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Awesome tech you can’t buy yet: Webcam covers and one-handed shoelaces

At any given moment, there are approximately a zillion crowdfunding campaigns on the web. Take a visual stroll through Kickstarter or Indiegogo, and you’ll find no shortage of weird, useless, and downright stupid projects out there — alongside some real gems. In this column, we cut through all the worthless wearables and Oculus Rift ripoffs to round up the week’s most unusual, ambitious, and exciting projects. But don’t grab your wallet just yet. Keep in mind that any crowdfunded project can fail — even the most well-intentioned. Do your homework before cutting a check for the gadget of your dreams.

QuickShoeLaces — One-handed shoe lacing system

 

Over the years, countless designers have tried to come up with a suitable alternative to the traditional shoe lacing system, but very few have gained widespread popularity. There are Velcro straps, coiler laces, Zubits, Klots, and Nike even makes a set that will automatically tighen around your foot when sensors feel your heel hit the sole. But this latest system might be the simplest and most appealing one yet.

The QuickShoeLace system, created by Slovenian designer David Knez, is notable for two reasons. Number one is that, once installed, the system allows the wearer to tie their shoes with just one hand. Number two is the fact that, despite being easier to secure than traditional shoelaces, QuickShoeLaces somehow don’t look dorky on your feet — which definitely can’t be said for most other “easy lace” solutions. Just think of all the stuff you’ll be able to do with that free hand!

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Nurugo SmartUV — Ultraviolet smartphone camera

According to the American Cancer Society, skin cancer kills one person every hour across the globe — a staggering number. Yet, despite our knowledge of the deadliness from excess sun exposure, many of us don’t make the effort to protect ourselves from it. Why? Well, part of the problem may be that it’s not really the easiest thing to see until it’s too late. But a startup by the name of Nurugo wants to change that, and has built a clever new device called SmartUV to help.

The device, dubbed the SmartUV, is a camera attachment for your smartphone that allows users to see themselves in the UV spectrum, which is invisible to the naked eye.

“If you look at your skin in UV light, you can see past the outer layer and the skin irregularities that are hidden are suddenly revealed,” the device’s creators explain. “Even if your skin looks perfect in normal light, UV light is able to reveal a surprising picture of what is actually happening.”

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Vava Dash — Accident-sensing dash cam

Dash cams are a dime a dozen these days — and for good reason. They’re arguably one of the smartest and most valuable accessories you can add to your car. In the event of an accident, dash cam footage can prove invaluable for insurance purposes, and can help settle disputes if you ever find yourself in court over something that occurred on the road. But not all dash cams are created equal.

The recently-announced Dash camera from portable speaker manufacturer Vava might just be one of the most versatile dash cams to date. The sleek unit combines 1080p HD video with a 140-degree field of vision, ensuring whatever happens to your vehicle will be captured, day and night. If a collision occurs, the Dash’s built-in G-sensor recognizes the impact and automatically saves the footage surrounding the incident.

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ISCC — Ultra thin webcam cover

One of the most unsettling revelations to come from Edward Snowden’s leak of classified documents is the NSA’s ability to hack into our webcams. Just as many people suspected, the agency has tools that allow it to take over devices, hijack microphones, snap clandestine photos, and even record videos. For this reason, its fairly common for people to put stickers and tape over their webcams when they’re not in use. But now there’s finally a better solution.

The creators of the Internet Security Camera Cover (ISCC) tout it as “the world’s thinnest, most ergonomic, and seamless mechanical webcam privacy cover.” At just 0.028-inches thick, the ISCC is thinner than a credit card, so it won’t snag on pockets or bulk up your device. It fits nicely — and looks good — on most laptops, tablets, and smartphones, without obstructing indicator lights. And, unlike many competitors, the ISCC is made of steel rather than plastic.

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Earos — Hearing protection for concertgoers

Love going to concerts, but worry that all that prolonged exposure to high-decibel sound will eventually catch up with you? It’s a tricky dilemma. If you wear hearing protection, you can’t hear the music as clearly as you would otherwise — but if you don’t wear protection, you run the risk of developing hearing disorders like tinnitus later in life. Don’t worry though. Luckily, there’s an upcoming gizmo called Earos that’s here to save the day.

