The outward appearance of the Case-Mate Tank doesn’t look all that special with a thicker rubberized housing, but there’s a special protective and retractable screen cover to keep the display protected. They say that cracked screens make up 67% of damaged iPhones. I’m not sure if I like the aesthetic of the almost corrugated-looking retractable screen cover, but you can’t argue about its added utility.

In addition to its screen-cracking resistance, the Tank also meets or exceeds US DoD standards for sand, dust, shock, drop, wind, rain, and vibration. The textured polycarbonate exterior is said to be 2.5 times more impact resistant than the leading competitor. Bold claims, but the embedded video below helps back those claims. In any case, the Tank is available now for $60.

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Do you remember that scene in Twister where the man and lady tie themselves to a gas pipe with a leather belt and see the guts of a passing tornado?  Me too. But apparently that was a tad unrealistic.  In reality, you would need an American-built pickup truck, loaded down with 3,600 kilos (7,937 lbs) of steel armour — and one hell of a ballsy videographer.   Which is exactly what Sean Casey assembled. The film-maker, who has been working for eight years to capture such a fictitious clip, stripped his Ram 3500 down to the skivvy and re-dressed it with kevlar, aluminum, steel and rubber (video), complete with two metre-deep ground skewers to keep the thing in place in 350-km/h winds.

“We had to build the right tool to get what in my mind was the perfect shot,” said Casey, “and that’s a tornado coming right at you.” And he succeeded. The shot is featured in his Imax film, Tornado Alley, which is now playing in Ontario, the Netherlands, and several vistas in the U.S. “It was sheer terror in filming it, but it was sheer excitement,” said Casey. “Afterwards you felt like crying. You felt like laughing.” Casey is already starting on a vehicle similar to his current “tornado interceptor,” but capable of traipsing off-road.

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The folks at LaCie have been selling their own brand of rugged hard drives for quite some time. They can withstand all kinds of abuse while keeping your precious documents nice and safe. What if you want the same kind of ruggedness in a different drive? That’s where the LaCie Tank comes in.

It’s not a portable hard drive itself. Instead, the Tank is an IP-63 certified protective case that can wrap around most portable hard drives of the 2.5-inch variety. LaCie will obviously be happier if you choose to plunk a LaCie drive in there, but there’s no much stopping you from going with Western Digital, Seagate, or any number of other manufacturers.

The cool thing is that the LaCie Tank can also be used for other similarly-sized products, like your digital cameras, Nintendo DS, PSP Go, or whatever else you can shove in there. This could make the Tank which looks like the continous tracks of tank treads) a good choice for travel purposes, surviving random bumps and bruises your electronics may otherwise encounter along the way.

It’s currently listed on their UK site for just under 20 quid. That works out to about US$31.

[Lacie UK]

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