The TableDrum app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch transforms rhythmic tapping on just about any surface into real-time virtual drum sounds

With a few notable exceptions, the fine art of tabletop tapping has been a purely non-digital experience for most people. Now, iDevice users can turn their rhythmic creations into real-time drum sounds, courtesy of the TableDrum app from Sweden’s Dohi Entertainment. Rather than have virtual drummers tap out the beat on touchscreen icons, this app uses the device’s microphone to pick out individual sounds made by thrumping on different surfaces, and allows the user to assign them to the various parts of a drum kit.

Who doesn’t like to while away the odd moment or two drumming away on a table, desk or counter top? The Table Drum Augmented Audio application allows iOS device users to turn that acoustic finger pounding into digitized drum sounds, in real time. The developers say that just about any real world object can be used to generate the sounds needed to make up the four piece drum kit. Each virtual pad can be assigned one of 40 drum samples.

With the app active on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, you need to grab yourself some household, kitchen or office objects that happen to be lying around and place them within range of your device’s included (or external) microphone. The app recognizes the different sounds made by tapping each object with a pen, pencil or finger and each sound can then be assigned to one of the four drum pads on the screen – such as the top of an upturned coffee cup for the snare, the plastic casing of a computer mouse for the hi-hat or crash cymbal, the thud of a table top for bass drum, and so on.

"By altering sound through live interaction on an iOS device, TableDrum pushes the boundaries of table drumming" says Rasmus Larsson, Software Developer at Dohi Entertainment. "Users interact with objects in their surroundings, teaching the app their distinct drumming sounds, augmenting the input of up to four simultaneous sources into a complete drumming experience."

The TableDrum app comes supplied with a Classic Rock drum kit, but the library can be expanded to include samples from the Ethno and Jazz kit, and Electro and Glitch kit. As you can see from the following video demonstration, once the percussive objects have had drum samples assigned – you can turn your finger drumming into realistic rhythms:

The iPhone SLR Mount comes in either a Nikon F-mount or Canon EF-mount version, and allows iPhoneographers to utilize an SLR lens with the iPhone’s

There’s little doubt that when it comes to snapping spur-of-the-moment photos, nothing quite matches the always-ready convenience of the smartphone. Apple’s iPhone is second only in popularity to Nikon’s D90 for overall image uploads to Flickr, and takes the top three spots in the Cameraphone category. There are now a whole host of apps available that can help add numerous clever effects to the photos taken with an iPhone’s camera, and a growing number of hardware-based enhancements. If you find yourself yearning for a little more zoom than the Eye Scope offers, or the close-up goodness of the Fisheye and Macro/Wide Angle lens is just too small and fiddly for you, then perhaps what you need is an iPhone SLR Lens Mount.

The iPhone SLR Mount from Photojojo is essentially a phone case that acts as an adapter for either Nikon F-mount or Canon EF-mount lenses (although it’s not compatible with Canon EF-S or FD lenses). Placing your Apple smartphone into the tough but lightweight aluminum casing allows you to choose from your collection of telephoto, wide-angle, macro or fish-eye SLR lenses and use it with the iPhone’s camera.

It’s kind of a first step towards bringing the conceptual WVIL proposal to life. Of course, autofocus is not available, the absence of a mirror means that images will appear upside down, and there’s no supersonic dust reduction system so you’ll have to keep the focusing screen free of dirt and dust yourself – but if you want professional-looking depth of field effects, or the ability to bring a distant object into close focus or pop on a fish-eye lens for some wide angle fun, this could be your answer.

Naturally, there are a few other limitations to consider – including a possible loss of image brightness (which can be corrected using the aperture ring on older SLR lenses or via editing software if using newer ones) – but the iPhone SLR Mount certainly looks to be a step in the right direction. The solution comes supplied with a UV filter, includes strap loopholes to allow you to hang your iPhone/SLR lens mash-up from your neck, and it features a tripod attachment.

Photojojo says that iPhoneographers can expect the iPhone SLR Mount to be available from the middle of August at a cost of US$249, for either the Canon or the Nikon flavor.

It seems like the Japanese always have the coolest technology–in this case quite literally. The hip new way to stay cool in an increasingly energy-conscious Japan: cooling foam or gel spray-cans that go right on the skin and provide an instant cool down.

These cooling sprays apparently aren’t brand new, but a thing isn’t a “thing” until it goes mainstream in Japan, and this summer that’s what’s happening. City-dwellers are using the products to cool down on the subways or on the streets. Particularly cool: the foam-like spray that hardens quickly out of the can, so users can make cooling wristbands or neckbands to help keep their core temps under control.

Shopping on the go just got easier in South Korea. A new virtual store developed by Euro grocery giant Tesco for its line of South Korean Home Plus supermarkets lets customers browse store shelves for the products they want just as if they were in a physical store. But they’re not. They’re on a subway platform.

The virtual store has been a huge success among the 10,000 or so customers who have taken advantage of the service, which allows busy workaday South Koreans engaged in their daily commutes to optimize their time by shopping while they wait for the train. Tesco has simply plastered the walls of a subway station with visual recreations of grocery aisles. Each item has a QR code emblazoned on it. Snap that code with the Home Plus smartphone app, and it goes straight into the virtual shopping cart.

Customers can then check out via their smartphones as they step onto their morning trains. The groceries are delivered to their homes that evening at a specified time, saving office drones the added hassle of braving a crowded supermarket during the late-day rush.

