Nothing livens up a party quite like declassified Cold War technology.

Originally developed by the U.S. military for underwater sonar devices, the SoundBug will turn any hard, smooth surface into a speaker. A pair of the devices on separate surfaces will produce the effect in stereo.

A little smaller than a computer mouse, the SoundBug adheres via a suction cup to your speaker of choice, for instance a window. It then plugs into a standard 3.5mm jack on your boombox, to produce sound up to 75 dbm. Not loud enough to raise the roof, but still respectable.

The device uses waves of magnetic force and a naturally-occuring crystalized form of iron called Terfenol-D to make noise. As the electromagnetic signal from your boombox arrives, it is boosted by the Soundbug's internal power (three AAA batteries), and fed to the Terfenol-D strip which vibrates in time to the music. That energy is transferred to the surface the SoundBug is attached to, and voila, a speaker you can see through.

Look for even smaller versions of the device for use with a laptop to be released in the next year.

-- Robert Myers

http://www.soundbug-us.com