The Red Ferret Journal

This Oregon Scientific Magic Weather Forecaster is actually a tiny nano-powered robot that wakes every morning, shuffles up to the front door, opens it and takes a look outside to suss the weather situation. It then returns to your snoozing body in bed, makes you a cup of tea, delivers the morning paper and tells you to put on your snow-shoes. Now *that’s* magic. £129.99.

 The magic weather station from Oregon Scientific, where the weather icons are built into see through glass. A stunning piece of contemporary art, as well as a highly versatile weather forecaster and radio controlled clock. The perfect additon to a modern home.

Dr Timmy’s Micro Hand-Crank LED Torch is unquestionably a thing of wonder. Small, useful, everlastingly delicious and probably very hard work. But let’s not get cranky, eh? Geddit? $4.99.

  A steampunktastic flashlight that runs for as long as you’re alive to crank it * Small silver & black flashlight fastens to your keyring or the rivets on your costume * Eat food, get energy, use energy to crank the torch, receive light! * Essential for night time safety to prevent banana-motivated muggings * Each torch bears the Dr. Timmy Seal of Approval!

This Mini Donut Maker is perfect for those dreams. You know the one, where sweet, sticky consumables contain no calories, carbs or harmful additives and can be eaten safely in large quantities. Sigh. $29.99.

 Bake delicious donuts without icky frying! Mornings will never be the same once you switch on this donut machine. It’s so easy and convenient you’ll never have an excuse not to have donuts! Makes 7 mini fresh donuts in under 4 minutes. Easy to use non-stick baking tray releases donuts instantly and make clean-up a breeze.

This Magtenlight Bicycle Lighting kit provides zero battery illumination by harnessing the power of magnetism. Just clip the magnets to the wheel, attach a rather clunky generator unit to the front forks and bingo, let there be light. The generator turns at a rate of 150 RPM when the bike is travelling at 15 km/h, but the really cool thing is the fact that the lamp keeps on shining for 4 minutes after the bike has come to a halt. Perfect for staying visible at traffic lights, eh?

 The Magtenlight Company provides a revolutionary system which powers a 15 Lux superlight white LED on the front and a double RED led on the rear, with only one frictionless power generation system, constantly on, for you to see the road and to be seen by others. A constant light is best for the approaching motorists to estimate how far and how fast the bicycle is going. The system keeps illuminating the 2 LED back light for up to 4 minutes when the bike is not moving, attracting attention even at standstill.

Thanks to the nice people at Magneat, we have four of these cool earphone cord wranglers to give away to you lucky Ferret readers. Instead of the usual competition we thought we’d be a bit different and ask for your opinions.

To be in the running for a Magneat, just hit us in the comments with your all time favourite product or service and tell us why. It could be a straightforward gadget, a life tip, a computing tip or some super useful product advice that’s been passed down in your family for generations. We’ll look them over and pick the four bestest ones to share in a front page post.

You can enter as many times as you like. Oh and why not try and surprise us eh, instead of just mentioning something you’ve already read on the Ferret? The competition will close in 1 week on Friday the 12th of January, and the usual rules apply .

Tags: magneat, magneat+competition

The iRecord Pro is a simple way of recording almost anything and cramming it onto your iPhone/iPod/Zune/Blackberry/AppleTV/PSP or PC. It can do most resolutions all the way up to SD (720×480/576) at either 25 or 30fps. You can plug almost anything into it including; turntables, VCRs, CD players, DVD players, cable box or radio. You can even leave it to record programs without you being around and it can time-shift video and radio, encode video and transcode MPEG2 into H.264, have a look here for more information. Sounds very handy. US$259.99

iRecord Pro new features include direct recording to iPhone, iPod Touch, and Blackberry, plus direct recording to a PC or Mac. All this plus new timer recordings and a remote control! You simply connect iRecord Pro to your TV, DVD player, VCR, cable/satellite set-top box or any audio source, and then press one button to record directly onto your iPhone, iPod, Blackberry, USB storage device or your computer. iRecord Pro charges your iPod while connected.

Tags: gadget, irecord+pro, video+recoder, analog+to+digital+encoder

DocFetcher is a cool freeware program which gives you the power to search deep inside your documents and folders. The software supports a whole bunch of formats, ranging from .doc, .ppt and .PDF to HTML and vector graphics files, which makes it very useful for finding stuff within a large collection of files. I like the simple interface and the fact that the indexing is nice and swift, around a minute to index 200 documents.

