Following the introduction of the limited edition Leica M8 Safari we wrote about in January, the famed camera company is releasing the D-LUX 4 Safari (above). The special limited edition model will be available in August. The body of the camera features an anodized olive green surface finish which is particularly resistant to wear and guarantees long-term protection against inadvertent damage. Like all models in the Leica D-LUX 4 series, the Safari has a tough metal body manufactured exclusively from the finest materials.

The 10.1 megapixel Safari edition's technical features such as a high-performance lens and lightning-fast image processing offer versatile options for any number of photographic situations. A waterproof carrying case is included with the camera, offering ample room for optional accessories for the D-LUX 4 collection such as a handgrip, optical viewfinder or flash. Additionally, the back of the case has a compartment containing a nylon "rain cape" that can be pulled out to cover the whole case and protect it from the elements.

Nothing says summer like a nice cool glass of something sparkly. Well, now you can make anything bubbly!

The SodaStream is a DIY home carbonating machine with no electrical parts, nothing too tricky or messy, and a small splurge price of around $100. The Fountain Jet Start-Up Kit, with which I had the pleasure of experimenting, is currently on sale for $89.99 (normally $139.99) -- and it's perfect for both you and your dad for Father's Day.

How it works: You get the lightweight Fountain Jet, two BPA-free bottles, and a 110-liter Carbonator which makes approximately 110 liters of seltzer. You can select from a number of flavors for sparkling water, or buy their syrups in all kinds of varieties: cola, diet cola, root beer, orange soda, diet grapefruit, tonic, and more.

You put cold water in the bottle, then the bottle and the Carbonator in the Fountain Jet, and press the button on the top to infuse the water with seltzer. Like sparkling water? You're done. If you want soda pop, you add syrup -- which I can honestly recommend; it truly tastes like root beer, cola, or whatever it says -- and you have soda pop!

Not only is it fun to make yourself, but their syrups have no high-fructose corn syrup or aspartame, and you're also doing the planet a favor by not adding cans and bottles to landfills -- and the servings come out to pennies-per-glass.

So what's luxurious about this? You can use it on anything -- turn your whites and even reds to sparkling cocktails or make the most alcoholic gin and tonic ever (by mixing a little tonic syrup into sparkling gin). Look through the gallery to see, and click here to shop for a SodaStream.

Ulysse Nardin surprised the haute horology world a few months ago with the announcement of a luxury smart phone. I originally discussed the Ulysse Nardin Chairman here, but recently got to sit down and personally experience three of the Chairman models my self. I also got to learn a lot more about what makes the Ulysse Nardin Chairman a real luxury of a mobile phone. I got to see the blue and satin steel, the black-toned model (very sexy!), and the blue steel and rose gold (very Ulysse Nardin!). The phone is large and pleasantly hefty - I would describe it more as comfortable and solid feeling rather than intimidating.

The back piece of the watch is made of a carbon fiber plate and a black ceramic plate (mobile phone antenna radio signals do not travel through metal well). The keypad features large comfortable keys and excellent backlighting - and the screen is one large sapphire crystal. Ulysse Nardin finally confirmed that the phone's operating system will be unique to the phone rather than just a skinned version of an existing mobile phone operating system.
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Proving once again that luxury brands have no sense of humor, Cartier sued Apple over an iPhone app that displayed obvious fake watches including a version that looked like Cartier's popular Tank design. The "Fake Watch" and "Fake Watch Gold Edition" apps allowed users to show the time on " look-alike famous wristwatches" on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch. The obvious fakes used names like "Relax" for Rolex and "Carpark" for Cartier. "Fake Watch" was a free download and "Fake Watch Gold Edition" sold for 99 cents in Apple's iTunes store. No word on if Cartier sued the maker of the app, Digitopolis Game Studio.

But almost as soon as the fracas began, it was over. The Wall Street Journal reports that Cartier is withdrawing the suit that it filed earlier in the same day after the apps were removed from iTunes.

It was only a matter of time before the famed Tag Heuer Meridiist phone got a diamond make over. It is an official diamond make over too, not one of those aftermarket jobs. I am as much a fan of luxury as the next luxe lover, but what is the deal with diamonds on phones? As though a $5,000 - $8,000 phone was not enough given that it will go technologically extinct in a few years? Your future paper weight needs diamond decoration as well? Plus, nothing say's "ergonomics" quite like the jagged edges of fine cut stones against your palms and the side of your face. The Meridiist Diamant phones will likely go for between about $10,000 and $30,000.

