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ie8 fix

color

Microwaves not pigment-challenged

The way manufacturers are splattering color all over home appliances, you'd think they'd seen Pleasantville one too many times. We've seen transformations in everything from stoves and refrigerators to washing machines and even personal safes.

So we're curious why it's taken so long for them to get around to that staple of every house, apartment, condo and dorm room: the microwave. But Whirlpool is trying to make up for lost time with its "Max" ovens, which Popgadget says are available in black, silver, baby blue and raspberry red. They also sport a non-traditional … Read more

Protect your valuables in living color

Why should safes always be the same boring, battleship-gray fixtures seen in the movies? After all, we've seen color applied with abandon to appliances ranging from stoves and refrigerators to red and flowered washing machines.

You can't unlock these home models with voice commands as with others we've seen recently, but they sure look a lot nicer. Japan's Nakabayashi sells these simply designed personal safes in your choice of primary colors, operated electronically with your personal numeric code.

At first we thought the bright hues might attract would-be thieves, but Tokyomango suggests the perfect place for … Read more

Lights for the sake of lights

A gadget that projects colored lights may seem pointless to many people, especially when it has no raver or laser effects. But for us it conjures memories of our childhood when, every Christmas, our cheapskate dad would pull out a silver aluminum tree that came with a rotating lamp to give it "festive colors." How depressing.

As best we can tell from the description on TechEBlog, Philips' "LivingColors" is basically just a multi-hued LED lamp that can be dimmed or intensified by remote control to match your mood (see the YouTube clip below). Why anyone would … Read more

Flashy speakers take a cue from nightclub decor

Here in Manhattan we have all these overpriced, semi-trashy, "see and be seen"-type nightclubs that routinely show up in the pages of Us Weekly. They all have one thing in common, aside from the price-gouging on bottle service: each one inevitably features some kind of luminescent gimmick inside, be it a giant tank of jellyfish or a light show on the ceiling. Well, if you can't get enough of that stuff, here's a set of speakers that will bring nightlife into your home--the I-Lit, which feature pulsing colored light to the beat of your music (… Read more

Target sells pre-owned iPods

Borrowing a page from computer resellers, Target is selling previously owned iPods, including some of those in the latest colors. It's unclear where exactly these players came from, but Target says they've all been "quality tested." In any case, as Chip Chick points out, it's a chance to try one out at a good price if you've been holding out for them to get cheaper.

Apple's portable fashion

Just when you thought the ubiquitous iPod Shuffle couldn't get any smaller, Apple showed us all by releasing its second-generation Shuffle. Of course, that's not good enough for Apple, which has just unveiled a multifarious array of colors to delight even the most fashion conscious music lover. At a price under $100, who wouldn't want to say goodbye to their current, bulky Shuffle and move on up into the world of color? Of course, if iPods aren't your cup of tea, there are plenty of excellent alternatives.

The Wii may get its first makeover

Regardless of which game console you prefer, the Wii apparently has it all over the Playstation 3 in at least one category: colors. GameDrift says it has confirmed that Nintendo will release its game box in red, black and possibly other hues at an undisclosed time, according to CrunchGear. If true, it would be a smart move (and we think an obvious one), given the success that custom shops have seen just by adding a little color to PS3s and selling them on eBay for upwards of $1,400. Why Sony itself is taking so long to figure this out, … Read more

Adobe Kuler: a tool for some, fun for me

Kuler is a free tool from Adobe Labs that lets users design and share color schemes for use in Web sites or other projects. If you've ever designed a Web site or PowerPoint presentation before, you know that choosing a color scheme is often trial and error. Kuler lets you tune up to five different colors at once and makes the process surprisingly easy, allowing users to simply adjust selectors over a large color wheel. Users can then go deeper, adjusting the finer details of a color, and Kuler makes small adjustments to make sure the other colors will … Read more

ColorWare makes ThinkPads blush

Somewhere, ghosts of IBM's past are spinning in their graves. ColorWare is bringing 28 hues--including pink, purple, yellow and bright orange--to laptops from Lenovo that were once produced under the nameplate of Big Blue, that most buttoned-down of corporate establishments.

Laptoping says ColorWare applies its "X2 scratch-resistant liquid plastic coating" to Lenovo's "ThinkPad T60" laptops, whose features include an Intel Core 2 Duo processors, 1GB of memory and a DVD burner. But it's the complex coloring process that draws the most attention: "The X2 coating is applied to the laptops and … Read more