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.

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.

If time is money, why waste it by continually smacking the snooze on your bedside alarm clock? This contraption will ensure you understand the literal cost of your morning laziness.

The Shredder Clock is just a concept, but it’s a pretty good idea, and a new spin on the notion that money is a great morning motivator. Other alarm clock inventions force you to feed them money before they’ll shut up, or automatically donate to charities that you hate until you get out of bed, but this one lets you see your money going to waste.

You could conceivably shred anything you find precious, from letters to pictures, so you wouldn’t have to stock it with Benjamins. Which actually might be a good idea, because as Mashable points out, willfully destroying legal tender is a federal crime. Is five more minutes of doze time really worth wasting a C-note and spending six months in prison?

This actually seems like a decent DIY project — it probably wouldn’t take much work to sync a paper shredder to your alarm clock. But it probably wouldn’t look this cool.

WOW-Keys is a full-sized desktop keyboard that can serve as an input device for an iPhone, or that can use an iPhone as a multi-touch input device for an attached computer

An iPhone has various input features that a standard desktop keyboard doesn’t, such as a reconfigurable touchscreen display. A full-sized keyboard, however, is much easier to type on than an iPhone. Perhaps it only makes sense, therefore, that Korea’s Omnio Technologies decided to combine the strengths of the two devices, in the form of its WOW-Keys keyboard with built-in iPhone dock.

WOW-Keys is capable of serving two main purposes.

If you want to work more easily with your phone, without transferring files to and from a computer, you put the keyboard in iPhone mode. In this configuration, the keyboard serves the phone – you use its keys in place of the phone’s tiny virtual keyboard, to input and manipulate text on the phone itself. Twelve dedicated hotkeys offer shortcuts for functions such as volume control, previous/next, and home.

With the flip of a button, however, you can switch WOW-Keys over to PC mode (although it also works with Macs). Now, the phone serves the keyboard. Its touchscreen display allows it to work as a multi-touch input device for the computer – among other things, it can function as a touchscreen track pad or numeric keypad.

Additionally, like other docking devices, the keyboard charges the phone’s battery and allows for syncing with the computer. It also works with the iPod touch.

A set of speakers from Logitech are given a new lease on life in the Glass Speakers from Whamodyne

If, like me, you’ve often wondered what would happen if you took a diamond drill to a glass vase and then fed in some audio – the answer we’ve been looking for takes the shape of the Glass Speakers from Whamodyne. A set of Logitech S120 computer speakers have been stripped apart, the components forced into a pair of glass vases, each of which have then been mounted at a slight tilt on a hand-made birch plywood base. They’re not as powerful or as slick as the precious-looking GLA-55 touch-sensitive speakers from Harman Kardon, but they are about a tenth of the price.

Inspired by the creations of designer Joey Roth, the Glass Speaker system has been constructed by making a circular hole in the bottom of two 7.5-inch long, 3.5-inch diameter glass vases with a diamond saw to accommodate a speaker each. To allow it to lie flush against the bottom of the upturned vase, the speaker is first mounted on a clear plastic disc and then fixed into position.

The system’s amplifier board and a 120V AC power transformer are placed ship-in-bottle style inside the right Glass Speaker housing, with a volume pot and on/off switch on the outside. An LED on the amp board lets you know when the unit in on. The total RMS output of the speakers is 2.3W, with a frequency response of 50Hz – 20kHz. Connection to a computer, MP3 player or mobile device is via a 3.5 mm stereo jack.

Amazing glass speakers are a wonder to watch and own

When you think of mind control, you know you dream of having furry cat ears of your own that you can control with your brainwaves. And why not? They’re adorable. They’re also the latest fashion in Japan.

The ears, created by a company called Neurowear, sit on top of a headband which incorporates sensors for brainwave reading. The ears spring to attention when you focus intently, and fold down when you relax your thoughts. Neurowear designed them to act like a natural body part.

We’ve seen a fair amount of brainwave-reading tech, but not much as cute as this. While you can’t compose a symphony with the ears, it is a step toward the sort of science that may help people whose health problems make communication difficult. But what’s next on the science fashion front? Maybe a set of matching whiskers.

The Typescreen is a separate keyboard for the iPad, that looks and works like an old-fashioned manual typewriter

One of the criticisms of iPads is that they’re not easy enough to type on. Yes, the virtual keyboard is there, but it’s a little on the small side, and lacks any kind of tactile feedback to let users know that their finger tappings have registered. While there are Bluetooth keyboards that iPadders can purchase, there’s now something else that offers what must certainly be the ultimate in tactile feedback – the manual typewriter-inspired Typescreen.

Users just slip their iPad or iPad 2 into the Typescreen’s carriage, then start hammering away on its old school keys. As with a manual typewriter, an individual arm will fly up with every keystroke. Whereas those arms would strike an ink-containing ribbon on a typewriter, on the Typescreen they actually press the individual keys on the iPad’s virtual keyboard – it would be interesting to know if the arms always connect with the right keys.

It’s definitely reminiscent of a little something we featured last June, called the USB Typewriter. The device can be ordered or made at home from plans, and is essentially a Frankensteined-up existing manual typewriter that is wired into the USB port of an iPad, smartphone or device of your choice. From there, it simply acts as a clickity-clackity retro keyboard.

The Typescreen is made by Britain’s Spinning Hat, and the company is only making a limited number of the devices. It’s priced at GBP 35, or about US$57.