The Ferret is off scavenging for news and titbits for a few days. Check back on the 8th May when coverage will resume.
Read MoreMonthly Archives: April 2002
New online map service – and it’s good!
You would have thought that what with MultiMap and Mapquest and a million other map type sites, that the market was saturated, but it seems not. Into the arena boldly strides Maporama, offering maps, travel routes and the usual stuff. The shocking news is that it’s actually a neat site. It’s well laid out, the main country maps are incredibly well done and detailed and the service provides less detailed maps for a huge number of countries. To top it…
Read MoreTiny Windows games
Strictly one for the 20/20 vision brigade. The Tiny Windows Games site contains a selection of …..er….tiny Windows games. Very tiny. In some cases (e.g. the tennis) you can hardly see the court, but I suppose that’s supposed to be part of the fun. Maybe I’m getting too old! :-)
Read MoreThat’s easy for you to say, IYKWIM
Fed up with cryptic acronyms? Wish you could dazzle your friends and foes alike with your own dextrous use of these power tools? Then hurry along to the World Wide Web Acronym and Abbreviation Server. More acronyms and abbreviations than you can shake a stick at for your delectation. Enjoy. HTH.
Read MoreThe VCR fights back
The humble VCR may not be dead yet. Fighting back against the growing onslaught from PVRs like Tivo and Replay and recordable DVD, comes the NV-HVH1 video deck from Japanese giant Matsushita. This nifty little product is a standard hi-fi VHS video cassette recorder with a built in 40 GB hard disk. The hard disk will hold up to 40 hours of recorded material, and the $700.00 unit will also be able to dub between tape and disk at will….
Read MoreDa Bug is da business
The Sound Bug is a clever little gizmo from Olympia that turns any flat surface (table, window, etc) into a loudspeaker. The �49.99 Bug attaches via a suction cup, is powered by 3 AAA batteries and can deliver up to 75 decibels of sound from any 3.5mm jack socket device like a personal stereo, mini-disk, MP3 player or even….gasp…a laptop. Based on a type of sonar technology which was developed to detect submarines, UK company Newlands Scientific created the material…
Read MoreThat’ll do nicely, Sir.
So when is a credit card not a credit card? Erm…when it’s a keyring attachment? This is a short article looking at the advent of new, trendy credit cards designed to be a fashion accessory rather than a mere piece of square plastic. Yeah right, so no doubt we can expect more of these gimmicky attempts to crop up over the coming months as the credit card people frantically try and lure us to their services.
Read MoreEnd of the PC Mac wars?
Another from the ‘too much spare time’ department. See this guy had an old Apple Macintosh lying around and figured that it would be cool if he squeezed a full blown PC into it, and so he did. This is the result. A PC in sheep’s clothing you might say. Not that I’ve got anything against sheep you understand, or indeed Apples for that matter. Oh no, siree!
Read MoreDoes this make my bottom look fat?
The folks at Infineon have come up with a range of technologies which they say will make it easy to create techno clothing or wearable electronics. The site features a jacket which has an MP3 player integrated into the fabric, with the controls on the sleeve and the headphones embedded in the collar or hood. To be honest this kind of thing tends to look better in press releases than it does sitting in your pile of dirty washing, so…
Read MoreWho invented that?
The Inventor Archives is one of those sites which is an essential bookmark for anyone who loves winning trivia arguments down at their local hostelry. It lists inventions and inventors across a whole spectrum of stuff, and more importantly lets you search by invention or inventor’s name. Did you know that the windsurfer was invented by a certain Newman Darby after watching his girlfriend Naomi sail a boat he’d made by standing up and steering it with her feet. Or…
Read MoreFor the house-husband who has everything…
Slaving over a hot carpet will never be the same. The Trilobite from Swedish home appliance company Electrolux is billed as the world’s first self propelling vacuum cleaner. That’s right, just press a button and sit back as this little wonder scoots around your room sucking up all the dirt and nasties as it goes. It travels at the mind numbing speed of 0.4 meters per second, and navigates using sonar (although you need to embed little magnetic strips in…
Read MoreTiny digital cameras again…
Logitech has announced that it will be shipping a new credit card sized digicam based around SmaL’s Ultra-Pocket technology. The Logitech Pocket Digital is the second camera based on this technology announced within the past two months, and shows just how the digicam market seems to be separating up into tiny consumer gizmos and true 35mm replacements. It will be priced at around $129.95 when it ships later next month. This model joins its stablemate the Eyeplate from Fujifilm, but…
Read MoreJabra hands-free bluetooth mobile phone headset
The folks at TwoMobile.com have come up with a report on the new Jabra bluetooth headset for mobile phones. The Jabra Freespeak headset is a slimline unit which will cost around $99.00 when it debuts in the US in September. More interestingly, the company also plans to sell a $179.00 package which includes the headset plus a small 2.5 mm jack plug bluetooth adapter which will bluetooth enable older phones which don’t have the feature built in.
Read MoreMusic to DieCorp for?
Well you can’t say that these folks haven’t got ambition. In one of the most astonishing debuts on the world music market yet, a company calling itself DieCorp Ltd has announced the Musit system.. The two components of the new service are a portable, palm sized MP3 music player which incorporates a 5GB hard disk and USB connector, plus a – wait for it – satellite connected P2P file sharing network.
Read MoreBecome a virtual space tourist
So Mark Shuttleworth has got more money than you, and can get ferried up to the International Space Station as a VIP guest? So what. Now, courtesy of those nice folks at Palm you can download his Palm m125 schedule onto your own PDA and pretend that it’s you up there floating around uttering suitably impressed comments during the grand tours. Go here to get instructions. Day one: Wow, space. Wow isn’t earth small? Wow, look at the moon. Ouch,…
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