The new phones will be known as the Meridiist Diamant collection and will come in two styles with 208 diamonds or the "imperial regalia of mobile phones" with 1232 diamonds. Tag Heuer says that the Meridiist Diamant phones will be marketed toward women, which makes sense. While very expensive, the base line of Meridiist phones is really quire cool - at leat on the outside from a construction and materials standpoint. It should be cool however to have a phone with a massive sapphire crystal as the screen. I do feel that if you are willing to make the investment, you'll be happy with the phone, at least until you want to get another phone.

Remember what I said about the phone being obsolete in a few years due to the rapid progression of mobile phone hardware and software? Well get this: Tag Heuer places the Meridiist Diamant phone in a wooden jewelry presentation box "in which to preserve and store your investment for future generations." Really? As an antique for a time capsule maybe? A mechanical watch will still be useful for "future generations, but a digital mobile phone? Imagine giving your mini cellular tower suitcase phone from the mid 1980s to a 16 year old today and gauge how "awesome" they think it will be. That is the idea.

Ariel Adams publishes the popular watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.

You might think the diamond-covered phone market had dried up in this economy but companies are still creating them. Luxury designer and jeweler Knalihs Athem has come out with their latest diamond-covered phones: The Diamond Blackberry Bold(BlackBeauty) and The Diamond Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte(SnowWhite). The custom phones can be decorated with pink, yellow, black, champagne and white diamonds and personalized with initials, lucky number, logos and anything else your heart and back account desire. Each one is a custom creation although the Nokia clearly offers more room for stones to be inlaid. The Knalihs Athem Blackberry Bold looks almost modest by comparison with its small rim of diamonds.

What better way to keep your precious electronic essentials all cozy and protected than in sleek and chic fine wool felt? Pretty much guaranteed to always stay in style, the Hard Graft High Collection is classic, simple, and beautiful functionality at its best. Featuring woolen and leather sleeves for everything from your Macbook to your iPhone to your Kindle and Moleskine, the only thing missing (in my opinion) is a choice of colors -- if only for making it easier to tell items apart if you have more than one to wrap up in felt.

The sleeve shown above is the Macbook sleeve plus the add-on pouch for €128. See the rest of the collection in the gallery below.

Via acquire

For $10,000 you can get a one-of-a-kind piece of furniture crafted from the gearbox of Ferrari's F2000 Formula 1 racecar. At the end of the 2000 racing season, the complete 7-speed gearbox was signed by Ferrari's championship-winning driver Michael Schumacher, Scuderia Ferrari Executive Director Jean Todt and Ferrari CEO Luca Cordero Di Montezemolo. It was mounted to a 18"x18" carbon wall plaque with an authentic Ferrari fender shield mounted in the middle. Performance furniture firm RaceChairs is now offering it for $10,000 with the option of having a custom lamp or table (above) completed showcasing the gearbox. RaceChairs notes that due to the espionage problems with rival teams, Scuderia Ferrari is no longer releasing these kinds of pieces to private collectors, so this is your last chance.

[RaceChairs via BornRich]

A lot of people ask me if there are devices that will help them keep their manually-wound (hand wound via the crown) mechanical watches wound, so that they don't have to wind them each day or so. Automatic mechanical watches have all sorts of winders that mimic the oscillation needed for the watches to be wound - that would occur as though you were wearing them. Automatic watch movement winders are easy to find, and devices that wind manually wound watches are more rare, and of course expensive.

Manually wound watch winders all pretty much look the same. The watch is placed into a vice like grip, and an adjustable claw of sorts is hooded over the crown. This claw is attached to an arm that spins in the right direction to wind the watch. The machine must be capable of sensing resistance so that it can stop spinning, so as not to damage the movement with over-winding.

