruments (bought on ebay, flattened at a friend's sheet metal factory) and a goldfish submerged in a champagne glass do get some digital manipulation, Huber says most of his work happens on film and that, as much as he pre-visualizes images, he leaves room for error during a shoot. His martini glass series, for example, involved an elaborate set up with a bungee cord-rigged piece of plexiglass that triggered a strobe flash, requiring a completely dark room. The upshot ranges from the ordered chaos of liquid that appears to float above glasses to shattered stems resulting from the tricky shoot—Huber broke 11 glasses in all. Like the glassware series, much of Huber's portfolio includes work that either makes the mundane fantastic or the other way around. For the recent never before shown series that takes sex toys as its subject (after the jump), Huber applied his near-clinical image-making process to taboo items that are usually secreted away. Similarly, an ongoing collaborative project that the photographer has been working on since 2001 with his girlfriend, Patricia Korth-Mcdonnell, a writer, is a survey of everyday women's breasts with accompanying anecdotal interviews. Moving fluidly between the commercial and the art worlds, Huber's considerable skill as a photographer is evident in his ability to communicate visually with precision—as well as in the stunning effects created with lighting, composition, sheet metal presses, bungee cords, etc.

Foneros

by Joel Niedfeldt

The spanish company Fon, billing itself as the largest WiFi community in the world, is poised to make a dramatic entrance to New York City this month. Their "free WiFi for all who contribute" manifesto found a comrade in technologist and former candidate for NYC Public Advocate Andrew Rasiej, who ran on a free-WiFi-for-all ticket. Having lost that bid, Rasiej is now privately teaming up with Fon in an attempt to cover the City in a grid of "shared" access points. Rasiej and his fellow "Foneros," in a race to beat other cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco to the wireless utopia, are distributing 25,000 free Fon routers from their website starting this month. They are currently only available if you live in the East Village, but you can signup to get notified when they reach your neighborhood. That's good news for me, having just moved to the East Village and still reeling from the fact that all of my neighbors have secured their wireless networks, prohibiting my mooching. Also, unveiled earlier this week, a new router that includes a wireless Skype phone (pictured) adds a mobile component to the Fonero movement. ¡Libertad!

T-Book

by SummerSeventySix

For our last dispatch this week from British casualwear show To Be Confirmed, we're focusing on label T-Book.

The designs are the work of London-based Karen Leung, and are called T-Book because she started off using several t-shirts to tell a tale. Issue 7 comes out in time for Spring next year, and Karen's taking inspiration from an unusual source—onions—for the line. It's obvious when she explains that people pile on the layers in Autumn and Winter, and then when it gets warmer, they peel them off.

The cleverest piece was a t-shirt called Faceless Lovers (pictured), made up of two translucent layers (get it?). A sunglasses pattern printed on the bottom layer could only just be made out through the top layer. The shades are meant to catch tears, as were the special Onion Love tissue packs being handed out, plastered in the same delicious logo that pops up on other tees, cardigans and sweatshirts Karen has cooked up.

3G Bikes: The 3G Stepper

by Evan Orensten

The 3G Stepper is a cross between a bicycle and a StairMaster; it rides like a bicycle but is propelled by a vertical motion with your feet on two decks on either side of the frame. You stand up while riding, and your upper body gets as good a workout as your lower body does.

Arriving in stores in September 2006, the 3G Stepper will come in four models: Junior (for 5-8 year olds); Spyder (for 9-13 year olds); Diablo (8 speed); and the Hammer/Work It models in aluminum, also with 8 speeds. Prices will range from $199-$649. Full size images of the models after the jump

For more information on the 3G Stepper contact 3G Bikes.