The Red Ferret Journal

I’ve been known to carry a cable or six whilst working out of my bag. This Bestfon 3-in-1 Dual Retractable Cable would tidy things up a bit though. It has a 2m retractable RJ45 Ethernet cable with two plugs on one side and a 1.5m male USB A to male mini USB B type on the other. Bestfon make a whole range of different types of these as well, including FireWire and RCA plugs.

RJ45 Ethernet RTC Cable / Cable Length: 2.0m / USB V2.0 AM/Mini 5PM RTC Cable / Cable Length: 1.5m / External Size: 88×96x22mm

Tags: gadget, usb, bestfon+3+in+1+dual+retractable+cable, retractable+usb+cable

This NightVision Digital Video Camera gives you unlimited power to video activities in pitch darkness. Those times when only ferral creatures wander the streets, when desperate men seek solace in hunched clusters around the slowly flickering embers of night time street fires.

With its support for SD cards (up to 75 minutes of footage) and built in LCD preview screen, you’ll be scratching around those possums and owls faster than you can say Holy Dumpster Diving, Batman. Also works in regular uplifting light. £69.95/$115.00.

The Sound Egg is an updated and technified version of the 60’s seating icon which looked great in photos and sucked as a chair. The theory is that slapping a bunch of speakers and a ‘meaty’ sub-woofer in the thing will make it suddenly hip again, especially if you paint it pink (dude) and line it with a bunch of acoustic foam.

From where we’re sitting it looks like it would probably sound great, but that pink plastic seat thing in the middle doesn’t inspire confidence in the comfort quotient. Nevertheless for audio purists who need to be bathed in sound, this is your baby. And all for a meager recession busting $1450.00. Please form an orderly queue next to the Andy Warhol bidet, thank you.

JPEG Lossless Rotator is a free program which lets you rotate your images without losing image quality. What, you mean you didn’t know that every time you rotate – or indeed edit – a JPG file it loses quality? Tsk!

Anyhoo, this software accomplishes its magic by doing some kind of ‘block’ transformation, whatever that means. It’s available in 24 different languages, comes with hotkey support (e.g. r for rotate right etc) and Windows Explorer integration for all your right mouse click enjoyment. Cool product for the toolbox. Oh, do remember to take a copy of the photo first, because the program overwrites the original.

Files24 is a new twist on an old tale. A BitTorrent search engine which aims to make the whole file search much more consumer friendly and less geek. How? By placing lots of colourful icons all over the place, adding artwork cover graphics alongside file names and otherwise giving the whole P2P room a bit of a spring clean. It’s interesting because this is probably the future of legitimate home entertainment in one way or another, even if this version is a little limited in scope.

ThinkGeek’s Zombie Shooting Gallery brings Left 4 Dead into meatspace cubeville. Use your laser gun to fend off the horde and increase your score, just don’t miss or the honeymooners get it. Need 9 AA batteries (yes nine!). US$34.99

Take aim with the included laser assault rifle and blast the zombies as they pop up from the windows of the dark mansion. Too slow and they dine on the human hostages inside.

Tags: gadget, thinkgeek, zombie+shooting+gallery, cube+toys

The Ridgeblade is a wind powered generator designed for installation on the roof of houses. The unique design of the rotor and its housing means it can harness the natural buffeting of the wind as it moves over the ridge of the house. This overcomes the main issues people seem to have with wind generators, namely the noise and the look of them.

Designed by a bunch of aeronautical and turbine engineers in North Yorkshire, the Ridgeblade has just won the Dutch Postcode Lottery Green Challenge. With the �500,000 prize money helping them, the Power Collective hope to launch the Ridgeblade by early 2010.

RidgeBlade addresses the issues associated with traditional micro-wind generation technologies. The unique design means it can reliably produce electricity in low or variable wind conditions whilst creating very little visual impact. This means that it is suitable for locations including urban houses, rural buildings and environmentally-sensitive sites such as National Parks.

Tags: gadget, ridgeblade, wind+power+generator, wind+turbine

The Audio-Technica AT355ST is an inline 3.5 mm microphone that plugs in between your earphones and your PC or media player. It has a tie clip so you can keep the mic near your mouth, 60cm of cord, earphone volume control, and comes in black and white. The mic is powered by a coin/watch battery that will last for 3 weeks if you don’t switch it off. Available from AudioCubes for US$59.99.

Audio-Technica presents AT355ST/0.6 from Japan with a built-in microphone for users to record sound and voice on their audio player. Featuring a volume control allowing the music to magnify greater than the audio player can produce.

Tags: gadget, audio+technica+at355st, clip+on+microphone, audio+cubes

It seems that the Virgin Atlantic mob have decided that if they want to increase the passenger numbers then they better start recruiting from the Afraid of Flying minority/majority. What better way to do this than with the Virgin Atlantic Flying Without Fear iPhone application? The application provides flying FAQs, video based inflight explanations, relaxation exercises and tips to prepare yourself for future flights. All this help for just US$4.99 from the iTunes store. [Via the Sydney Morning Herald]

Many people suffer anxiety at the prospect of flying. These fears range from anxiety at booking a trip to complete inability to board an aircraft. Whether it is the unfamiliar aircraft, the strange noises a plane makes, or the fear of losing control, this app is designed to help people overcome their personal fears.

Tags: iphone, virgin+atlantic, self+help, fear+of+flying+iphone+app

The weird Yamaha Tenori-on is about to get a brother, the Tenori-O (for Orange). The pitch? It’s plastic, LEDs on only one side, and comes with other compromises in order to get the price down. So instead of $1000 or so, we’ll be talking, what…half price? We don’t know yet because the canny marketing team at Yamaha are not releasing prices till next month. Check the video if you don’t know what this puppy does.

This video of a Bottle Bank Arcade Machine is brilliant. Turn a bottle bank into an arcade machine with flashing lights and score tables and what happens? People recycle more bottles. Awesome, now why couldn’t we do this with all recycling banks? And it takes a VW viral site to give us the idea? Wow.

Prism from Mozilla Labs lets you convert any web application into a desktop accessible program, complete with its own icon and dedicated screen. Why would you want this? Well it makes it easier to access some types of web apps if you can use them in their own space, without having them displayed in a generic browser. Things like docs, control panels, accounting services, even web mail.

Google Chrome has this feature and I love it, I immediately made Gmail into a desktop app so I could fire up my inbox without having to run up a full web browser instance. Very cool. The Prism product is implemented as a Firefox addon, which is superb (you’ll find it under the Tools menu when it’s installed) and you can set the app to run minimised from the task bar, start automatically and display pop-up notifications. Excellent. A keeper.