Sure, you could drop over a grand on a Philips Ambilight television if you want your TV to set a mood, or you can also turn any television into a giant glowing ambient light for just the cost of a single DVD.

Created by Japan’s Kyouei Design, this minimal DVD contains a rainbow of soothing colors that you can display on your TV screen. It’s perfect for all those times you’re not engrossed in the latest episode of America’s Next Great Biggest 5th Grade Loser, or when you’re completely fed up with the writers’ strike.

The Color Light DVD offers a truly mellow light show, gradually dissolving through its spectrum of colors in about 20 minutes. I’m already chilling out just looking at the pictures, so I can only imagine how sleep-inducing this would be in my darkened living room.

The disc is available from the designboom shop for $19 (plus $7 shipping). [FYI, the disc isn’t region-encoded, so it should play anywhere in the world.]

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Are you a Mario fanatic? Here’s a couple of new desktop toys which are a must for any serious Super Mario collector.

These excellent Super Mario Sofubi (soft vinyl) figures stand 9.5-inches tall and look great in your cubicle, living room, standing on top of your horizontal Wii, or even glued to your car’s hood as an ornament.

They’re $18 each from the Giant Robot Store and available in both a Classic Mario and white Fire Mario versions.

Tired of the same old bare floors? Why not cover them up with a little Mario magic? These plush mats lay down on your floor and feature icons from the classic Super Mario Brothers series.

Each squishy floor tile measures 40cm x 40cm (15.74 x 15.74″), and if you’re willing to spend some serious dough, you can cover your entire floor with ‘em. At $23 a piece, they’re more expensive than some schmancy Persian rugs, but for dedicated Mario fanboys and fangirls, money should be no object. After all, you should have plenty of extra gold coins lying around?

They’re made in Mario, Shroom, Goomba, Question Mark Block and Brick patterns, but the bricks are currently sold out, so my dreams of recreating the entire Mushroom Kingdom in my living room have been dashed for now. Made by Banpresto, they’re available from NCSX.

[via Level Select]

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Having seen my share of weird Japanese robotic animals, I was actually pretty impressed by the fact that this one doesn’t look like it’s going to attempt to murder you in your sleep. SEGATOY’s new robotic dog is a heck of a lot less creepy than their hollow-stared robot cats, and actually seems to act quite a bit like a real pup (sans the poop).

Inud the robo-dog (aka the Dream DX robot dog) responds to touch, voice commands, and can even track you as you move around it. The dog can move its eyes, mouth and head, wag its tail, shake with it paw, and can respond to voice commands like “good boy” about as reliably as you real dog does.

Just think, with one of these, you’ll never have to go out for another walk when it’s -10 degrees outside, and shedding all over your furniture and clothes will be a thing of the past. At a likely retail price of about $270, Inud isn’t cheap, but he is arguably much less expensive than a real dog.

I only have one question: Is he housebroken or is he going to leave batteries all over the floor? (thanks, Woody Allen)

[via The Presurfer and NewLaunches]

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Most robots are controlled using a joystick or other traditional input device, but this new system allows operators to issue commands to robots using simple hand and body gestures

Developed by engineer Tsuyoshi Horo at Tokyo University, the system uses a circular array of cameras to detect human movements in the room, then convey them to a robot as directional commands.

The system produces a real time 3-dimension volumetric model of people or objects inside the circle of cameras, allowing for precise tracking of movements. Be sure to check out this cool video clip showing what the cameras “see” once run through Horo’s software:

Controlling robots is just one possible application for the gesture recognition software. Horo has also implemented several computer user interface prototypes using the same basic system. You can find more information on Horo’s research website (translated from Japanese) and more videos over on his YouTube page.

Can’t afford to spend your next couple of paychecks on that Italian sports car you’ve been dreaming about? Why not live vicariously through these miniature motorized Ferarris that just hit the streets? These tiny 1/58th scale Ferraris measure just about 3-inches long and fit in the palm of your hand.

These officially-licensed RealDrive Nano mini racers include Testarossa, F430, 512BB and Enzo models. They speed around your room using infrared remote controls which each operate on different wavelengths so you can race up to four cars at the same time. They’re quite detailed and even feature tiny LED cornering lights.

Best of all, they don’t require costly gasoline or insurance policies to drive. So head on over to Japanese importer Strapya-World and pick up a few. They’re only ¥2,690 (appx. $25 USD) each, just a teensy bit less than that real Ferrari would cost.

Drooling over the forthcoming satin silver Playstation 3? Thought you had to live in Japan to enjoy its non-thumbprinty matte finish? Well not if reseller Play-Asia has anything to say about it.

The video game importer is now taking orders for the luscious silver PS3, and the price isn’t much higher than you’d pay for a standard model. The retailer expects to start shipping the new color on March 6th, for $429 USD, a $30 premium over what you’d typically spend for a stock black PS3 here in the states.

Of course, it’s a Japanese PS3, so the default menus are in Japanese (which you should be able to change), and the manual isn’t in English, either. Thankfully, the console does run on standard 110v power, and PS3 games aren’t region-locked, so you should be okay.

So if you’re willing to do a little grey-market importing, check out Play-Asia’s silver PS3 product page. If you’d like to grab a matching Dual Shock 3 controller, they’ve got those too.

The latest Nintendo DS game to hit the streets in Japan isn’t some exciting new Mario or Metroid game. Nope, it’s Bimoji Training — the game that teaches you how to draw calligraphic lettering (in Japanese, of course).

Also known as Beautiful Letter Training, the game trains you in the proper creation of Kanji and Kana characters. The coolest thing about the game is the included stylus, that looks like a traditional Japanese lettering brush.

With the game’s emphasis on taking tests and getting feedback from your virtual teacher, I’d have to say it looks more like education than entertainment. But with more and more personal development games like Brain Age, Flash Focus and Wii Fit, it’s really not that offbeat when compared to other stuff coming out of Nintendo these days.

Bimoji Training was just released on March 13, and can be ordered from game importer Play-Asia for $39. I just want it for the stylus.

For those of you out there who never played the 1989 Japanese game Zero Wing, “All your base are belong to us” might not mean anything (not like it made much sense even if you did play it).

Then again, the awesomely bad Engrish phrase has permeated geek culture for quite some time now, so if you’re not familiar with it by now, you’ve been living under a rock for the last 7 years. Now you can use the phrase to stake your claim on anything that’ll hold ink with this fun rubber stamp.

Designed with an appropriately retro bitmap typeface, the stamp was created by Etsy artist Terbearco, hidden between the artist’s stamps of bunny rabbits and birdies. (Also found in the artist’s collection, the F.U. stamp, perfect for making those cute animals profane).

The AYB stamp measures about 3″ x .5″ and costs just $6.99. So if you’re ready to make your mark on every piece of paper in the office, you can grab one here.

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