Recharge your cellphone, iPod, iPhone and camera with this USB solar powered bonsai tree by French designer Vivien Muller.

Thanks to 54 tiny photovoltaic panels, the iBonsai (we just made that name up) will store energy in a hidden battery during the day, allowing you to recharge your gadgets even at night.

Hate wire clutter? Who doesn't. The bonsai charging tree cleverly hides all wires and plugs under the tray.




Need to slim down the tree's berth so you can fit it on your desk? No problem. You can rotate each part individually and produce an endless number of different shapes. It's like metal adult LEGOS.



The iBonsai Tree is decorative, good for the environment and sexy. It's also just still a concept, so sorry. You can't buy this yet. Hopefully Vivien will sell his concept and get the tree mass produced soon.


[Via methodshop]

You'd think the former CEO and co-founder of Rock-A-Fella Records would be immune to the mortgage crisis, but hip-hop mogul Damon Dash is feeling the credit crunch in a big way. Dash and his wife Rachel Roy are facing a seven million dollar foreclosure after they stopped making payments on their $78,504.20-a-month mortgage. Damon and his wife stand to lose two valuable properties in TriBeCa.

According to the New York Post, Dash still has a fortune estimated at $50 million yet has been besieged by debtors during the past year. Eastern Savings Bank, the bank holding the mortgages, filed suit against Dame after he stopped making his monthly payments in January.

It's too bad Dash has become estranged from his former business partner Jay-Z, as we're sure Hova's flush with cash. The two entrepreneurs started the Rockawear clothing line together in 1995, but Damon sold his stake in the company to Jay-Z for $30 million in 2003. Since then Jay-Z sold the rights to the brand for $204 million. Oops!!! We bet the money he would've made could've gotten him out of this mess.

Labels: Damon Dash, Scott Bernstein

Is Digg.com founder and Diggnation star Kevin Rose abusing his Apple contacts? This past weekend Kevin blogged about some new stuff being released by Apple next month including new iPods and an iTunes update.

According to Kevin, Apple will announce the following within the next few weeks:

• the iPod nano will take on a slimmer, more rounded look
• the iPod Touch will get an update with a new 2.1 operating system
• Prices of the iPod line will drop to differentiate the product from the iPhone
• iTunes 8.0 will be a major new release with several additional features
• Further out Apple is planning to add Blu-ray support to Mac OS X

Why would Rose risk exposing his Apple contacts by announcing this information? And why now? Rose mentions his Twitter account multiple times in his blog post and urges people to "follow" him on Twitter to get more information. Perhaps Rose is bitter that Barack Obama took the top slot away from him on Twitter earlier this month.



methodshop

After years of promises, a major U.S. airline has finally delivered inflight broadband internet service. American Airlines' Gogo on AA service debuts today on its fleet of 15 767-200s. For a fee of $12.95, passengers on those planes will be able to e-mail their bosses, check on their EBay auctions, find dates on Match.com, play poker with their buddies and do everything they normally do with a land-based internet connection. The only thing you won't be able to do is use Skype and other VOIP services, but who wants to hear other passengers chatting on the phone anyways.

American plans to test Gogo on the 767-200s for the next few months. If everything goes well they'll roll the service out to the whole fleet. Typical speeds for Gogo clock in at 500Kbps to 600Kbps -- upload speeds were a more modest 250Kbps to 300Kbps. Wall Street Journal Technology Guru Walter Mossberg recently tried out the service and found that it worked flawlessly on his Dell and Apple laptops, a Blackberry, iPhone, and WinMo-based cell.

Other airlines are following in American's footsteps with Southwest on the verge of testing a new satellite-based system. While the carriers are happy to offer their customers a new amenity, they also see the dollar signs. Inflight broadband is expected to generate $6.6 million in passenger revenue this year, according to a June report by MultiMedia Intelligence. The research firm estimates the industry will skyrocket to $936 million revenue by 2012.

We'd guess by 2013 you'll be able to surf the web on every single flight, but for now the service is only available on American Airlines. Soon enough no one will remember the days of 'net-free air flight.

Labels: internet, Travel

If you own the sleek Aston Martin DBS we've got a must-have accessory for you. Jaeger LeCoultre has just released the AMVOX2 DBS Transponder, a gorgeous time-piece capable of locking and unlocking the Aston Martin DBS. This incredible and complex piece of machinery features 200 parts used for just the casing and an additional 200 parts used for the watch movement itself.