The whole point of a watch winder is to be convenient, so that you don't have to wind the watch yourself if you are not wearing it. Thus, it is utterly ironic that the beautiful Bernard Favre Crown Winder must be manually wound itself. That's right, the Crown Winder device, is a manually wound watch winder for manually wound watches. This is starting to sound awfully ironic and perplexing. The nature of the device requires that you wind it yourself, so that it can wind your watch, itself. Yea, I don't quite get it either. Even if the power reserve in the Bernard Favre Crown Winder is longer than your watch's power reserve, it still has the same downfall. Though I don't think this is the case as I believe it has a 24 hour power reserve cycle.

The Crown Winder looks great, and I have no doubt is of a high quality commensurate with the luxury pricing, but is it just me, or did the designers completely gloss over the point of why people even want to invest in manually wound watch winders in the first place?

Ariel Adams publishes the popular watch review site aBlogtoRead.com.

Care to read your newspaper on a Kindle? Amazon has unveiled the Kindle DX (the DX stands for deluxe) that has a 9.7 inch screen with graphics (still black and white, no color). The new Kindle DX will cost $489 but as our sister blog Daily Finance reports, if you subscribe to the New York Times, Washington Post or Boston Globe, it will cost less. The exact amount less hasn't been determined yet but instead of having your paper show up on your doorstep each morning it will be waiting for you on your Kindle.

The latest Kindle has 3.3 GB of storage which can hold up to 3,500 books and there's no monthly cost for the 3G wireless access. So for there is no release date but you can pre-order on Amazon. When it does begin shipping Amazon will also launch trial programs at several universities to put textbooks on the DX this fall.

If you were to commission Louis Vuitton to create a bespoke trunk made to hold anything you desire, what would it be? Last year we wrote about Karl Lagerfeld's custom Vuitton trunk made to hold his collection of 20 iPods. Pretty cool if a little over-the-top. A Chinese gentleman has commissioned something more grandiose and yet more mundane from the famed French luxury goods house, which will produce anything within reason.

The client "wanted to be able to watch television and offer coffee to his friends wherever he traveled in the world, including the remotest desert," LV's Patrick-Louis Vuitton recounts. "We agreed to put two solar panels linked to a battery for the flat-screen TV and DVD player, two-way radio, tuner and coffee machine." The trunk (above), covered in Damier canvas, took a year and tens of thousands of dollars to complete.

Meanwhile, Vuitton creative director Marc Jacobs remarked at the Met Costume Institute Gala in New York last night that luxurious trunks are not likely to make a comeback. "I don't think there's anything practical about travelling with a trunk," Jacobs said. "Luxury travel is traveling with a toothbrush. That's it, end of story. The people who really live luxurious lives don't need to pack. They've got stuff wherever they go."

A fully armored Rolls-Royce Phantom, able to withstand everything from a direct assault with an AK-47 to a poison gas attack, is for sale in Germany via online global luxury marketplace JamesList for about $1.5 million. Engineered to the highest international protection rating, the armored Phantom is virtually indistinguishable from the standard version to lure attackers into a false sense of security.

The car features high-tech fiber composites and special steel plating to provide protection for the bodywork, with bulletproof glass for all windows and its own oxygen supply in the trunk in case of a gas attack. The ultra-luxe car's aluminum spaceframe chassis and suspension have been strengthened and the 453 hp powertrain remains unchanged, while nothing has been sacrificed in the way of luxury, refinement and comfort.

Famed French champagne house Veuve Clicquot is known for many innovative products designed to enhance the experience of enjoying their world-class wine. The latest addition is a nifty new version of their thermodynamic Ice Jacket. The high-tech isotherm sleeve is tailored to the shape of the Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label bottle and designed to keep it at the perfect temperature. The high-tech fabric with leather detailing highlights the vibrant Clicquot Yellow color. The Ice Jacket can maintain the champagne at an optimal tasting temperature for up to two hours, and it comes with a customizable leather-trimmed label as well as a leather tab at the bottle neck ensure a snug fit.

[via JustLuxe]

I'm not one to usually be very impressed with jewel-studded cell phones, because even if they're pretty to look at they always seem so gaudy and impractical to actually use. But the design of this Lady Diamond phone by Gresso seems to have a nice balance of sleek common sense and indulgent luxury. Made in a limited edition of only 8 phones (seems like an odd number...) it's basically a red version of Gresso's Skeleton Gold model with 4 tiny diamonds on the center keys. It has the same 42K sapphire crystal display and transparent back as the Skeleton Gold, but the price is significantly higher at $5500.