Good Thinking

Using a laptop on a dining table might be fine now and then, but if you have additional hardware like multiple monitors, you may soon notice cable spaghetti becoming an issue. The Magnus desk from Secretlab can help keep your home workspace tidy.

When wheelchair users are traversing loose or slippery surfaces (such as snow or wet sidewalks), it would help if their chairs had knobby, grippy tires. Well, that's what the reTyre Traction system is claimed to give them, within a matter of seconds.

While most multitools are quite well-equipped, users have generally had to switch over to a whole separate tool if they wished to use a ratcheting screwdriver. Such is no longer the case, however, with the release of the Leatherman Ratchet Driver.

In many parts of the world there may not be much precipitation, but there is a fair amount of water vapor in the air – particularly at night. An experimental new device draws in that vapor, then uses it to irrigate edible plants.

When spawning fish travel through the canals of Utrecht, they're often blocked by the city's closed Weerdsluis lock. Regular citizens are now helping the fish to get through, though, using an online "fish doorbell."

It's easy for us to forget that our computers are equipped with "electronic eyes," potentially watching us at all times. Scientists are now exploring the dynamics of the relationship, with a creepy – but fully functional – human-eye-like webcam.

Lots of people love multitools, even though they usually ending up paying for and lugging around tool bits they don't need. The Goat Tools multitool is designed to address that shortcoming, as users can add or remove its tools.

As the folks at tech startup CharaChorder point out, we think in words, not letters … so why slowly type words out one letter at a time? That's where their new keyboard comes in, as it uses groupings of keys to instantly generate whole words.

Many cars are now equipped with pedestrian-detecting radar systems, but those systems can still be blocked by obstacles such as buildings or other vehicles. A new setup is intended to get around that problem, by taking the radar to the streets.

Ironically, many of the places that most require water purification have the least-developed infrastructure. That's where a new filtration device comes in, as it's activated by the sun – and it works relatively quickly.

If you worked in a dingy, windowless environment, it would be nice (and energy-efficient) if you could get natural daylight "piped in" from outside. An experimental device does exactly that, in a new compact and robust form.

It's a sad fact that many of the people who most need water filters are those who are least able to afford them. A newly demonstrated MIT technology could help, in that it uses locally sourced wood to inexpensively purify contaminated water.