If you’ve ever dreamed of levitating out of traffic when cycling to work, your dreams may soon come true. Three Czech companies have joined forces to develop a helicopter/bicycle hybrid, complete with giant propellers above the front and rear wheels. Although the bike isn’t quite ready to carry a human on board, it has already been tested by remote control and it can fly for five minutes straight.

The helicopter bike prototype may look a little like the rider is transporting two wind turbines, but those cage-protected propellers create enough power to lift the bike vertically into flight. Weighing in at 209 pounds, the prototype has two large battery-operated propellers on the front and back, and one smaller propeller on each side which is supposed to give steering control in addition to flight.

If you owned the brand-new simplehuman Sensor Mirror, you’d know the answer to that question. (It’s YOU, btw.)

Think of those pull-out mirrors you sometimes find in hotel bathrooms that magnify your face to scary proportions: it’s NOT one of those, but rather a very clever sensor mirror that lights up automatically as your face approaches, and which uses a ” tru-lux light system” that simulates natural sunlight.

This prevents the dreaded “hooker” look; you know, when you’ve applied your make-up by a dim bathroom light. By allowing you to see full color variation, you can tell when your makeup is color-correct and flawless. (The mirror is also distortion-free at 5x magnification so you can see your entire face at once, which is what you want when applying make-up.)

Mirror Mirror On The Wall, Who’s The Fairest Of Them All? [Popgadget]

The passion for design and creation is the very pinnacle of Bang & Olufsen; to wrap technology and great experiences in beautiful designs. We’ve seen amazing B&O product designs integrated into cars such as Aston Martin and Audi A8 – and with the new system B&O is redefining the sound system experience.

Compactness is one of the keys to meet the consumer needs of tomorrow – we need more sound in smaller sizes – and that is exactly what B&O have done. The delicate speakers can be fitted into any room and with the subwoofer – or the ‘Tower of Power’ as it is referred to be its designers – which hold six independent amplifiers, the system is complete.

This new BL14 will enrich any home. The handcrafted and uniquely shaped speakers will light up any room, and the design allows you to choose from a variety of colors to fit your home décor. Pick your color and place the speakers anywhere you want; on the walls, on the ceiling, standing on their floor. There is a wide range of brackets and stands that allows you to position the system almost anywhere.

With more than 500 hours of designing and shaping the new system, B&O strives to bring us something that has not been seen before and something that is better than anything you can find in the market today.

Similar to the self-balancing scooter, the Hovertrax features a platform that connects two electric motor-powered wheels, which use gyroscopes and accelerometers to keep users upright. After stepping onto the vehicle, users lean forward to start moving. The platform is split into two, enabling users to turn by putting greater pressure on one side than the other. The batteries that power the device allow riders to travel at up to six miles per hour for around four miles. Without handles users can step off the machine at any point and at nine pounds in weight, the vehicle can easily be carried by hand or in a backpack when not in use. The video below shows the Hovertrax in action:

Segway-style vehicle is ultra portable [Springwise]

There’s no escaping it: when you hit the beach, you come home with sand in your bag, littered over everything you stashed in there. Unless, of course, you hit the beach carrying a Quirky Shake Bag.

A women’s tote bag, it comes with a mesh bottom that automatically lets out those tiny grains of sand, so none of them gets stuck inside. Whether the sand gets kicked in there accidentally or came attached to the blanket you stowed away, you can get rid of it by simply shaking the bag and letting all that gritty sediment out.

Shake Bag Is Like Having A Sand Proof Beach Tote [Cool Things]

Even though scientists created this glorious internet you see before you, current scientific practice is still based more on publishing academic papers than sharing ideas online. As one of the more prominent proponents of the open web, Mozilla stepped in to offer a solution with a new open science initiative called Science Lab. It’s designed to bridge the gap between the open web community and researchers so that they can share ideas, tools and best practices on how the web can be used to solve problems and improve research techniques. Led by Kaitlin Thaney, a long-time open science advocate, the Lab will initially focus on bringing digital literacy to the scientific community with the help of Software Carpentry, a program that teaches basic computer skills to researchers. From there, the group hopes to foster a global conversation on how to encourage the use of the web in science. It’s great to see that the internet has a lot more to offer the field than just Foursquare check-ins.

Mozilla Science Lab encourages scientists to share ideas over open web [Engadget]

The Prep Master Cutting Block is useful because you can scrape your scraps — peels etc. — in to a hole in the front of the cutting board, below which is a metal tray. When that metal tray is full you can simply pull it out, carry it to the garbage, and throw everything in. It’s so much easier than either picking up all your peels off the cutting board and carrying them (often dripping) to the garbage, or else picking up the whole cutting board and tipping whatever is on top in to the garbage. There’s also a groove around the whole board, so whatever liquids end up on the board end up in the groove, which channels them in to the metal tray.

Prep Master Cutting Block [Cool Tools]