10 New Gadgets to Maximize Summer Fun

Take off your jackets and buy some flip flops because summer is officially upon us. The season of white wine, bike rides, trips to the beach and rooftop BBQs means you need sunglasses, wireless tunage and cameras to capture all the fun, not to mention robotic lawnmowners and sweet new pinball machines.

Without a new iPhone announced this June, we’ve rounded up an epic list of must-have, rad gadgets for summer 2011.

Lomo LC Wide

Last month, Lomography released their Lomo LC-Wide, which continues their iconic line but adds the ability to shoot ultra-wide angle photos.The camera features a 17mm lens with 3 different shoot modes (full, square and half format) for extreme close-ups and extra-wide panoramic shots. The box includes film, an instruction book and a Lomography portrait book.

Buy it here at Lomography online or in any of their retail stores ($390).

HoodieBuddie

HoodieBuddie and InSound with HB3 Technology would be perfect for a lounge in the park or a ride on a hot subway. These hooded shirts come equipped with built-in drawstring earbuds and mp3 player connectivity through an input jack in the pocket. They’re machine washable to boot! (Just don’t put in the dryer. Electronics don’t like heat.)

Buy here ($66)

TUMI sunglasses

This season, Tumi, the premium travel brand premiered its first line of sunglasses featuring 13 new designs. My favorite style, pictured above is titled “Brooklyn.” The style incorporates the pattern and texture of Tumi’s famous ballistic nylon throughout the entire frame by way of a unique acid etching technique. This frame, like the entire collection is fitted with a custom Tumi ZR3TM Zeiss CR-39 lens. Utilizing advanced technology, it is polarized and contains a special multi-layer coatings that repel grease, smudges, water, static and dust, in addition to providing a proprietary hard coat for superior scratch-resistance.

Buy them here and in Tumi stores worldwide ($245).

Jawbone Jambox

If you’re going to get one gadget on this list for the summer, make it a Jambox. This surprisingly powerful portable speaker magically beams music via Bluetooth. It’s great for taking tunes to the park, beach or just riding around like a cool kid blasting Foster The People from your bike basket.

Buy it here ($184-$199).

GoPro Wearable HD Camera

We first featured the GoPro’s awesome abilities in our post: Video: Kite skiing feels like skydiving down a mountain. GoPro offers a line up of the world’s highest performance wearable 1080p HD video and still photo cameras. Record up to 2.5 hours on a single charge and up to 9 hours total on a 32GB SD card (not included).

Watch the device in action here:

The camera, which can fit in the palm of your hand, can also shoot automatic 5 megapixel photos at 2/5/10/30 and 60 second intervals during your activity, hands free. Press the shutter button once at the start of your activity and record up to 2.5 hours of poster-print quality photos of you and your friends surfing in Hawaii this summer.

Buy it here ($179.99-$299.99).

LawnBott-Robotic-Lawn-Mower

The LawnBott LB3210/LB3250 is like iRobot’s Roomba for your lawn. The 22 pound robotic lawn mower capable of mowing up to 3/4 of an acre right out of the box. The LawnBott LB3210/LB3250 feature “adaptive programming,” which learns the growth pattern of your lawn over time. It then automatically modifies its mowing schedule around the actual mowing needs of your lawn. This feature saves battery life and lengthens the life of the electric motors.

Buy it here (LB3210/LB3250, $3399/$3699).

TiGr: Titanium Lock

This Titanium Lock is not just as cool as your bike, it’s probably cooler than your bike. The device first started as a Kickstarter project and was successfully funded 4 days ago. According to the project site, the complete TiGr system includes a flexible Titanium bow and a compact, highly pick resistant lock cylinder. The TiGr bow has a protective coating to protect your bike and stores snugly and unobtrusively on the top tube with simple and light weight straps. The Titanium bow is flexible so that you can lock your bike to a variety of structures up to about 5 1/2” in diameter. Depending on your wheel base, rim and tire configuration, you can even lock both wheels (without removal) and frame to a structure.

Outcast Junior Wireless Outdoor Speaker

This weather-proof wireless outdoor speaker transmits signals up to 350 feet outdoors  and features an 8-inch downward firing woofer, four 3-inch high frequency drivers, and a 100-watt digital amplifier. (It can also directly connect with other audio devices using the auxiliary input/output jack.) The speaker is made of water-resistant plastic and operates up to 10 hours with a rechargeable battery pack.

Buy here ($599.99)

Hard Candy iPhone 4 Cases: Beach Collection

These superlight polycarbonate cases come in beach-inspired colors turning your iPhone 4 into the ultimate beach accessory. Hard Candy’s Superlight Beach Collection features a “pearl-escent” exterior that reminds me of seashells and will pair well with your pink seersuckers.

Buy here ($34.95)

Stern Avatar Pinball Machine

It’s got to rain eventually, right? New York City’s pinball expert Seth Porges recommended this awesome new pinball machine by Stern Pinball, Inc. made in celebration of James Cameron’s Avatar through a license with Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products. When your stuck indoors, this pinball machine will take you to the planet of Pandora on a quest to protect the Na’vi people from an invading mining colony. Staying true to the film the Avatar Pinball machine features a 3-D backglass with speech and sound effects from the movie and an original voiceover by Stephen Lang, who plays Colonel Miles Quaritch.

Buy it here ($5,399)

Leica V-LUX 30 Camera

Leicas can cost a killing. But this one is under $700 and comes with the sorts of features people have come to expect.The V-Lux 30 offers a 16x optical zoom, 14.1 MP sensor and a 3D mode. Other stand-out specs include a 3″ touch screen display, GPS photo tagging and full manual controls. All this inside quite a slight frame makes for the perfect summer camera. In the meantime, we’re still patiently waiting for the day we’ll be able to turn our iPhone into a Leica.

Buy it here ($655)