Here’s a quick round-up of Red Ferret posts from the past week for those who missed them. Enjoy. Basketbuster – Firefox addon guarantees you get the best deal available – Basketbuster is another of those… T-Mobile Pulse Mini – say hello to the 99 quid Android Smartphone – T-Mobile UK has just announced… Candle Carver – Turns fruit into candles, what could go wrong – At first glance, this Candle… Open source alternatives – keeping it real in a sea…
Read MoreMonthly Archives: February 2010
FireFlys – Motion Activated Tyre Valve Stem LED Lights
Just when you think your life is chock-full of awesome, along comes something like these FireFlys. They’re inserts that screw into the valve stem of your car or bike tyre and when movement is detected, they switch on and give you cool glowing tyre rims or spokes. Three batteries inside, not sure if they’re replaceable and comes in a pack of 4 (red/green/blue/yellow) for US$6.99. Motion activated, flash automatically when the vehicle moves. Easy installment, simply screw it into the…
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Ion Pics 2 PC Photo Scanner – transfer all your attic flotsam into digitally wonderful, fast
Grab one or both of these Ion Pics 2 PC Photo Scanner thingies and you’ll be able to retrieve decades of lost history from your attic basement garage top drawer wardrobe hideaway in a flash. Designed to operate chop-chop, quickety-quick, you’ll be able to scan and digitize your prints at 5 megapixel resolution to disk or SD card at the rate of around one a second, fabulous eh? Once on disk you can then conveniently forget about them for another 10 years until tech…
Read MoreWall Painting Cell Phone Jammer – keep ’em stunned and silent
This Wall Painting Cell Phone Jammer makes us happy for the merging worlds of art and technology. Stick it on the wall and smirk as visitors to your [insert famous building here] struggle to make contact with the world at large to complain about your lack of taste. Or something. Provides jamming up to 50 metres range. Working hours? Long time. Application Area: 1) Theatres 2) Libraries 3) Museums 4) Restaurants 5) Places of Worship 6) Country Clubs 7) Hospitals…
Read MoreWire Blooms – Bird on a wire cable clips tidy up the ugly wires
Noor, isn’t this cute. These Wire Blooms cable clips will make your silly, ugly, plumbed-in wiring part of the furniture. They push or nail into plasterboard or timber and will makes things just a little bit nicer. The packet comes with 12 leaves and 1 bird and costs a song at �6.90. Wire Blooms: nail-in cable clips. Now attaching your cables to the wall can be creative experience. Set of nail-in cable clips with a difference. Makes unsightly cables come…
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Men’s Housework Timer – chauvinist maybe, funny probably…
The Men’s Housework Timer is designed to encourage the male of the species to slouch into the kitchen and do their fair share of the work. Flip the timer upside down as they start donning the yellow glovies and they keep going till it runs out of sand. Smart idea. £6.99. [Psst…small thing. The thing has been calibrated to last precisely 3 seconds! Don’t tell] We can all picture the scene; (Man) is comfortably sitting on the sofa, mug of…
Read MoreVehicle Pitch and Roll Landmeter Inclinometer – Keeps you off the straight and level
Now you can pretend you’re in the Paris-to-Dakar while you’re on the way to the supermarket with this aftermarket Vehicle Pitch and Roll Landmeter Inclinometer. It has a backlight that’s powered via the cigarette lighter socket and it tells you when you’re pointing up, down or wherever. It even has a lovely fake walnut finish to match the Land Rover. US$17.69 # Car Inclinometer indicate pitch and roll in rough terrain. # Excellent for OFF-ROADERS. # Orange light Illuminated display…
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Halfdone Unknown Devices – freeware identifies those naughty unknown devices on your PC
This Halfdone Unknown Devices freeware gets our vote as a pretty useful utility to have in the toolchest. Fire it up and it will scan your computer for devices and let you know what they are, so you can take appropriate action. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of one of those naff yellow question marks in Device Manager you’ll be grateful for this puppy. Hey, it’ll even give you the Product Key used for your version of…
Read MoreOpen Source software destroys capitalism – according to the music and movie industry
[photo] Apparently the International Intellectual Property Alliance [site down right now – cache], which is an organisation representing entertainment cartels like the movie and music industries, is lobbying the US government to declare that countries which promote free open source software are ‘enemies of capitalism’. The way they’re doing this is to request that these countries be put on a Special 310 trade watchlist, which identifies nations as anti-capitalism. Brazil, Indonesia and India are singled out for this amazing claim, and no doubt pretty soon…
Read MoreCartDesk Luggage Trolley – Turns spare time into productive time
This CartDesk Luggage Trolley transforms an ordinary, non-rolling computer bag into a work-anywhere flat space for your laptop. The table is height-adjustable and can support 9kg, and laptops up to 17″. And of course it even fits in aircraft overhead lockers. Pretty nifty. US$129.95 CartDesk luggage trolley converts to a desktop for your notebook computer, or to a writing surface, in seconds. The desktop can support up to 20 pounds and will easily hold a 17″ laptop computer. Create an…
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Google Moderator – harnessing the wisdom of the crowds, Google style
Google has just introduced a new service in the Google Labs called Google Moderator. Simple idea, provide a web space where anyone can post a question, idea or topic and let the public vote, comment or suggest relevant responses. There’s a big handy vote button which gives you community moderation, and there are also private moderation facilities to manage trolls etc. It’s a great idea, and the type of thing that only a company like Google would think of…
Read MoreClearSound CSC1000 Amplified FreedomTalk – Amplified home phone
New gadgets don’t always have to be about the smallest, or the most powerful or the biggest screen, sometimes they’re just about making life easier. Take this CSC1000 Amplified FreedomTalk by ClearSounds for example. Big numbers on the dial pad, handset speaker that can clean up voices and amplify them by 55dB, calling number announcement, and best of all photo buttons instead of impossible-to-remember or impossible-to-see speedials. There’s a bright orange emergency button to ring for help, built-in answering machine…
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Kidizoom Plus – Digital camera for kids
This Kidizoom Plus digital camera for kids, looks like just the ticket for a boring, rainy afternoon. Easy to hold twin grips, 256MB of storage plus up to 2GB via SD card, records movies and hooks up to a TV for big screen viewing. It even has built-in games. US$49.99 With the KidiZoom Plus, your child can become the family photographer with 4 times the fun: photos, photo editing, movies, music & games all in one! KidiZoom Plus is a…
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Big Change in the tech world – more unease about the rise and rise of web service control
Mmm…seems like we’re not the only ones getting worried about the dominance of the large online services and their control over our data. Web icon Dave Winer yesterday echoed our sentiments that the trend towards monetizing and dominating chunks of the web [direct link down, Google cache version] is leaving us all vulnerable to a potentially nasty future. The moral of the story of the Facebook patent and all the recent news from Apple and Google: Tech companies are no better or…
Read MoreTouchless Paper Towel Dispenser – hands free paper towel dispenser ensures….wait…what…?
Yep, this makes sense. A Touchless Paper Towel Dispenser which keeps your hands away from the paper towel by using an infrared sensor. Hmm…hold on, perhaps we’ve got that wrong. Four type C batteries runs it for a year. $79.95. When the dispenser’s infrared sensor is activated, it advances the roll until its optical scanner recognizes the sheet’s perforations. It then holds down the paper towel for you to tear off with one hand, preventing germs from being transferred to the unused…
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