Ice to meet you



Forget figure-hugging jackets: the latest in cool outerwear is a jacket that lets you hug a glacier. The Glacier Embracing Suit is the brainchild of Kate Hartman, a researcher and inventor from the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, Canada.



The glacier suit is made heat-reflecting fabric and is worn over your clothes. Hartman says she came up with the idea for the jacket while researching better "glacier-human communication techniques".



"There's no social protocol for what to do when you meet a glacier," she says.



(Image: Kate Hartman)

Doughy circuitry



The Squishy Circuits project uses a Play-Doh-like substance to teach kids about electronics. The material, developed at the University of St Thomas School of Engineering in St Paul, Minnesota, comes in conducting and insulating varieties. You can find instructions on how to make it yourself here.



(Image: Sam Johnson)

Old-school typing



Do you find entering text using the touchscreen of, say, an Apple iPad a little dull and lacking in tactile feedback? Check out the USBTypewriter, a manual typewriter that plugs into tablet devices and laptops. It's built by Jack Zylkin of a group called Hive76, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.



(Image: Jack Zylkin) Advertisement

Boxing clever



What's in the box? The only way to find out is to head to the place with the coordinates shown on the lid, whereupon the box will unlock. Mikal Hart, a software engineer at Intel, calls his box an example of "reverse geocacheing" – a new spin on the game of geocacheing where players follow GPS coordinates to find hidden treasure.



(Image: Mikal Hart)

Joke clothing



The ultimate piece of clothing for pranksters, the TV-B-Gone hoodie features a zip connected to electronics that wearers can use to switch off televisions in their vicinity. The infrared LEDs that transmit the TV-deactivating signal are unobtrusively nestled among the rhinestones in the circular logo to the side of the zip.



(Image: Becky Stern)

Home time



This clock is a personalised timepiece made by the company Fluid Forms. Choose a city, and designers will build a clock (or even earrings) featuring its street map. You can also order a fruit bowl featuring the topography of your chosen area, or a ring whose shape has been "bred" into male and female versions using genetic algorithms. (Image: Fluid Forms)