luxury

Anyone who bought this $2.5 million iPhone should consider upgrading to the latest lavish technology, the iPhone 4S Elite Gold from bling king Stuart Hughes.

Stuart Hughes already dazed the world with an $8 million iPad. The only way to top that was with a $9.4 million iPhone 4S. For that price, Stuart Hughes should be offering an iPhone 5.

This is what you get when you plunk down that chunk of your rock star salary:… Read more

Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robots are back, and they're bigger and more kick-ass than ever.

Just in time for the holidays, Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a pair of bumper cars designed to look and act much like the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robots we loved as kids. The Bionic Bopper cars feature a steel-cage cockpit where the driver can sit and use two joysticks to maneuver the robot's arms and deliver metal-crushing uppercuts to the opposing robot's head.

The cars measure 74 inches high by 59 inches wide by 62 inches deep. Each is equipped with a display in its midsection to keep tally of the score (one hit equals one point).

Three wheels underneath the 850-pound machines allow you to move forward, backward, left, and right at a breakneck speed of 3 mph, and rubber bumpers along the bottom of the vehicles ensure that the fighters are at "optimal distance for scoring." Also, prepare for some epic battles because the Bionic Boppers' gas engine promises up to five hours of continuous use. … Read more

The 2011 SEMA Show has come to a close, but I've still got an SD card full of photos of the hundreds of wild rides displayed there.

With that in mind, I've rounded up 130 photos of some of the hottest rides found on the floor of the SEMA Show. The cars have been split into four bite-size categories for quick navigation.

There were plenty of Asian imports to be found, with styles ranging from VIP to street tuner to race ready. This was the first year that I was able to check out the anime-inspired Itasha style … Read more

I've been waiting for the moment when famed Renaissance painter Raphael and an Apple product finally meet in a triumphant clash of art and design.

Sound the trumpets and cue the "Hallelujah" chorus! That day has arrived in the form of a 2011 MacBook Air slathered with 20,000 Swarovski crystals arranged as Raphael's two cherubs against a silvery background of glittering angel tears.… Read more

Finally, a gift for the posh paleontologist Apple fanboi who has everything--the iPad 2 Gold History Edition from luxury designer Stuart Hughes comes with 53 "flawless" diamonds individually set in the Apple logo; a 24-karat gold back-plate; an Ammolite front frame complete with shavings of a tyrannosaurus rex thigh bone; and one more huge, 8.5-karat flawless diamond on the front.

Owning this unique gadget will set you back a little more than 8 million dollars, but you'll want to break open that piggy bank soon, because the production run is limited to two. The price tag outdoes the previous title-holder for world's most expensive iPad--a $1.2 million diamond-encrusted offering--by a mile.

Here's a more detailed look at the specs: - 57 grams of 65 million-year-old tyrannosaurus rex thigh bone. - 750 grams of Ammolite stone, the world's oldest at 75 million years; sourced from Canada. - 16.5-karat diamonds on the back and an 8.5-karat single diamond on the front. - 2,000 grams of solid 24-karat gold.

If you don't fancy yourself a fashionista in the Jurassic style, associated site Goldstriker also offers plenty of other lavishly modified gadgets for all sorts of tastes. There's even a gold, monogrammed BlackBerry available for die-hard fans of the legendary Western Australian soccer club the Perth Glory. No word on whether that one comes with any shavings from the goalie's thigh bone.… Read more

While some technologies, such as smartphones and laptops, change by the month, others evolve at a far more glacial pace. Bathroom tech isn't an area where one expects great strides from year to year, but I couldn't ignore an invite to test Kohler's new Numi toilet. It's not every day I get asked to test-drive a commode.

The Numi is U.S. bathroom furnishing manufacturer Kohler's first big stride into a top-to-bottom high-tech toilet. While Kohler had previously introduced an attachable seat with several functions built in, the Numi is more of a complete toilet overhaul.

High-tech toilets are very popular overseas, particularly in Japan; in fact, I first used a high-tech toilet while on my honeymoon in Tokyo. Toilets with seat warmers and automatically adjusting bidets are strangely luxurious, but many times the toilets that employ them end up looking like astronaut equipment.

Comparatively, the Numi is shockingly minimal. At first glance it looks more like a piece of high-end kitchen equipment. Compact, squared-off, and glowing, it has barely any visible buttons at all on its smooth facade. Instead, the toilet's functions are controlled with a full-color touch-screen device that magnetically docks with a wall-mounted panel. … Read more

Linton Weeks' March 5 National Public Radio article, "Whatever Happened To The Audiophile?" questioned the pursuit of better sound. It was one of too many articles written by an outsider who had no idea of what he was talking about, but that didn't stop Weeks from making his case for the demise of audiophilia. Weeks spoke to the usual suspects--professors, industry spokespeople, and even an audio journalist or two--but the tone of the article was skewed. It presented audiophiles as oddities, people desperately clinging to their hi-fis, while everyone else is happily listening to music over the … Read more

We assumed everyone knew that Apple's stock earphones give only slightly better sound quality than holding a speakerphone up to your ear, but nobody tipped off the buyers at the OC Concept Store, a new luxury boutique in New York selling diamond Apple headphone covers for $10,000.

Manufactured by a New York-based company called DEOS (Defining Expression of Sound), the DEOS-604-WB set polishes your low-end Apple buds with 604 diamonds that weigh 9.5 carats, or 1.9 grams of lavish excessiveness.

Someone tell those "ORGY OF THE RICH" protesters that we have their next target.… Read more

If you are the type of person who tends to misplace those little USB thumbdrives, you might want to consider this.

LaCie introduced today a new USB thumbdrive that in no way resembles the look of a thumb; instead, the Galet USB drive looks like a pebble. "Galet," by the way, is the French way to say "pebble." But that's not the coolest thing about the drive.

According to LaCie, the Galet is hand-crafted in France. Each unit is individually plated with silver through Christofle's 150-year-old silvering process. After that, the company claims, the … Read more