This is not the first online grocery shopping scheme by a longshot, but it’s the first we’ve heard of that combines a virtual in-store experience with an online checkout and delivery system while also making the most out of those wasted morning minutes spent on the train platform. That’s good for both user and grocer alike. Users get the added value of a more efficient workday and an easier-to-acquire dinner. And just imagine the targeted advertising opportunities.

For those who’d rather be woken by a gentle breeze or the smell of coffee than a shrill alarm, Royal College of Art graduate Ki Hyun Kim has designed a clock that wakes users with the electrical appliance of their choice.

Alternative Alarm Clock is a combination of an alarm and an electric outlet which are common things in daily life and have a simple single function. It goes off on time users set and also supplies electric power through double sockets.

By putting together other products with it, this simple function does not gives opportunities to rebuild up fresh sorts of alarm to users but also allow many potential options stimulating different senses with ordinary electronic products around us.

Markus Kayser’s Solar Sinter project takes the desert’s two most abundant resources, sunlight and sand and puts them to work manufacturing glass objects. Kayser loads the sand into a solar-powered 3-D printer where it serves as the raw material for glass. In a process that’s fascinating to watch, concentrated sunlight replaces the laser typically found in 3D printers, melting sand (instead of resin) in patterns to form an abstract sculpture or, more usefully, a bowl.

Kayser tested the Solar Sinter for two weeks in the Sahara desert in May of this year; you can see the results in the video below. The project is currently on display at the Royal College of Arts in London.

This Japanese cooking pot converts the heat from a boiling pot of water to electricity that can charge your smartphone at the same time it cooks a delicious meal. The invention, inspired by footage of Japan’s earthquake victims building fires to keep warm, could prove a boon after a natural disaster, when all you’d have to do to keep communication open would be to light a campfire.

The Hatsuden-Nabe thermo-electric cookpot contains strips of thermoelectric ceramics that use the difference in temperature between the bottom of the pot and the water boiling inside it to generate electricity. Using this method, the device takes between three and five hours to charge an iPhone–not much longer than using a crazy space-age AC charger.

In addition to helping victims of natural disasters and being useful for camping trips, the cookpot could provide citizens of developing countries with a method of charging mobile phones, even if electricity is spotty. The device went on sale this month in Japan for $300.

When your gadgets go to sleep, they tend to pulse peacefully. LEDs programmed to a soothing “breathing” waveform are to thank. You may ask yourself, why can’t my cufflinks do the same?

A new open source hardware project of Phil Torrone’s at Adafruit, the iCufflinks consist of a custom-machined aluminum power button, a simple circuit board programmed to pulse organically (a product of some clever reverse engineering), and a battery, which is good for 24 hours of elegance.

In true open-source form, you can download everything from the aluminum schematics to the code that controls the LED from GitHub.

The Wii U and its touchscreen controller

Nintendo took the wraps off its new Wii U console at E3 today, sporting a controller as unique as we’ve come to expect from the company that brought us the Wii and the DS. With a 6.2" touchscreen, dual-analog sticks, D-pad, four face buttons, four triggers, front-facing camera, microphone, and motion controls (gyroscope and accelerometer), it’s safe to say we’ll see some innovative game mechanics invented to make full use of this thing.

The graphics capabilities appear to be on par with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Games can be played with or without a TV, which will likely save countless domestic arguments across the globe, and the Wii U is backwards compatible with Wii software and accessories.

Confirmed titles include Smash Bros., New Super Mario Bros. Me, Lego City Stories, Tekken, Assassin’s Creed, Darksiders 2, Batman: Arkham City, Dirt, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Metro, Battlefield 3 and Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge.

The Wii U controller with stylus

The Wii U console

The ‘imaginary phone’ recognizes gestures and the position of keys on your phone so you can perform simple smart phone tasks without taking it out of your pocket

Taking on the idea that daily smartphone use can create automatic touch recall, just like touch typing on a keyboard, students at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, have created the "imaginary phone" concept that turns the palm of a hand into a smartphone touch interface. Using spatial memory built up while operating the physical device to remember gestures and the relative position of icons on the phone, users can perform simple smartphone tasks without even taking it out of your pocket.

The imaginary phone concept uses a depth-sensitive camera to detect hand gestures such as tapping and sliding, software to analyze the video, and a wireless radio to send the instructions back to the smartphone. Patrick Baudisch, professor of computer science at the Hasso Plattner Institute, and his colleagues believe that their concept could free users from physically retrieving a device to carry out the large number of "micro interactions" that users perform every day.

The imaginary phone "serves as a shortcut that frees users from the necessity to retrieve the actual physical device" says Baudisch. Unless the user is already wearing a Bluetooth headset, the concept probably won’t be much use for answering calls – unless you like yelling at your pocket – but Baudisch says the concept would be more useful for sending calls to voicemail or turning off an alarm, for example.

During the research project, a depth camera was affixed to a mounted rack and proved to accurately sync gestures with a local iPhone. Whilst the setup is far from flashy, it serves the basic idea that once the technology has been mastered, micro cameras can be fixed into clothing materials, such as a shirt button, or reading glasses.

The "imaginary" technology is similar to what we’ve seen with Skinput and NEC’s gesture control system, however it does eliminate the need for a projector and it doesn’t rely on learning new hand gestures.

The system does, however, rely on users remembering the position of icons on the phone’s display, so it will only be useful for commonly performed tasks – unless you’ve got a photographic memory. With that being said, it could definitely come in "handy" when you are driving or washing the dishes.

Watch the demo video below.