Monthly Archives: October 2006

Gadgets October 31, 2006 posted by

Instant FM – USB radio recorder

The Instant FM USB Radio Recorder. Plug it into your USB port, tune it to your local FM or favourite web station and record stuff. Lots of stuff. Not only that, but this little doohickey will separate the tracks and identify songs using Snaptune. Then you can move it all onto your portable player. I can see this being pretty handy for Podcast fanatics somehow, although I’m not sure that it’s offering anything more than software only products like Station Ripper…

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Gadgets October 31, 2006 posted by

Video Capture Telescope

The TC 245 Video Capture Telescope. Bolt a 3.1 megapixel camera onto a 60mm 45x zoom lens and you get this strange beast. Voyeur’s delight? It comes with a 2.5 inch display, an SD slot and a tripod and remote trigger cable to minimise camera shake, which leads us to believe that there’s no optical or digital anti-shake tech in the thing at all. Frankly, for $449.95, we would have expected better. But what do we know? [via Raw Feed]  Go…

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Gadgets October 31, 2006 posted by

Intempo iDS-02 Surround Sound System

The Intempo iDS-02 Surround Sound System may look like a vase of flowers with a strange stumpy rose growing on top, but it’s not. Honest. It’s some kind of audio player speaker system which, as you know, is so very hard to find nowadays. C’mon, when was the last time you saw a speaker dock for sale which could hold an iPod? There see, ages ago. Told you. Priced at around £129.00.   The compact iDS-02 surround-sound system packs in…

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Gadgets October 31, 2006 posted by

Truelite Compact LED Flashlight

The Truelite TU80 Compact Torch. The TrueLite dudes sent us one of these to play with at Ferret Towers, and one evening’s fun put half the neighbourhood in hospital. Why do you need so much light? 21 LEDs will make your hair drop out if you’re not careful. No really. Apart from that, this has got to be one of the coolest flashlights around, real aircraft grade aluminum quality. Just don’t point it at your face if you want to see…

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Free Software October 31, 2006 posted by

Grocist – stock control for your kitchen

Grocist. Billed as a barcode driven grocery list application. You scan barcodes of empty containers you’re throwing away (or recycling?) in the kitchen, and the software automatically creates a shopping list for you, using an online UPC database and laptop. I think it’s a fab idea, but it doesn’t go far enough. Why not dump the PC entirely and go straight from barcode scanner to smartphone? That way you can scan wirelessly from scanner to smartphone, and do the lookup and grocery…

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but is it art? October 31, 2006 posted by

Can Digital Actors Act?

Fascinating new technology from Pendulum Studios provides state of the art facial animation and begs the question – how long before we’ll be watching high quality digital movies as part of the mainstream Hollywood catalogue? Answers on a plastic Oscar to… Check out the video (the hands are a bit wrong though, perspective-wise). We heart Shakespeare.  A fundamental hurdle in bringing digital actors to the screen is achieving realistic facial animation. With the most recent implementations of the Vicon motion-capture system,…

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Bookmark This! October 31, 2006 posted by

Top Firefox 2 tweaks

The Top Firefox 2 Config Tweaks. What it says on the tin. Some very useful tweaks for the new version of Firefox. [via Digg]  Fear not, my friend. Here’s the deal: Firefox’s configuration is a long list of keys and values. To view this list, type about:config into the Firefox address bar. Then, enter the name of the key you want to update in the “Filter” field. The list will narrow to only the entries that match your keyword as…

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cool tech October 30, 2006 posted by

Yamaha FC-me Fuel Cell Scooter

The Yamaha FC-me Fuel Cell Scooter. Yamaha has a commercially available fuel cell scooter available? Really? Who would have thought? It sounds as if it’s in private beta, but still…  The “Yamaha Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (DMFC) System” uses a liquid methanol-water solution as its fuel, which eliminates the need for a converter and a pressurized (fuel) tank and thus makes it possible to create a lightweight system for a small vehicle requiring power in the 1 kW range without…

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Gadgets October 30, 2006 posted by

LED Scrolling Message Pen

LED Scrolling Message Pen. Perfect for surreptitiously beaming messages to a neighbouring colleague’s desk without arousing suspicion. Yeah we know it’s lame, but we just can’t think of any other purpose for having a 118 character scrolling screen on our person. Can you? Looks nice though, don’t it? £19.95 ($38.97)  The messages can be scrolled very fast or tortoise slow and can be varied in brightness all by using the three buttons on the barrel of the pen. Supplied with black ink, you’ll…

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future tech October 30, 2006 posted by

Z-Agon Video Cube – WiFi meets tiny cool

The Z-Agon Video Cube is strictly prototype level at the moment, but it’s interesting nonetheless. Each face of the cube sports a high resolution display, and it hooks up to the content via WiFi. The Japanese developers are working on a 2.5 inch screen prototype, but no idea of time frames. And no, we’re not really sure why you’d want video displayed on all six faces, maybe it’s a multi-tasking kinda thing?   Z-agon is a revolutionary video player in…

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Gadgets October 30, 2006 posted by

Croci – the cute plush green USB drive

The Croci USB Drive. He’s cute, he’s green, but unfortunately he’s only got 128 MB in his belly. Which makes the price of $44.27 quite a bargain which is not. One to put alongside the Garfield slippers, eh? [via PCMag]

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Mobile Tech October 30, 2006 posted by

Vox for Skype – mobile Skype calls redux

Vox for Skype. Clearly putting Skype on to mobile phones is now big business, since it seems that every man and his dog is trying to do it. We mentioned Fring the other day, and now there’s a product that seems to go one better, in that it can run on any mobile handset, not just a handful of 3G ones. The cool thing is that you only have to install Vox on the computer which is running Skype, no installs on the handset, hardware kludges or even…

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software October 30, 2006 posted by

No more noise!

ChatterBlocker. Plagued by a noisy office? Then you need the £11.35 ChatterBlocker program. The software uses samples of voices, music and sound effects to mask out distracting background noise and let you concentrate on getting your job done. Sounds a bit *£&£(E_£>=$%_(£*$£, really.  ChatterBlocker doesn’t “stop” noise — it reduces the intelligibility of nearby conversations to make them less distracting. This is done using auditory masking, the same psychoacoustic phenomenon exploited by MP3 and related compression algorithms. Intelligible speech is…

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reprise October 29, 2006 posted by

Ferret posts this week

Here’s a quick round-up of Ferrety posts from the past week for anyone who missed them. Enjoy. 68 bulb lamp – how bright is too bright? – The 68 Bulb LED Flashlight. Blind… Cuboglass – the TV that isn’t sure – The CuboGlass Television tries… Sound Sentinel – protecting ears everywhere – The Sound Sentinel. Stick this… USB Mirror Card Reader – USB Mirror Card Reader. You see… MediaFire – unlimited file hosting for free – MediaFire. Unlimited file hosting……

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future tech October 28, 2006 posted by

Alltunes MP3 Knob

The Alltunes MP3 Knob is an interesting design concept from Plusminus Design. The player is the volume knob. No more, no less. Attach it with a Velcro fastener or magnetic catch and you can turn anything into an MP3 player. Convinced? Yeah….  You have always been aware that your bag can play music, as well as your kettle. They just lacked a volume control and a Play button. Just attach to them our knob-view device via velcro strap or magnet…

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