Thor’s hammer is one of the coolest weapons in the superhero universe. Called Mjolnir, it can summon lightning, crush through pretty much anything and help the Norse god fly. No wonder Caleb from Hack A Day wanted one for himself.

But the gifted builder wasn’t looking for yet another simple prop that looked like Thor’s hammer, he wanted something that actually produced bolts of lightning. Armed with his own DIY superpowers, Caleb Kraft set out to create a foam replica of Mjolnir and sought the help of battery-powered Tesla coil maker Staci Elan, who provided a tiny but effective device able to produce 80,000 volts of electricity. Caleb says he had to make a choice: “I was either going to go portable and live with small arcs, or make this a stationary piece and hide a giant Tesla coil in a base. It would have bigger arcs, but I couldn’t carry it around.” In the end, he opted for the portable version, fitting his light but realistic looking hammer with a a small 12v powered coil. It creates 3″ arcs when going to another piece of metal, and can power on light bulbs if you hold them close to the hammer. Nowhere near as cool as the real Thor’s powers, but pretty awesome for a mere mortal, wouldn’t you say?

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Studies have shown  that hugs can truly make lonely people feel better, so a group of Japanese students from Tsukuba University have invented a coat designed to imitate the feeling of a girlfriend hugging you from behind.

Hugging is all the rage right now. London has its own cuddling workshop for people in need of a hug and a professional cuddler in New York City will wrap her arms around you for a fee. But these solutions don’t work very well if you suddenly find yourself in need of a hug and there’s no one around to give it to you. Luckily, a team of Japanese geeks students have come up with a more practical, if weird, solution – a special hugging coat that emulates the sensation of a girlfriend putting her arms around you from behind. Called the Raiju Coat (Fulfillment Coat), this offbeat invention features motors attached to its back to operate the artificial “arms”, which are controlled through a computer using a USB connection. So whenever its owner feels lonely and in need of a fake girlfriend hug, all he has to do is put it on, close his eyes and imagine a cute anime girl putting her arms around him, as the coat takes hold of his waist. To make the experience even more realistic, the Raiju Coat comes with a pair of headphones that plays the sound of footsteps running from behind and pre-recorded sentences like “I’m sorry, were you waiting?”; “Watch your back!”; “Guess who?”; and “Blind side!” With such advanced hugging technology, who needs a real girlfriend?

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Finding the right song to suit your mood can be pretty frustrating, but thanks to the new Mico mind-reading headphones from Japanese company Neurowear, you won’t have to scroll through your playlist anymore. They’ll just scan your brain and play the perfect song.

The Mico mind-reading system is made up of two parts: a pair of bulky headphones and an iPhone app. The headphones come with a forehead sensor that analyzes the user’s brainwaves to detect his mood, then connects to the Mico database via the iPhone application and selects the song that best fits his current state, from a number of neuro-tagged tunes. If your mood changes, and you feel the song isn’t appropriate anymore, all you have to do is shake the phone to clear collected data and have the sensor scan your brain again. Neurowear’s revolutionary headphones also come with built-in LED indicators that display your mood through icons to everyone around you. Right now, they have an exclamation mark for when you’re focused, a “zzz” sign for when you’re feeling drowsy, and a cross icon for when you’re stressed.

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First there was journaling, then came blogging, vlogging and even microblogging. The latest in the trend of recording life experiences is Lifelogging – recording every little thing that goes on in your life through pictures. As if people sharing mind-numbingly mundane pictures of things like what they ate and where they slept wasn’t enough, modern lifelogging devices actually help people take continuous photographs and videos of every single moment of their day.

So capturing only the special times of your life – like weddings, birthdays or your child being born – is fast becoming a thing of the past. With lifelogging, it’s just like downloading your entire life, minute by minute, and storing it on your computer. A master file, if you will, that you can always refer back to, to remember exactly what happened in the past. According to the fans of this practice, lifelogging helps them create what they call a perfect digital archive. This can be accessed any time, so they are able to recall things like where they left their car keys or remember a cherished moment in great detail. These lifeloggers capture their daily routine through pictures or video and store them on the internet. Some of them also record patterns of their mood, sleep, exercise and diet. A handful of users have also broadcast their lives online for everyone to see, and most say that they want to create as many data streams about themselves as possible, so the data can be collated and analyzed, leading to new insights and revelations about their lives. It’s especially helpful to those who are interested in health and fitness.

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Tired of waking up very late and missing his university lectures, Indian student Sankalp Sinha decided to do something about his problem – he invented a special alarm clock that “rewards” the owner with an electric shock if he tries to press the snooze button.

