Best of Spot Cool Stuff

9 Cool Home Aquariums

If your Fish Highway is not firmly secured you'll find yourself in a wet room having sushi for dinner.

Why does nearly every home aquarium have a simple round or rectangular design? As with chairs and lamps, aquariums are furnishings that can take on a variety of styles and shapes. Here are nine cool expamples:

Continue →


5 Temples & Monasteries on Perilous Cliff Sides

Spot Cool Stuff recently reviewed five towns on cliff sides where drinking and driving . . . or drinking and walking . . . or simply walking could be especially perilous.

Following up on that, here are five religious buildings—temples, shrines, monasteries and churches—built at a cliff’s edge. Gazing down at the rocky drops from these structures, and out at the magnificent vistas they offer, one can’t help but believe in God.

Continue →


7 Upside-Down Buildings

˙uʍop ǝpısdn plɹoʍ ǝɥʇ uɹnʇ ʇɐɥʇ—puɐloԀ puɐ ɐıɹʇsn∀ ‘˙∀˙S˙∩ ǝɥʇ ‘ʎuɐɯɹǝפ ‘ɐpɐuɐƆ ‘uıɐdS uı—sǝɹnʇɔnɹʇs uǝʌǝs ǝsǝɥʇ ɟo puoɟ ʎllɐıɔǝdsǝ sı ɟɟnʇS looƆ ʇodS ʎɥʍ sı ɥɔıɥM ˙ʎʇılɐǝɹ uo ǝʌıʇɔǝdsɹǝd ɹnoʎ ǝƃuɐɥɔ uɐɔ ʎǝɥʇ :ǝɹnʇɔǝʇıɥɔɹɐ puɐ lǝʌɐɹʇ ɥʇoq ɟo ʇɔǝdsɐ looɔ ǝuO

Continue →


Best of Spot Cool Stuff 2009: Unusual Hotels

There’s a soft spot in Spot Cool Stuff’s heart for unusual hotels. In a world where there are so many mediocre motels, unremarkable rooms, indifferent inns and characterless chains we love when a hotelier gets creative and offers an overnight experience that goes beyond the ordinary.

With a new year of unusual hotel exploration nearly upon us it seemed a good time to look back at the most weird, odd and downright bizarre accommodations we visited in 2009.

Continue →


Best Spot Cool Stuff Tech & Gadget 2009

What an incredible year 2009 was for gadgets and technology. Here’s a countdown of our favorite posts from the year past:

Continue →


Best Spot Cool Stuff Website Reviews of 2009

We spend nearly every day searching out cool websites. And nearly every day we are amazing at the possibilities the world wide web offers.

Our favorite website review posts from the past year:

Continue →


Best Spot Cool Stuff Travel 2009

Thank you, dear readers, for making 2009 a wonderful year for travel on Spot Cool Stuff!

2010 will be further filled with amazing trips, insider tips and unusual travel tidbits. But before planning our next adventure a look back on the travel blog posts of the year past:

Continue →


Best Spot Cool Stuff Design 2009

You heard it here first: Spot Cool Stuff plans to expand the scope of our design channel over the next year. But before getting to that here’s a look back at some of our favorite articles from 2009:

Continue →


8 Weird and Wacky Items Sold on Amazon.com

Almost everyone knows Amazon.com for its bargain deals on books and electronics. Amazon is also a good source for discount groceries. We like their DRM-free MP3 store (even more than iTunes). And we love their Amazon Kindle. But Amazon also has a surprisingly large selection items that defy categorization, from the odd to the downright wacky.

Here’s our look at some of the weirdest items for sale on Amazon and the solution they provide to some of life’s most common problems:

Continue →


Barefoot Running Shoes

Question: What’s the single best designed piece of running equipment?

Answer: It’s a pair of gear you already own—your bare feet.

Most running shoes, it turns out, do more harm than good. The problem is that these shoes are designed to “protect” your feet in a way that they weren’t meant to be. When encased in an excessively built-up running shoe the muscles, tendons and ligaments of your lower extremities will atrophy. That’s because your shoes are doing the work that your legs and feet should be doing.

The other problem with running shoes is that they encourage you to run with the wrong form. Your body is designed to run on the ball and forefront of your feet. Try going for a run barefoot and you’ll experience this yourself—your heels will barely touch the ground. In contrast, most running shoes will cause you to land on your heels in a way that won’t only slow you down but will inevitably lead to knee and back pain.

Shoes, of course, do serve a purpose. They keep your feet cleaner and drier than bare feet, not to mention being useful when there’s a sharp rock or nail under foot.

So what’s an athlete to do? Get a pair of running shoes with a design that mimics the advantages of your bare feet. Here are our two favorite:

Continue →


Vote Spot Cool Stuff for best blog
Spot Cool Stuff reviews travel destinations, tech products, music & DVDs, websites and high design items with a WOW! factor.
Unusual Hotels
Best Blu-Ray Player
Blog Jobs
Swedish
Yurts