With that question asked, most people are embarrassed to say yes. Now you don’t have to be. XYXX is a new design of Condom cases. Pulling the XYXX container from your pocket or purse will be pleasurable in more ways than one.

This is the packaging for the case. On the left is the case with extra condoms and on the right is the instructions and story about why the device was called xyxx. The two pieces screw together to form one round package.

With Spring training just a couple of months away, here’s a great gift idea for the baseball fan in your life. This new wireless device sits anywhere in your home or office, and provides baseball scores without a computer.

The new Ambient Devices Baseball ScoreCast receives a digital radio-frequency broadcast to update with the latest scores every half-inning. It’ll even tell your the current standings for your team’s division as they race towards the Pennant.

Ambient Baseball ScoreCast

Keep in mind that Ambient’s wireless data network covers only 90% of the U.S., so be sure to check coverage before buying. Expect the device to hit stores just in time for the 2008 baseball season for about $125.

Check out the world’s slimmest digital camera by Fujifilm called the FinePix Z100fd. It features a 2.7″ 230k pixel LCD scratch-free glass display, Sensitivity settings of up to ISO 1600, Dual Image Stabilization, Face Detection Technology, Automatic Red Eye Removal

Presenting the world’s first Samsung phone that can go through wear and tear and survive: the Samsung StrongPhone is dust, water, and shock resistant with a rubber body to work with. It features typical specs such as: FM tuner, GPRS, WAP 2.0, VGA camera, MMS, Java support, and Bluetooth along with an SOS feature. This baby is now available through the Pay and Go plan at O2 for $118.

Looking like an up-ended keg, albeit one full of your home media, the oddly-named Moneual I*magine is an HTPC capable of pumping out 1080p, 5.1 surround sound and reacting to voice commands either through a built-in microphone or remotely via Bluetooth headset. However, it’s the straightforward and intuitive interface - presented either on your attached screen or on the 7-inch touchscreen on the I*magine itself - that has garnered the Moneual machine a CES 2008 Innovation nomination.

Powered by an Intel Core2Duo T7300 CPU running at 2.0GHz and running Windows Vista Home Premium, the I*magine has an ATI 2400 PRO 256MB HDMI graphics card and 2GB of RAM. You can enjoy media from the 750GB of onboard SATA storage, via the multi-format DVD drive or downloaded from the internet through the gigabit ethernet connection or b/g WiFi. Both keyboard and mouse are wireless, and there’s a remote control too.

If you liked the portable aspect of the A-Bike but are too posh to push, then MIT’s RoboScooter might be the folding bike for you.

Recharging is courtesy of a special bike rack, which automatically tops up the RoboScooter’s power pack whenever it’s hung back up. The project envisions a one-way rental system similar to that operating in Paris (albeit using normal, pedal-powered cycles there), where patrons would swipe a credit card on the rack, take a bike and ride to their destination, then leave it at another rack ready for the next user.

Maybe most useful for long-term viability, the RoboScooter only requires 150 different parts, significantly reducing production costs and maintenance.

MIT RoboScooter [via BornRich]

There’s certainly such a thing as too much choice, and internet radio stations are just one such example - worst thing is, if you neglect to set your new-found favourite as a preset, it’ll take ages to find it again.

That’s just such the issue Cambridge Consultants set out to solve with their Iona ‘Cube’ WiFi radio; unlike other options, which pride themselves on having shed-loads of functionality but seem to forget that people actually just want to turn them on and get on with listening to audio, it eschews standard controls in favour of four presets, each selected by rotating the Cube onto different sides.

The fifth side holds the speaker, while rocking the Cube back onto its sixth side turns it off. Rotating it left or right adjusts the volume, and they’re promising that it’s straightforward to set up the four presets. Although just a concept, Cambridge Consultants have made some attempt to be realistic by basing the design on their own Iona platform, which has a mere $15 bill of materials, and which they demonstrated at CES 2007.

Design doesn’t always need to make complete sense, sometimes it just needs to wow people beyond their own logic. I don’t recall ever thinking fan blades were such a huge design flaw that they needed to be taken off immediately, but apparently someone thinks it’s a bit of a eye sore.

Some of the fans once the blades retract it just looks like a plain overhead light. I keep staring up at the ceiling fan above my head and no matter how hard I look at it I can’t force myself to think it’s such a hideous thing that it should be hidden.

Each fan varies in price according to model and how the blades retract. The base Air Shadow is priced at $499.95 but with extra lighting kits added the price reaches $899.95.

If you weren’t the fan to navigating GPS device screens or carrying too many devices on the road isn’t an option then this device is definitely for you. Garmin has just announced the Garmin Mobile PC navigation package that automatically endows your notebooks with powerful navigation capability. You can choose from a software-only package or a bundle with software as well as Garmin’s new GPS 20x sensor.

The software-only bundle works with broadband modems, internal or third-party GPS receivers via serial or Bluetooth connections, while the latter package uses the GPS 20x via a USB connection. You can even mount the GPS 20x on your dashboard thanks to its non-skid pads and small size (<2″ in length). The Mobile PC will be paraded at CES 2008, so head on there to check it out. You’ll have to wait until April for the Garmin Mobile PC with GPS 20x bundle though, and it retails for $99.99. It costs $40 less if you want the version sans GPS 20x.

Deputy Dog has posted an excellent story on the 5 coolest research facilities, of all the Super Kamiokande detector at Kamioka observatory in Japan is the coolest.

It reminds of the human battery farms from ‘The Matrix’ except there are no electric spiders but plain mortals. Located 1,000 m underground in the Mozumi Mine it consists of a cylindrical stainless steel tank 41.4 m tall and 39.3 m in diameter enclosing 50,000 tons of ultra-purified water. The clever people built the machine to detect neutrinos, proton decay and cosmic rays: this is done using the 12′000-ish photomultiplier tubes (extremely sensitive light detectors) visible on all walls of the ‘ultra-purified water-filled’ tank.