If you’ve got so much money that you’re just looking for new ways to waste it, Tobias Wong and Ju$t Another Rich Kid created the Gold Pill for you. It’s a pill dipped in gold and filled with 24-karat gold leaf. You’re supposed to eat it “to increase your self-worth.” That would be funny if it didn’t cost $425 for the joke. Supposedly an added benefit is that it will make your poop sparkle, but no one seems to have proven that part yet (and if you do, please don’t send us the pictures). This is either genius social commentary or a brilliant way to bilk rich people out of their money. If Wong’s name sounds familiar, it’s probably because he also created the $2,000 ccPhone.

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Tired of looking like a wuss on your Segway? Then put down your bike helmet and put on the Skull Helmet from Santiago Chopper. Owning anything from a place called Santiago Chopper is guaranteed to add +1 to your self esteem, but this brain bucket (that’s cool biker slang for “helmet”) will “scare the crap out of any onlookers while you’re enjoying your mid day [sic] cruise.” Also recommended for spastic World of Warcrafters who frequently “biff” or “auger” during extended gameplay sessions as this will prevent the ensuing “cranial disharmony.” And since this “lid” is only $149, you can afford to get one for your “betty” too.

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Dubai gets all the cool stuff. If it isn’t the world’s tallest hotel, or a building inspired by an iPod, it’s a hotel that is underwater. The Hydropolis Undersea Resort will open its doors this month, offering guests 220 rooms of scenic underwater views. Located in the Arabian Gulf, the hotel sits approximately 60 feet underwater, and has a roof that can open for special events. Obviously the roof is located above water, or that would a real problem for those inside.

Trains connect guests from dry land to the hotel, and while staying at the luxurious Hydropolis Undersea Resorts guests can shop in the mall, dine at island restaurants, or watch a movie in the state of the art theater. Best of all you can sleep sound knowing you are protected by the hotel’s very own missile defense system.

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Technology has come quite a long way since the original USB Missile Launcher was unveiled a year ago. It was so popular that biggie Microsoft wanted some USB desktop weapon action and has teamed up with Dream Cheeky for vastly improved missile launchers.

The first launcher is attacking the biggest flaw of the missile launching predecessor, the cord. The wireless USB missile launcher still work the same way via your PC, but this time there is a little more flexibility where it can be set up. The second launcher is where Microsoft got its hands dirty and addressed another concern with the original: covertness. Previously, it was tough to setup and aim the USB missile launcher without being discovered, but the included top-mounted webcam makes it all the easier. Both launchers should be making its official debut at CES in less than a month, much to the disappointment to the local dweeb in the cubicle farm.

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t’s easy to track the tidal movements of the ocean by looking at waves, but all of that energy is moved around under the surface of the water as well. Florida Atlantic University’s Center of Excellence in Ocean Energy Technology hopes to harness these underwater currents by placing 100-foot-in-diameter 20 kilowatt turbines that are anchored to the ocean floor along the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic. The system would be hooked up to floating generators and monitored by solar powered control buoys and small naval vessels.

The team at Florida Atlantic University will first test the waters with smaller prototype turbines to be deployed in February 2008. How much renewable energy the system will be able to generate is still up in the air, but the team hopes it will provide a significant amount to the state of Florida.

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So there you are, walking down the street, when you hear a voice in your head. And instead of the regular voice, the one that tells you that you want a cheeseburger or that you should buy more video games, this one is an unfamiliar one telling you to watch a new TV show. Are you going crazy? Perhaps, but that’s not the cause of this. Nope, it’s just a new form of advertising. Awesome!

Yes, there’s a new add in Soho in Manhattan that uses a speaker beaming down an “audio spotlight” that only you can hear, making it sound like it’s coming from inside your own head. Is nothing sacred? If advertisers can start beaming sound into our heads from afar, what’s next? In-dream advertising? I weep for the future.

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The Portable PC Theater probably won’t replace your PC, even if you do use it as a media center. It will come in handy, though, if you want a computer that you can tote around and take to show friends whatever hot video is going around the web. Instead of a monitor, it has a detachable projector up top that’s between stereo speakers, and all the cables tuck away inside the machine when you pack it up into its tight little package that’s only a few DVD cases wide.

It’s a cool concept, and a whole lot prettier than a projector taped to a DVD player. But it really works about the same. Designed by Jin Woo Han, the Portable PC Theater looks to be a concept for a Microsoft shuttle.

Outdoor types who are into extreme sports: listen up. You don’t have to rely on some wired-up coat that controls your MP3 player when there’s a helmet that can do it for you. Hammacher Schlemmer has a winter sports helmet with Bluetooth headphones built in. The transmitter wirelessly connects to an iPod sitting safely and snugly in your coat pocket while you whip down the trail listening to your favorite hard-rockin’ granola-lovin’ music mix.

Made of ABS plastic and polycarbonate foam for the liner, your noggin is protected should you slip and fall, and the classic black design tells everyone your helmet is cooler than theirs. Listening to music while having fun? Great idea. $300 for a helmet that keeps you from hearing someone screaming at you to get out of the way? Not a great idea.

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The race to build a working and dependable scramjet is happening all the world over — the United States, China, Australia and who knows who else all want one. DARPA’s HTV-3X, also known as Blackswift, is an unmanned scramjet-powered plane that may take to the skies as soon as 2012, hitting speeds of up to Mach 6. Why the rush? Planes flying with scramjet engines would be able to fly from New York to Tokyo in two hours. Certainly more enticing to the nations of the world, a missile using a scramjet would be able to hit any target anywhere on the globe in a handful of minutes.

The fastest jet at the moment is the SR-71 Blackbird, which tops out at Mach 3.3. Scramjet engines have been tested at speeds of anywhere between Mach 6 and Mach 15. This amount of crazy acceleration is possible by sucking in air through the front of the engine, squeezing it into the thin sleeves of the combustion chambers until it superheats and subsequently igniting the fuel and generating thrust.

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The Kanguru USB Duplicator allows you to plug in up to 24 thumb drives at once and dictate what information goes onto all of them. An LCD on the unit helps you to know what you’re doing, and you can map hotkeys so that you can copy and format drives with the touch of a button.

The Kanguru USB Duplicator might not seem so useful if you’ve only got a thumb drive or two (just copy and paste you lazy bum!), but these days flash drives are replacing pamphlets. If you’ve got a press release or a portfolio that requires not only text but large images as well, handing out cheap, low-capacity thumb drives is a lot easier than printing it all out.

The cost might make you wish you were duplicating cash, though: $3,000 for a Kanguru

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The Digital Veil is an art piece by Soomi Park that combines black and white flash animations with a wearable LCD screen. The wearer’s face is visible through the white parts of the animations and obscured by the black areas, so onlookers are presented with a distorted face that’s always shifting. The wearer can randomly change what images are displayed by making noise toward a pin microphone, as the animations are saved to different levels of volume.

The other model seen above to the right is wearing another piece of Soomi Park’s, a set of LED-tipped eyelash prosthetics that raise questions about the fetish-like obsession with large, or “bedroom,” eyes in Korea and the lengths women go to get them, including plastic surgery.

Soomi Park is a designer and student at International Design School of Advanced Studies in Seoul, South Korea.

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