Just blinkin’ in the rain

The uber-geek online retailer, a favorite of Will Wheaton and other sci-fi luminaries, last week added a couple of techie-looking umbrellas to its storefront.

ThinkGeek is based in Fairfax, Va. Like people in Boston, these guys know a thing or two about getting wet while waiting in line outside nerdy events.

The umbrellas, priced at less than $30, have substantial canopies and LED lights, so they both protect and highlight the Ghost Busters costume you plan to wear to your next convention.

The Blade Runner Style LED Umbrella is my new favorite for, as ThinkGeek’s brilliant copywriters put it, staying dry on my “walk to the noodle shop.’’

Evocative of Ridley Scott’s rain-soaked, futuristic Los Angeles, the Blade Runner umbrella has a pushbutton, light-up shaft. The umbrella comes with three button batteries that will probably outlive its fabric, if this spring’s rains are a sign of things to come.

You can order the Blade Runner umbrella with either a white LED or blue LED shaft.

ThinkGeek also offers the black Lumadot LED Umbrella, which has a canopy covered with blue fiber-optic light dots. With one click, you can get your dots blinking or switch them to an all-on, or solid, setting.

The end of the handle of the Lumadot umbrella doubles as an LED flashlight.

The Lumadot does not come with the three AAA batteries you will need to dazzle passersby.

Also this past week, ThinkGeek added two more cheap thrills, for the “Star Trek’’-obsessed: a wonderful stainless-steel Official Starfleet Hip Flask, for drinking Andoreans under the table (about $20), and a chrome-and-steel corkscrew, shaped like a Romulan Bird-of-Prey (also about $20).

Prototype

These OLED screens tougher than rest

The new manufacturing technique, demonstrated in a pilot plant this year, is inexpensive and can be adapted to making devices other than OLED screens.

OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes) are expected to make TV and computer screens even more common because they produce excellent pictures in thin, flexible formats.

Think T-shirt televisions, or clocks on socks.

But OLEDs are notoriously fragile. A drop in humidity or a bit of oxygen can doom an OLED to a very short lifetime.

Fraunhofer’s technique deposits the diodes on thin sheets of aluminum foil. It also adds a clear layer that shields the diodes against the elements, without reducing their luminosity.

The new system might also help manufacturers hedge their operations against shifting market demands.

With factories for conventional LEDs idling in Taiwan, the Fraunhofer Institutes say that in the absence of any short-term demand for OLEDs manufacturers can easily convert the OLED printing system to turn out sheets of organic solar cells and memory systems.

Correction: This article originally stated that ThinkGeek is based in Seattle. It is based in Fairfax, Va.