The SolidSmack Weekend Reader | Week 14.17

Don your favorite bathrobe, cream that coffee, and get comfortable with this week’s SolidSmack Weekend Reader.

The Weekend Reader features a handful of the most interesting articles featured on the ‘Smack over the past week ranging from tips and tricks to inspirational designs, processes, and more. So lay back, relax and take a load off while reading the top ten stories on SolidSmack this past week.

Oh and uh…don’t forget to shed some much-needed sunlight on your face, too.

ABC and Mattel Partner to Create a ‘Shark Tank’ for Toy Inventors

In a new spin on the Shark Tank show format, where inventors and budding entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to investors including Mark Cuban and Barbara Corcoran for advice and hopefully, an investment, ABC has teamed up with toy manufacturer Mattel to give toy inventors a stage for pitching their concepts.

The Lo1 is a Simple Desk Lamp That Requires No Hardware

There is something zen-like about products that require no hardware to assemble (we’re looking at you, IKEA). It’s as if those materials and parts were created for the sole purpose of existing as the components of a seamless assembly.

PERK Wants to Revolutionize Coffee with an Automated Pour-Over System

Originally designed for brewing the perfect cup of joe in low-gravity environments, the PERK fully-automated pour-over coffee system gently pumps water through the coffee grains to ensure that the water reaches each grain evenly. Unlike a manual pour-over system, the PERK is also capable of lifting, tumbling and separating the coffee grains while it’s brewing.

Garage Inventor Colin Furze Squeezes a Motorcycle Engine into a Bumper Car

When it comes to ‘garage inventors’, few people carry the title as well as Colin Furze. The plumber-turned-viral YouTube video star out of Stamford, Lincolnshire has created everything from the world’s fasted pram to a hoverbike in his humble UK-based garage workshop.

VETR Speaker Design Goes Flat, Ditches the Box

Traditional speakers, the kind that sits on your bookshelf, produce sound by applying an electrical audio signal to a voice-coil, which vibrates rapidly back and forth, thus moving a diaphragm, which pushes air resulting in an audible tone.

A UK Engineer Just Built His Own Iron Man-Like Flying Suit

Whether it’s the 1991 film The Rocketeer or any of the more recent Iron Man movies, Hollywood has been teasing us with the jet pack for years. After all—who wouldn’t want the chance to fly?