neckties

Taking wearable tech to ridiculous heights is the $9.99 Piano Tie, which touts itself as instrumental, so to speak, in making you "a hit at your next party." That said, this geek accessory is actually a lot more high-tech than it looks.

Sporting touch-sensitive polyester fabric, it's capable of playing eight notes. That's a whole octave plus an extra, which should let you perform classics like Chopsticks, if not Tchaikovsky. A plastic speaker hidden in the knot outputs your tunes, though we've no idea how long two AG 13 button batteries can last. An … Read more

Father's Day is coming up Sunday and I've been trying not to do a "perfect gift for dads and grads!" post of any kind because ubiquitous rhymes make me want to shoot small, cute things in their small, cute faces. But then I came across the Pillow Tie on Geekologie, and it makes me wish I was a dad or a grad so someone would buy me one.

It's an inflatable microfiber/silk-blend necktie that goes for about $20, and that's about all. But that's all it has to be, as a simple … Read more

You may not know it, but deep within the ivory towers of hospitals a debate is raging over the future of the doctor's necktie. One company has turned the debate into an opportunity with a tie whose stain-resistant coating actually thwarts microbes.

Much evidence has emerged in recent years that doctors wearing ties might actually cause as much harm to patients as doctors who don't wash their hands. In one 2004 study of 42 doctors and medical staffers at the New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens, almost 50 percent of the neckties were host to bacteria that … Read more

The music may be horrible, but if you rub a tape head over these ties you can actually hear jumbled sound collages recorded from the NYC metro system. This is possible because the ties are 50 percent audio cassette tape.

If you have $90 to spend on one of the ties, and you are willing to sacrifice an old Walkman for the project, you can make this a fixture of your formal wardrobe. Of course, walking around with a broken Walkman asking every one to rub you with it is not recommended.

This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.

It's no surprise that the first necktie to come with a USB-powered fan built into the knot comes from Japan. Having lived in Tokyo for nearly three years, I can confirm that which you already know: Japan is technology heaven.

It's where old tech hopes to go when it dies so it can be resuscitated by an Atari 2600 fetishist, and it's where new tech hopes to be born. It's one of the few countries in the world where bleeding-edge cell phones shaped like pens and that, in fact, are pens can enjoy a limited if well-lit 15 seconds of fame.

… Read more