But by far the most useful part of the prog is the ability to right mouse click on any folder in Windows Explorer to do an instant index and search on the contents. I imagine this could be very useful for people who keep a lot of PDF or DOC files on their machine and need to locate text inside the files quickly. Definitely worth a look.

 DocFetcher is an Open Source desktop search application: It allows you search the contents of documents on your computer. – You can think of it as Google for your local document repository. The application is currently available for Windows and Linux.

The Meaning of Color is an absolutely brilliant post (the first of three) from Smashing Magazine which looks at the meaning of color in terms of design. It comes with some great practical examples of the use of color in web design. If you’re involved in design or even just interested, then you really need to bookmark this and keep it for permanent reference.

 Outside the western world, red has different associations. For example, in China, red is the color of prosperity and happiness. It can also be used to attract good luck. In other eastern cultures, red is worn by brides on their wedding days. In South Africa, however, red is the color of mourning. Red is also associated with communism. Red has become the color associated with AIDS awareness in Africa due to the popularity of the [RED] campaign.

The Political Compass site helps you locate your political place in the world by asking a series of basic questions. Well some aren’t so basic, but anyway… If you’ve ever wanted to know just how far right of Attila the Hun you actually are, or feel a deep kinship with Mahatma Ghandi, now’s the time to find out for certain. Actually the finesse of the final results chart is such that you might end up rather surprised. Interesting!

You can also purchase a handy certificate after you’ve done the test, which displays your political position adorned with caricatures of famous political figures of the ages. Useful for framing and placing in plain view to point to if you get into one of those ‘you’re a fascist pig’ type arguments. Unless you are a fascist pig of course.

 The idea was developed by a political journalist with a university counselling background, assisted by a professor of social history. They’re indebted to people like Wilhelm Reich and Theodor Adorno for their ground-breaking work in this field…Remember that there’s no right, wrong or ideal response. It’s simply a measure of attitudes and inevitable human contradictions to provide a more integrated definition of where people and parties are really at.

This Flower Design Baby Monitor is what happens when webcam designers make baby monitors. The baby-end of the setup is an adjustable, clip-on, nightvision camera and microphone with a lovely flower design. It still requires AC power but it connects to the base station wirelessly over a choice of 4 channels with a range of 30m. The parent-end has a 1.5″ colour screen, speaker and an AV-Out for connection to a TV. ~US$60

This baby monitor will allow parents to see as well as hear their baby while moving around the house and is ideal for checking on the baby without waking him or her. You will have the freedom to watch TV, listen to music, entertain guests, do household chores, exercise, or sleep with the assurance that you’ll always know when your baby needs you. If the 1.5 inch screen is too small, then use the AV OUT slot to connect the monitor to a television in your bedroom or living room to spend less time worrying and more time relaxing.

Tags: gadget, chinavasion, baby+monitor, flower+design+baby+monitor, baby+monitor+with+camera

Sure, Dustbusters and other cordless mini vacuum cleaners are useful but they’re horrendously noisy and they only give you 5 minutes of vacuuming on a charge. Enter the Miele Hybrid Vacuum Cleaner (warning very painful Flash site), a home vacuum cleaner that can run on mains or battery power. The cleaner is a bag-filtered, 1,800W cleaner with a 9 levels of air cleaning, and a built-in attachment caddy around the hose base.

The lightweight Li-Ion batteries can power the vacuum for 20 minutes (it is 1,800W remember) which Miele reckon is enough to do 100 steps, 80m� or 22 small incidents. The battery recharges whenever the cleaner is plugged in, will fully recharge in 3 hours and are good for 10 years. Sounds perfect for kid-ravaged households and cleaning up the car. �770 [Via Appliancist]

The Miele Hybrid is equipped with a special engine that operates on two power sources: mains operation and battery operation. Draw with or without cable Automatic changeover without interruption of engine operation when the battery cable is disconnected with Non Stop Service

Tags: gadget, eco+gadget, hybrid, miele, hybrid+vacuum+cleaner, battery+vacuum+cleaner

Flair Hair is outrageous hair, supplied in an easy-to-apply sun-visor. There’s a few different styles and a colours and the visor is fully adjustable. Not guaranteed to make you interesting though. US$19.99

It’s not just hair when yours is not there — get stealthy with this new Camo Flair Hair visor. This fashion-forward model will keep you covered without blowing your cover. Fully adjustable.

Tags: gadget, flair+hair, fake+hair, hair+hat