19-year-old Sankalp Sinha came up with the idea for his shocking alarm clock a couple of years ago, when he was having trouble getting up in the morning to attend university classes. He had developed a habit of hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep, so he started thinking about a solution that would force him out of bed. A student of automobile engineering at Sharda University in Uttar Pradesh, India, Sinha came up with an idea for an alarm clock that administers a small electric shock via the very popular snooze button. “The shock it administers is harmless but is enough to energize you”, the young inventor says, adding that users will be able to adjust how strong the electric shock they get is. He added that the power of his Good Morning Sing N Shock clock will be a fraction of the 50,000 volts delivered by the standard Taser gun. Pretty weak, but you want the thing to wake you up, not put you to sleep, right?

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Compressorhead is not your usual heavy-metal rock group. The band’s three members are all robots, but they’ve proven they can cover hits by rock legends like Motorhead or AC/DC honorably. They’re even scheduled to play alongside The Chili Peppers and The Killers, at the Big Day Out Festival, in Australia, this summer.

Assembling, cooking, waiting tables, even horse riding; robots have proven capable of doing all of these jobs, but until now, musicians seemed like they had nothing to fear. Well, not anymore – introducing Compressorhead, a rock band made up of three real metal heads: Fingers, Bones and Stickboy. They are robots that can be programmed to cover hits by pretty much any rock group that ever existed, but so far they seem to prefer heavyweights like Black Sabbath, Pantera or Led Zeppelin. They’re a bit lacking in the creative department, but I’m sure they’ll improve on that as they go along. The robot group hail from Germany and hope to conquer human kind with their music, instead of Terminator-like force. Let’s meet the boys:

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These days, the world is going crazy over smartphones, but in Japan, people who engage in extramarital relations remain faithful to a seemingly outdated mobile phone which does a great job of keeping their affairs private. It’s even been nicknamed the “uwaki keitai” or “infidelity phone”.

The Fujitsu “F-Series” flip-phones are not coolest-looking or most feature-full mobiles you can buy in Japan, but they remain very popular thanks to some very efficient stealth privacy features that help people cheat on their partners without being caught. According to a recent article by the Wall Street Journal, not even the latest smartphones come close to the aging Fujitsu, when it comes to keeping their private business private. Apparently, the F-Series “private mode” is a layer of invisible security that does a perfect job of hiding incoming calls and messages from contacts marked as private. The only visible signal that lets users know they’ve been contacted by one such contact is a subtle change in the color or shape of the battery or antenna icons. The changes are practically undetectable by the untrained eye, and even if someone might get suspicious, the private mode can only be turned off by a secret combination of keys, to make concealed calls, text messages and voice mail available.

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Don’t you hate it when total strangers invade your personal space by getting a little too close for comfort? By wearing the high-tech Spider Dress you can now send them a message in the shape of a creepy artificial spider leg pressing against their body.

Netherlands-based designer Anouk Wipprecht has designed one of the scariest garments I have ever seen. Aptly-called the Spider Dress, this piece of wearable design features animatronic arachnid limbs that react to external stimuli, in this case – nearby movement. When someone gets to close the wearer, the creepy spider legs start dancing on the shoulder pads, pushing the person away. You might just give them a heart-attack, but you’ll finally be able to enjoy your personal space in however crowded a space. Created in collaboration software engineer and hacker Daniel Schatzmayr, the Spider Dress’ robotic components use sensors to detect when someone gets too close. The scary tech-fashion design was showcased last November, at the VIVE LE ROBOTS / Cafe Neue Romance in Prague, during the EU Robotics week

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Embrace your passion for music in this life or the next with the CataCoffin – a unique coffin equipped with a high-quality sound system that will keep you rocking six feet under. An afterlife of partying awaits.

Do you want to keep in touch with the latest trends in music, even after death? It seems impossible, I know, but Swedish company Pause has just turned your weird dream into a reality. Introducing the CataCombo sound system, an original solution that will help you take your passion for music to the grave, literally. The unique sound installation comes incorporated in a high quality coffin with “godlike comfort and angelic interior”, and features a pair of two-way speakers, tweeters, a custom-built 2.1 amplifier and “a divine 8-inch subwoofer fine tuned to the coffin’s unique interior acoustics”. And it gets better – the CataCoffin comes with matching CataTomb tombstone that has a built-in upgradable music server. Powered by a 2.5 GHz Intel processor, this unique piece of technology allows your friends and family to update your playlist through the Spotify music service, with the help of 4G connectivity. The tombstone also has a a 7-inch LCD that displays what song is currently playing inside the coffin. It’s safe to say CataCombo can take anything the afterlife throws at it.

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If you’re looking to attract attention when you hit the club on a Saturday night, there are better ways to do it than showing off your funky dance moves. You’re much better off wearing some remote-controlled LED clothes like the ones sold by Chinavasion. You’ll be literally shinning on the dance floor.

