Lumir C

Candles are a fine source of light, but what about all that wasted heat? It’s a stroke of small genius to invent a device that captures it and turns it into more light — and that’s exactly what this candle-powered LED lamp does. Admittedly, I’m not sure how practical or useful a device this is for most people, especially given the somewhat steep price — but there’s something elegant and brilliant about the idea, as though it came from a basic frustration with entropy more than a pragmatic desire to make a consumer product — but maybe I’m giving it too much credit. Either way, it’s pretty cool.

Rocketbook Wave

There are really two aspects to this notebook. The first is kind of cool: an associated app that scans and enhances the pages based on photos taken with your smartphone, and organizes them to various cloud apps based on little sorting boxes you tick with your pen. That’s nothing too remarkable though. The real magic comes when it’s time to empty the notebook: you put it in the microwave and all the pages come out blank. Is that a good system? How well does it work? Those are questions that are hard to answer without holding one in my hands — but it’s certainly not an idea I’ve ever heard before, and it’s nothing if not inventive.

MAGNETIPS

Okay, so this one isn’t radical or mindblowing — it’s just handy. I for one love fine-tipped markers, and as I look into my drawer full of a completely disorganized tangle of them, each with different colors and in different stages of life, I can’t help but think that stackable, refillable, magnetically-connected markers is a pretty good idea. The markers themselves aren’t much pricier than any other good quality options, and at $17 for a complete 20-color set of refills (not to mention the decreased likelihood of losing them one by one if you’re like me) they could easily pay for themselves.