Jaeger LeCoultre first released the AMVOX2 DBS last year, but the transponder feature on that watch was kinda a dud thanks to the mechanical watch's impact on electrical fields. This time around the world-famous watch maker crafted a 128-mm sapphire and metal antenna inserted into the curve of the inner bezel ring. The AMVOX2 also comes with the Jaeger-LeCoultre vertical-trigger chronograph system. This ingenious mechanism serves to activate the functions simply by pressing the sapphire watch crystal. The chronograph function can be started or stopped by pressing at 12 o’clock, while the counters are reset to zero by pressing at 6 o’clock.

So throw away your keys, and pick up one of these brilliant time pieces when the AMVOX2 hits the market in December. If you've blown $332,000 on the Aston Martin DBS, you've gotta accent your pimpness by spending an addition $40,000 on the AMVOX2.


A PimpWiz Exclusive by Scott Bernstein

Labels: Watches

While John McCain is still learning how to use email (we're not kidding), his U.S. Presidential competition has completely mastered the micro-blogging service Twitter.

This month Barack Obama dethroned Kevin Rose from Digg.com and became the most popular person on Twitter. According to Twitterholic, a website that measures the "followers" of Twitter accounts, Barack Obama has over 58,000 followers.



Obama's closest Twitter competitor is Kevin Rose with 56k followers. Robert Scoble, CNN Breaking News and Leo Laporte help round out the top 10.

Someone not in the Twitterholic top 10... John McCain. In fact McCain isn't even in the top 100. The only serious McCain Twitter account we found has a little over 1,000 followers. A truly pitiful showing for someone who is running for president.



Here's a 101 primer on Twitter and tips on how to explain it. If someone who personally knows John McCain is reading this, please print the article out for him (because you can't email it to him yet).

Tutorial: How to Explain Twitter to Your Grandma

And if you are feeling wild, you can follow @methodshop on Twitter here.


methodshop

Labels: tech news

Last year, Wyclef Jean released an outstanding album The Carnival Volume II: Memoirs of an Immigrant to little fanfare. The album's first single, Sweetest Girl, immediately caught our ear thanks to its catchy "Dollar Dollar Bill Y'all" hook and gorgeous backing vocals. Those beautiful backing vocals come courtesy of Wyclef's latest prodigy, 20-year-old Niia Bertino.

Niia, who hails from Needham, Massachusetts, looks as hot as she sings. This blonde bombshell was trained as a classical singer, but fell in love with Hip Hop and R&B. She started singing and performing at the tender age of seven and in 2005 the nonprofit National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts named her the national jazz voice winner in its Arts Recognition and Talent Search.

Niia's life changed dramatically when she was discovered by Wyclef as he was putting his album together. Here's a clip of Wyclef explaining how they met:

Not only did Wyclef put Niia on his new record, he also signed her to his record label. Niia's currently recording her debut album, which will be produced by Wyclef.Thanks to Niia's silky smooth voice and drop-dead gorgeous looks we expect big things from her career. Remember where you heard her first. Be sure to check out Niia's MySpace page for five killer tracks from the songstress including unique covers of Sting's Fields of Gold and Gnarls Barkley's Crazy.


A PimpWiz Exclusive by Scott Bernstein

Labels: Music, Niia, Scott Bernstein

Sometimes “she’s just not that into you” just isn’t a good enough explanation for getting played by a significant other. In fact, those who have ever been dumped amid a budding relationship or, even worse, before a real relationship ever had the chance to bud, know how much it sucks to all of a sudden be left in the dust. However, if curiosity over that last abrupt breakup is really getting the best of you, there’s now a company of certified stalkers that can help you get that closure you feel you can’t live without.

WhyWasIDissed.com is a service for those who have been cut out of relationships with little to no explanation, leaving one to then turn to outside sources to discover the root of the dumping. The company assigns the dumpee a case number and proceeds to contact the person who dissed them, issuing the dumper a questionnaire complete with multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank answers, which they then evaluate before sending back to the dumpee with a sufficient explanation as to why they got the boot. Apparently, if the company gets ignored the first time, they try again, but will give up after two weeks of ignorance because getting ignored by the dumper would apparently indicate “a pattern of behavior [they] are unable to change. This person has deep-seated issues with communication that extend way beyond you.”

But does it really come down to that? Chances are, if someone was callous enough to drop you without explaining why, you either have a very repellent attribute or the person you were with is a hoe.

So, back to the original question: why were you dissed? If you’re the kind of person who simply can’t sleep at night without an explanation, you now have people who will do all the dirty work for you.

A PimpWiz Exclusive