Cycle In Cinema – Magnificent Revolution from culturehunter on Vimeo.

Springwise: Magnificent Revolution’s Cycle-in Cinema taps the kinetic energy of its participants to power the entertainment. Viewers can simply ride to a screening on their favorite cycle, hook it into the on-site generator and start pedaling. While the resulting energy powers the performance, the movie’s soundtrack is broadcast using a wireless transmitter that can be heard by audience members via mobile phone or FM radio. Events are free, with a suggested donation of GBP 5; a variety of drinks and locally sourced snacks are typically for sale.

London-based Magnificent Revolution also offers 100W bicycle generators and other equipment and workshops to help make a variety of similar pedal-powered projects possible. Meanwhile, it’s planning a series of Cycle-in Cinema events in the UK throughout 2011 and 2012. One to get involved in — or emulate in your neck of the eco-minded woods?

In the UK, pop-up cinema runs on pedal power [Springwise]

Suburban Camping is a company that sets up a variety of camping scenarios in your backyard, from canvas tents to cots and trail mix bars to outdoor movies. All campsites are set up by an experienced outfitter with one or multiple tents and sleeping bags, cots, lighting and whatever extras clients might request.

By nurturing genuine connections through the camping experience, Suburban Camping has the ability to enrich lives by bringing back simple but often forgotten pleasures. The sound of zippered canvas closing off the night and the click of the lantern inviting the moon and gathering place for stories to be told and adventures to be had, where only truly enriching memories can be made, at home and in the outdoors.

Idea contributed by Kella MacPhee. Thanks!

Iconoculture: Xtranormal text-to-movie technology is making its way by word of mouth into the hands of anyone who wants to transform their typed rants and raves into something more special. The Xtranormal tagline — “If you can type, you can make a movie” — says it all.

Users choose from 16 animated character sets (like Luchadorz, bulbous Mexican wrestler-types or Starz, with the likes of Oprah, Seinfeld and Larry King), then choose one or two actors per movie. Users can then type whatever text they like and see it instantly transformed into the dialogue of their very own animated short. In Xtranormal’s hands, the boring becomes bearable and the entertaining goes off-the-charts hilarious.

Xtranormal text-to-movie tech puts words into animated mouths [Iconoculture]

It’s the world’s first boutique drive-in movie theater created for the urban generation! The Blue Starlite Mini Urban Drive-In concentrates on indie films, art house, cult, Gen X/Y, childhood favorites, and drive-in classics. It requires less space and is more exclusive, more personal, and more intimate. A new drive-in experience is born right in the heart of Austin.

TrendCentral: While in-theater dining has long been appreciated in the few cities where it exists, the culinary cinema model is set to become more widespread as theaters provide menus replete with gourmet meals, table service, and cocktail-permitting 21+ viewings. Take for example, Brooklyn’s new reRun Theater, which touts a full bar and gourmet snacks prepared down the hall at parent eatery reBar.

Enjoy The Show [TrendCentral]

Engadget: The so-called EVOtainment System is a Wii racing wheel from Nerf that’s been drilled out and augmented to enable a Classic Controller to join the party, backed with a strip of 3M Dual Lock. Up top a universal GPS mount clings desperately on to his HTC EVO, which connects over Bluetooth to the Wiimote.

EVOtainment System brings emulation greatness to the HTC EVO on a Wiimote and a prayer [Engadget]

MobileCrunch: These cheap little stickers may look like impulse buys from a dollar store, but they might actually be pretty handy if you’re a big iOS gamer. Basically they just provide little bumps so you can tell where the virtual buttons are without checking or fumbling around.

I’ve found the controls on more complicated iPhone and iPad games to be like the ones on console FPSes: tolerable, but by no means excellent. A little physical feedback goes a long way. My friend tells me that Street Fighter IV plays great on the phone, but I just don’t believe that for a second.

The stickers are made of a conductive material, so your touches will go through to the screen as if there’s nothing there at all — or so they say.

Need Buttons For Your iPhone Games? Tactile+Plus Stickers Might Work [MobileCrunch]

TrendCentral: The Life In A Day project asks participants to capture video snapshots of their lives during a 24-hour period on July 24th, then post their films on a dedicated YouTube channel. The most compelling footage will be included in a full-length, user generated documentary, with each contributor selected to be credited as a co-director – not too shabby considering the film will be directed by Kevin Macdonald and produced by Ridley Scott. The film will premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. With even the most mundane videos having a shot at being included, is it possible that even our Saturday laundry and grocery run could become film fest fodder?

