Design

When I get into a submarine, I expect certain amenities like air conditioning, an iPod sound system, a screaming red paint job, and a plate of caviar. All except the caviar are available with the C-Explorer 5 from U-Boat Worx.

The $2.4 million C-Explorer 5 is being advertised as the "world's first subsea limousine." It holds five people, has an air conditioning system, can dive down to 1,000 feet, and sports a full 360-degree acrylic pressure hull. Cruising speed is 3 knots underwater.… Read more

You know that greasy bike chain sitting in the corner of your garage? Take a look at the below gallery of original art made from bicycle components, and you might think twice about getting rid of it.

Chicago-based bike parts company SRAM gave a group of handpicked artists a box each of 100 high-performance bicycle components and told them to craft something amazing. They responded with everything from a bike-centric interpretation of Vincent van Gogh's famous "Starry Night" to a robotic ostrich, a crawling "Sramantis," and your typical Mary Jane-wearing bike chain quadruped with a plastic baby head. … Read more

Every time I watch "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," I insult along with the French knight, sing Sir Robin's praises, and fervently wish I had a coconut to add horse-trotting sound effects to my life.

Design studio Original Content London has figured out how to bring the sounds of Monty Python-style equine movement to bicycles. Trotify is a wood kit that mounts on the front of a bike. As you pedal, the tire triggers Trotify to clomp a coconut up and down. You'll have to provide your own minstrel and squire. … Read more

Despite my small fear of bugs, there's just something creepily cute about these mechanical insects by Justin Gershenson-Gates.

Gates, a self-taught tinkerer, usually sells jewelry accented with watch gears on his Web site A Mechanical Mind, but people can't seem to get enough of his occasional arthropods made from watch parts, tiny lightbulbs, and other bits and bobs.

In an e-mail interview with Crave, Gates revealed the inspiration behind these creepy designs: a recent trip featuring a freak spider encounter -- "with a leg span of about 3 inches," he says -- prompted the idea. After returning from vacation, Gates created a set of spider legs with watch-winding stems and tacked on other watch parts to create his first spider. … Read more

If you think wind power will never get you anywhere, take a ride on the Sailrocket 2, a specially engineered sailboat that has set a new sailing speed record.

Sponsored by Danish wind turbine maker Vestas, the Sailrocket accelerated to 59.23 knots (68.1 mph) on Walvis Bay off the coast of Namibia. The speed was the best average time over 500 meters (546 yards), but the craft was later clocked at 64.78 knots (74.5 mph).

The World Sailing Speed Record Council has certified a speed of 54.08 knots (62.2 mph) and is assessing faster claims.

The 40-foot, British-built craft weighs just over 600 pounds but skims along the water on hydrofoils. It was built from carbon fiber with a core of Nomex Honeycomb, a composite material. Titanium was also used in the construction.… Read more

Ever wish you lived in the '20s so you could go to parties at Jay Gatsby's house and call your friends up on rotary phones to tell them how much fun you had doing the Charleston? We're still working on a time machine to get you to Gatsby's mansion, but Pyle Audio can help with the antique phone.

The company's out with a new line of retro-style home telephones that also serve as smartphone docks.

The four classically designed phones, handcrafted from real wood and adorned with brushed copper parts, have buttons for answering landline and smartphone calls and easily switching between the two. They also have standard phone features like last-number redial, flash function, and ringer high/low selection. … Read more

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades. Ideally, they'd have built-in earbuds. And now they do, thanks to Sanpei Optics.

Sanpei uses fancy lingo like "audio-adaptable glasses" and "hinged temple bar design eyewear" to describe its new product, but it's really pretty simple. The glasses look like regular shades, but you can slide the included earbuds into a dock at the end of each arm, pop the securely fixed 'buds into your ears, and connect to your smartphone or other mobile device right from your glasses.

Getting the glasses to fit just so depends on adjusting the aforementioned patented hinged temple bar (tilt it down for a tighter fit, up for a looser feel). That took some fumbling when I first got my hands on a pair of these, but once I'd angled the arms right, the polarized glasses felt lightweight and comfortable. The earbuds rested at a slightly strange angle when attached to the shades, but I'm still not sure if I need to further fiddle with the dock and three sizes of included silicone earbud tips -- or if, like my former CNET colleague Jasmine France, I'm just weird-eared. … Read more

Last month, we stumbled upon videos of Steve Jobs' yacht, the Venus, which was reportedly unveiled a year after Jobs' death. The sleek, clean design has a certain Apple Store look to it, complete with a row of 27-inch iMacs on board, but there's no evidence the crew will don those blue Genius bar shirts.

Then recently SuperYacht Times interviewed French designer Philippe Starck, who Jobs collaborated with to design Venus. (You might remember erroneous reports earlier this year that alleged Starck was involved in designing a new Apple product -- turns out the project in question was actually … Read more

As automakers contemplate diminishing energy supplies, downsizing their vehicles appropriately, Mercedes-Benz prepares for a different possible future, one where flesh-eating zombies roam the earth, and small bands of humans survive anyway they can. Mercedes-Benz released renderings of what its go-anywhere G-class truck might look like if it has reason to continue building the model in 2025.

The Ener-G-Force, sporting a name that sounds like a futuristic zombie fighting organization, smoothes out the boxy angles of the current G-wagon, lowers the center of gravity, and replaces its internal combustion engine with an electric power train. That latter feature comes in handy … Read more