The “Senorita” LED mini skirt and the “Maria” LED Boob Tube are the latest in club fashion, and according to maker Chinavasion, “the only way to stand out and light up the dance floor.” Both garments come with hundreds of small LEDs that light up in in shades of red, green, and blue or white, at the simple touch of a button. That’s right, these shiny clothes come with remote controls that allow the wearer to change both the color of the LEDs and the luminous modes ( monochrome, shade, strobe, flash and smooth), depending on what track they’re grooving to. The battery that fits in a special pocket on the inside of the clothes last up to 8 hours, according to the manufacturer, so you’re more likely to run out of energy before your clothes do. Chinavasion says its LED mini skirt and tube top are great “for any geek to give to his girl (Real or imaginary) or for any girl wanting a change on the light side but will be appreciated by them wanting something different for hen nights and raves.”

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Created by Canadian camouflage design company Hyperstealth, Quantum Stealth is a is a material that renders its wearer completely invisible by bending light waves around it, which is in effect very similar to the invisibility cloak worn child wizard extraordinaire, Harry Potter.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could put on your very own invisibility cloak and just roam around undetected? Sadly, that’s not going to be possible for most of us, but if you’re a US soldier, this fantasy could become a reality sooner than you think. Apparently, the US Military is currently backing development of special materials to make American soldiers completely invisible on the battlefield, and according to one camouflage design company, it might soon get its wish. Hyperstealth Biotechnology Corp. CEO, Guy Cramer, says their new “Quantum Stealth” material has finally made the sci-fi/fantasy technology a reality. Unfortunately at this time, we can only take his word for it, as its development is so secret that the company cannot even show footage of how it works, on its website, offering only mock-ups of its effects.

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51-year-old Velma, from London, England, spends up to 18 hours a day in her homemade Faraday cage, because she is allergic to electromagnetic fields. When she goes out she has to wear a special scarf that shield her from electromagnetic waves.

The Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Syndrome (EHS) sufferer says her problems began in her teenage years, after she suffered a shock when she touched the switch of an electric fire in her bathroom.At first the symptoms were barely noticeable, and at one point she even worked as a secretary for a number of companies, where she had to use a computer. “Even back then I could feel a huge agitation when using the computer, but I thought it was just because I didn’t have the technological skills,” Velma remembers. Although it is believed previous shocks make people more susceptible, the rare condition really started to affect her after the introduction of 3G technology. Nowadays she has unbearable head and nerve pain, memory loss, tinnitus, heart palpitations, vertigo and aching joints every time she’s close the technology, so she spends most of her days in a Faraday cage she built herself, reading, writing and sleeping.

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Thanks to Japanese company Inodore, the days when passing gas in public was seen as a social taboo may  soon be behind us. If you can keep the noise level down, their odor-deodorizing fabric does the rest, absorbing up to 99% of gas smell.

I know what you’re thinking, fart-proof underwear have been around for a while now, but according to Professor Hiroki Ohge of Hiroshima University they didn’t do such a great job of neutralizing smells. Ohge first got inspired to work on this unusual type of underwear when he traveled to America to study how diseases could affect the smell of people’s flatulence. In theory, by analyzing the smell of gas, along with its main component, hydrogen sulfide, one could be able to tell if he was suffering from a disease without having to succumb to more complicated examinations. While researching in the US, the Japanese professor noticed stores were selling various cushions and shorts that used activated carbon and charcoal to deodorize body smells. After analyzing them he identified some flaws in their design and technology, and upon returning to Japan, he began working on his own improved smell-neutralizing fabric.

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Just when you though it was safe to go out of the house, Japanese company Suidobashi Heavy Industry has officially announced their awesome boardable mecha, the KURATS, is now available for purchase. And it costs only $1.35 million.

I know it sounds like a lot of money, but we’re talking about the world’s first consumer mecha, which means you can buy it and use it to take your shot at world domination or just scare the hell out of your neighbors by riding in it on the street. If you’re a fan of Gundam or Armored Core, this thing is exactly what you’ve been dreaming of for years. It’s a 4,500-kilogram-robot that you can control and interact with using Microsoft Kinect motion sensors. You can either step into the built-in one person cockpit, or remotely control its actions with your smartphone, via 3G internet. RocketNews24 first reported on the KURATAS in May, but back then it was just a cool prototype. Now, its makers have announced their personal mecha is going into production and can be bought for ¥100 million ($1,35 million).

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Fish are regarded as the most low maintenance of pets, but even they need a minimum degree of care, like making sure they’re fed every day and cleaning their tank from time to time. But the Robo-Fish invented by Japanese company Takara Tomy A.R.T.S. makes having a pet fish a carefree job.

Robo-Fish are not only meant to look like real exotic fish, but they also act like them when powered on. They scour the bottom of their tank as if they’re looking for food, and rise to the surface looking for floating bits of food. The only thing that gives them away as robotic fish is a small gap between their tail and the rest of the body, but other than that they look and move like the real deal. People too busy to even throw their live fish some food every once in a while need only go to Amazon and spend $37 for one Robo-Fish. The worst that can happen is the robotic fish runs out of battery, but that’s easily fixable.

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