Here at GadgetCrave, we spend a lot of time featuring cool new gadgets designed to make your life a little more convenient and entertaining. Not all gadgets provide an improvement, however. Many gadgets serve to anger and annoy their users and others around them more than they actually provide any positive function. Here’s a list of gadgets and devices that have all undoubtedly found themselves at the wrong end of a mallet or strip of asphalt countless times.

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I’ve seen a few short-sighted folks that think the wristwatch is on the verge of extinction because you can tell time with a cell phone. Unfortunately, what that shallow argument fails to address is that watches are more than just timepieces; they’re fashion accessories, statement pieces. Perhaps cell phones will replace a few $15 digital watches from Walmart, but they’ll never replace fancy, multi-thousand-dollar Swiss machines.

With that being said, some watches may need to add a little more bang for the buck to remain viable. After all, not every watch is a handcrafted, jewel-encrusted masterpiece from the Alps. So watchmakers have taken to incorporating all kinds of funky tech in order to make watches a little more attractive to consumers. Here are our favorite examples.

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If you’ve ever been around an audiophile for more than five minutes, you know that they tend to be an intense, obsessive lot. Even more obsessive than the guy that spends tens of thousands of dollars on surround speakers, acoustic tile and amplifiers is the guy that tinkers his way to a speaker company specializing in a pair or two of half-million-dollar speakers. Looks aren’t of any essence at all, and fluid, harmonious sound is the only objective. In all cases, the desire for ultimate audio pushed these manufacturers to break out of the typical tall, rectangular wood box to develop something that looks straight out of a science fiction or horror movie.

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The recent MyType study reveals iPad owners are six times more likely to be “wealthy, well-educated, power-hungry, over-achieving, sophisticated, unkind and non-altruistic 30-50 year olds,” according to MyType’s Tim Koelkebeck [via Wired].

In another (even less scientific) study conducted here at uCrave, we discovered these same iPad owners are six times more likely to be drawn to tacky, useless iPad accessories that appeal to their over-inflated sense of self.  When I showed the iCade (Think Geek’s April Fool’s Joke), to iPad owning friends – every one of them expressed interest in acquiring the iPad Arcade Cabinet.  Judging from some actual iPad accessories, the fictional iCade wasn’t such a far-fetched concept.

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To those without a sense of sound, navigating the world can be a great challenge at times.  While the world is a very visual place, hearing can be a sense we often take for granted.  As we explored 10 great technologies for the blind, we have dug up 10 amazing gadgets for the hearing impaired.  From sign language translators to tactile music to closed captioning glasses, these brilliant technologies enrich life for those without a natural sense of sound.

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Probably the most persistent complaint among home theater owners is the inevitability of mating a slim, smooth flat-panel TV with a room full of big, coffin-like speakers. Or having to suffer the consequences of tinny, undynamic sound pumped out of small, dull TV speakers. It’s a problem that many companies and designers have tried to solve with slimmer speakers, in-wall speakers, speaker artwork and all other forms of gear that have failed to produce a popular solution.

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It looks like the job of mob goons is going to get much harder in the future. MIT has recently developed an experimental fabric that is capable of sensing and playing sound. The fabric is crafted from a conductive plastic ordinarily used for microphones. The fibers change shape when sound waves or electricity are applied and can be used to convert one to the other.  The material can also work in reverse, creating electricity from fabric movement.

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If you believe all the hype that Steve Jobs and Apple spit about their products, then you’d think that the iPhone 4 was a surreal piece of white magic brought to us by a pair of winged nymphs from the future. Yes, in the future, man evolves into a mystical, winged species just so that it can deliver Apple products into the past (present).

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I’m really glad that Bang & Olufsen decided to cut off the top of that picture and not show the full guitar. Because if they hadn’t, you’d have a fully-musical virtual c**k-n-balls teabagging you in the pupils. But you don’t, so thank B&O for that.

If you can manage to get past its resemblance of a smoothed-over, grey scrot-bag, you can start to see the beauty of this new B&O subwoofer. It certainly catches the attention (both good and bad) and it looks like a piece of artwork. Don’t be fooled, though; like other Bang products, the Beolab 11 is all about clean, inspiring audio.

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