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]

Springwise: Although video games and laser tag are a popular choice for kids’ parties, getting the kids to venues can be more hassle than it’s worth. Back in January, Texas-based Games2u stepped in to solve this problem with its mobile video game theatres—self-powered, climate controlled trailers that house X-Box 360, Wii and PS3 systems, enabling up to 24 players to compete head-to-head. For parents who’d rather see their children running around outdoors, the company’s Sprinter trailers contain a range of inflatable bunkers and laser guns to turn yards and fields into laser tag battlegrounds in an instant.
Thanks to its installation of multiple 50-inch flatscreen HDTV displays and surround sound, the trailer provides customers with a much more immersive gaming experience than they could create in their own homes. Each mobile theatre is accompanied by a trained Game Coach who oversees the event and keep players engaged, allowing parents to sit back and relax. Parties start at USD 199 for one hour, USD 299 for two hours and USD 99 for every additional hour.
Mobile gaming theatres pop up at birthday parties [Springwise]

BrandChannel: Ask 10-year-old kids about their favorite movie or cartoon character—be it the Incredible Hulk or Bratz—and they can identify every brand extension leveraging the character’s likeness. However, as both the toy and branding industries expand into virtual worlds, new dimensions of entertainment and branding are emerging—realms that are full of both pitfalls and profits.
While the press has focused much of its attention on the adult versions of virtual worlds such as Second Life and There.com, a boom time has been quietly brewing for virtual worlds with a retail twist aimed at kids and tweens—and they are making money amid stagnant and, in many segments, declining toy sales.
Virtual worlds—colorful, 3-D interactive landscapes experienced via the eyes and ears of an avatar—offer a cross between gaming and social interaction with plenty of customization to suit the user’s/avatar’s tastes.
Toy Brands Don’t Play Around in Virtual Worlds [BrandChannel]

Born Rich: No longer can we say that automated poker tables are the future for live poker. In fact they are the present of the poker gaming. Though in the past, poker has required several physical elements to play: chips or money, a table, some chairs, and a deck of cards, it was only a matter of time before poker got automated too. Since we have managed to focus on the best automated poker tables in the (recent) past with X10 automated poker table, Amaya automated poker table and the Axtra electronic poker table, today its time to shift our focus on to the Lightning Poker Table. Big enough to accommodate 10 players with ease, it sports a 45” LCD high definition screen in the center. And of course 10 12.1” XVGA touch screens for players too.
Lightning Poker Table – The automated table of the present [Born Rich]