Over the course of the year we have the privilege of reviewing some of the coolest tech toys fresh off the market. Sometimes, what comes through the door isn’t exactly what you’ll find on a tech site, but its sheer randomness and awesomeness leaves a distinct imprint in the minds of the editorial team. Today, we look at what we think is the most random, yet awesome thing of 2012!
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Read the other parts of the Super Unofficial Best Of 2012!
Part 1: Game Of The Year
Chapree – Nike FuelBand
Life as a sport is the tagline of Nike FuelBand and that is exactly what it does – by measuring every single move that the user does and converts it into a common merit called Nike Fuel which acts as benchmark on how active the user is. So, the more active the user is, the higher the user’s Nike Fuel point will be.
Think of it as a motivation tool for one to pursue more active and healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately, the Nike FuelBand is still not officially available outside of North America and UK for the time being. Why Nike, why…
Pang – The Insanely Amazing Camera on Nokia’s 808 PureView
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Nokia has a long history with producing phones with high-quality imaging capability, but the company took it to a whole new level with the introduction of the 808 PureView smartphone. The camera in this phone has a mammoth 41-megapixel sensor which allows for lossless zooming, a feature previously inhibited by the lack of optical zoom in smartphone cameras.
Capable of capturing incredibly detailed shots at full resolution, the camera has been used many a time to shoot down “teh tarik” arguments among friends over which smartphone camera is the best (full resolution image link here). Unfortunately for Nokia, they shot themselves in the foot for failing to really market the phone, as almost everybody I talked to about the 808 PureView hadn’t even heard of the phone, let alone the legendary camera.
Nevertheless, the think-out-of-the-box innovative mentality of Nokia’s engineers to produce a smartphone camera with the ability to capture images with a quality that rivals most point-and-shoot digital cameras easily takes the cake for LYN’s Random Awesome Thing of the Year.
Lucas – The Parrot AR.Drone 2.0
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If there was the category for most dangerous thing in the office this year, the AR Drone 2.0 would take the cake too. This flying quadcopter was the source of many a laugh and terrified scream in the office for the longest time and we did have a blast playing with it. Being able to control this flying monster via WiFi on your smartphone, seeing the live feed of the camera output on the screen and being able to record STRAIGHT to your mobile device sold it for me. Let’s not forget the sick barrel rolls you can perform on this baby!
Of course nothing is completely perfect, the very limited flight time and the higher price point make it not as accesible as Parrot would like, but let’s be honest, If I received on of these under my Christmas tree, I’d show the Nintendo 64 kid a thing or two. For making me revert to my child like self, just with a big boy toy, the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 is my pick for the most awesome and random thing of 2012!
Huei – NanoDots
I didn’t want to care about these small magnetic balls. I didn’t want to even notice that we had them in. I didn’t even want to be impressed when Lucas made a cube out of a long chain of these small, evil spheres. I couldn’t help myself. For the uninitiated, Nano Dots are a bunch of magnetic balls which seem stupidly clumped in a ugly mess, but once you start fiddling with them, you realise that it is more than that. Nano dots are a glorious time sink. Each ball has a positive and negative magnetism and you can’t just slap together a structure and hope it stays. It takes patience, skill and a little good luck to make some awesome shapes. After I finally got that crazy football like shape out of 12 5 sided panels, I was amazed by the whole thing. Wait, it’s 6pm already?
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