Crossing Over [TrendCentral]

Babygadget: Have you – or, more importantly, has your kid – discovered Smories yet? It’s a website with a simple premise: adults write short stories and kids read them straight to camera. The concept was born from a long overland trip in Africa, during which one of the founders’ kids filmed herself reading stories for the other, to the prolonged enjoyment of both. It keys into two essential facts:

1. Kids love watching other kids;
2. Adults’ stories tend to hold together a bit better than the average child’s.

Smories: kids read stories [Babygadget]

MLB.com: Everyone seems to be talking about these new toasters at the MLB.com Shop. They are hot. They toast your bread, your English Muffin, your frozen waffle – and the best part is that it produces your favorite Major League Baseball team’s logo on one side.

“You don’t have to be a fan to love this,” said Josh Fink, CEO of Pangea Brands, but since we are all fans here and we eat, sleep and breathe baseball, we had to know more about the latest rage. So we bought one of our own, tried it out at home, and found it to be a little too … fun. We made more toast than we really had appetite to eat, because, frankly, we were just having a great time putting a particular team’s logo on food.

“The market is saturated, all the same stuff – enough T-shirts and caps,” Fink said, referring to the popular standards at the Shop. “When it comes to the novelty market, we are all looking for the most creative thing. You look at the Silly Bandz and think, ‘Why?’ It makes no sense to parents. But things hit. This is utilitarian, yet whimsical. It’s a product that can live and breathe in any house. You don’t necessarily have to be a fan to love this. It’s not the most expensive toaster in the world, and in some ways, it’s a toaster, but not a toaster; it’s fun.”

Team toasters are hot items at MLB.com Shop [MLB.com]

BornRich: Auton, known for its TV Lifts, has been doing well to conceal our plasma and LCD TV screens in cabinets at the touch of a button, but it has grown better in this hide and seek business with its latest creation — the Dream Machine. With its seamless and simple to operate ways, Auton’s Dream Machine slides your TV under your bed and back on the stand at the touch of a button. The Dream Machine comes pre-assembled and it needs no modifications to adjust with your bed frame. Priced at $13,999 for the DM70 and up to $22,999 DM120S, it can withhold 120lb, but screen size shouldn’t be a problem.

Auton’s Dream Machine conceals your TV under your bed [BornRich]

Iconoculture: Far-fetched flying fantasies will soon become boutique thrill realities thanks to JetLev, a personal jet pack company whose motto says it all: “Stop dreaming! Start flying!”
Soaring-obsessed consumers with serious scratch can get their hands on a JetLev starting in September 2009 for approximately $129,000. No one ever said flying was cheap.
It’s hard to conceive of a more frivolous purchase than a personal jet pack. Still, the prospect of being the only house on the block with a truly personal jet is thrilling.
Products conceptualized during flush times — JetLev development started in 2000 —sometimes hit the market facing a far grimmer economic picture. Products with long development cycles can’t rely on stable market conditions throughout their journey.
JetLev gives you wings to fly (really) [Iconoculture]

TrendCentral: In-Home Bars: Why go to the bar when you can build one in your loft? That was the thinking of Chicago-based artist Dustin Ruegger. Using scrap wood, bar stools found in an alley, palm leaves, and decorations from the thrift store, Dustin built a Tiki bar in his house. Channeling the ghost of tropical vacations past, Dustin strung lights and netting over a wooden fence he constructed, decked it out with artificial plants, and installed handmade shelving for a stereo system and a TV that plays a found amateur video loop of tropical fish swimming in a tank. Now instead of biking to an overcrowded watering hole, Dustin and his friends gather around his Tiki bar to drink rum cocktails and play low stakes poker.
Cheap Tricks for Summer Tricks [TrendCentral]

Times Online: His cube was one of the most popular and infuriating toys of all time. Now Professor Ernö Rubik is hoping that the sphere will bring sleepless nights to the world’s obsessive puzzlers.
The creator of Rubik’s Cube is back with his first new puzzle for almost 20 years and early indications are that it is going to be every bit as irritating as the original.
Rubik’s 360, which goes on sale next week, features six small balls inside three interlocking spheres. The task is to lock each ball into colour-coded capsules on the outermost sphere. Professor Rubik said of his cube that it was “easy to understand the task, but hard to work out the solution”. It is just as aggravating to crack the 360.
Rubik Cube inventor devises new puzzle to drive us all to distraction [Times Online]