In a nutshell, Earos is basically the world’s most high-tech set of earplugs. According to the company, the plugs (which are passive and require no electrical power to operate) are made of medical grade composite plastic with a passive, resonant soundbore and acoustic filter that work together to allow full frequency spectrum, high-quality sound to pass through, while simultaneously blocking out higher decibel levels for your protection.

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Drew Prindle
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Drew Prindle is an award-winning writer, editor, and storyteller who currently serves as Senior Features Editor for Digital…
Rivian set to unlock unmapped roads for Gen2 vehicles
rivian unmapped roads gen2 r1t gallery image 0

Rivian fans rejoice! Just a few weeks ago, Rivian rolled out automated, hands-off driving for its second-gen R1 vehicles with a game-changing software update. Yet, the new feature, which is only operational on mapped highways, had left many fans craving for more.
Now the company, which prides itself on listening to - and delivering on - what its customers want, didn’t wait long to signal a ‘map-free’ upgrade will be available later this year.
“One feedback we’ve heard loud and clear is that customers love [Highway Assist] but they want to use it in more places,” James Philbin, Rivian VP of autonomy, said on the podcast RivianTrackr Hangouts. “So that’s something kind of exciting we’re working on, we’re calling it internally ‘Map Free’, that we’re targeting for later this year.”
The lag between the release of Highway Assist (HWA) and Map Free automated driving gives time for the fleet of Rivian vehicles to gather ‘unique events’. These events are used to train Rivian’s offline model in the cloud before data is distilled back to individual vehicles.
As Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe explained in early March, HWA marked the very beginning of an expanding automated-driving feature set, “going from highways to surface roads, to turn-by-turn.”
For now, HWA still requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road. The system will send alerts if you drift too long without paying attention. But stay tuned—eyes-off driving is set for 2026.
It’s also part of what Rivian calls its “Giving you your time back” philosophy, the first of three pillars supporting Rivian’s vision over the next three to five years. Philbin says that philosophy is focused on “meeting drivers where they are”, as opposed to chasing full automation in the way other automakers, such as Tesla’s robotaxi, might be doing.
“We recognize a lot of people buy Rivians to go on these adventures, to have these amazing trips. They want to drive, and we want to let them drive,” Philbin says. “But there’s a lot of other driving that’s very monotonous, very boring, like on the highway. There, giving you your time back is how we can give the best experience.”
This will also eventually lead to the third pillar of Rivian’s vision, which is delivering Level 4, or high-automation vehicles: Those will offer features such as auto park or auto valet, where you can get out of your Rivian at the office, or at the airport, and it goes off and parks itself.
While not promising anything, Philbin says he believes the current Gen 2 hardware and platforms should be able to support these upcoming features.
The second pillar for Rivian is its focus on active safety features, as the EV-maker rewrote its entire autonomous vehicle (AV) system for its Gen2 models. This focus allowed Rivian’s R1T to be the only large truck in North America to get a Top Safety Pick+ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“I believe there’s a lot of innovation in the active safety space, in terms of making those features more capable and preventing more accidents,” Philbin says. “Really the goal, the north star goal, would be to have Rivian be one of the safest vehicles on the road, not only for the occupants but also for other road users.”

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Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan hit the brake on shipments to U.S. over tariffs
Range Rover Sport P400e

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced it will pause shipments of its UK-made cars to the United States this month, while it figures out how to respond to President Donald Trump's 25% tariff on imported cars.

"As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are taking some short-term actions, including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans," JLR said in a statement sent to various media.

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DeepSeek readies the next AI disruption with self-improving models
DeepSeek AI chatbot running on an iPhone.

Barely a few months ago, Wall Street’s big bet on generative AI had a moment of reckoning when DeepSeek arrived on the scene. Despite its heavily censored nature, the open source DeepSeek proved that a frontier reasoning AI model doesn’t necessarily require billions of dollars and can be pulled off on modest resources.

It quickly found commercial adoption by giants such as Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo, while the likes of Microsoft, Alibaba, and Tencent quickly gave it a spot on their platforms. Now, the buzzy Chinese company’s next target is self-improving AI models that use a looping judge-reward approach to improve themselves.

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