The Mosquito Repeller Watch. $29.95. Now, a Drunk Slob @ Party Repeller Watch I can understand, but this?

There’s a Chernobyl story doing the rounds at the moment which is a pertinent reminder of the potential horrors of nuclear negligence. A couple of years ago the Ferret reported on a similar journey there by a games company which also featured some quite startling photos. The links have moved now, but here it is again at the new location. ‘Now we also know the symptoms to show you are rayed. If you feel a bitter metallic taste in the…

The Soundmatters MainStage is a single box ‘all-in-one’ surround sound system. $329.00 gets you some ‘patented Linear Magnetic Drive technology and ultra-powerful neodymium-sandwich magnets’ which apparently sound good. Oh and there’s a wireless version coming. ‘MAINstage, on the other hand, provides true high-fidelity sound while in most rooms creating a pretty convincing ambient surround effect from just one little TV set-top box. With no rear speakers, it obviously doesn�t provide a complete 360� surround, but what is does do it…

Panasonic is in the process of rolling out its DVCPRO P2 solid state recording system for professional camcorders. Press release here. The no-tape system will come at a price however. Apparently each 4GB P2 PC Card (which can store around 10 minutes of footage) will cost in the region of $2000.00. That’s around 10% of the price of the camcorder itself. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

The Sonica mobile audio upgrade provides high quality 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound for laptops or other computers. �59.00 in green folding ones. ‘Don�t have a surround sound receiver or 5.1 speakers? No problem. Sonica�s built-in TruSurround XT� technology gives you simulated surround sound over your existing powered stereo speakers. The patented TruBass� technology can even increase the perceived bass output of your existing speakers.’

Google Watch. ‘It’s not that we believe Google is evil. What we believe is that Google, Inc. is at a fork in the road, and they have some big decisions to make. This Google Watch site is trying to articulate and publicize the situation at Google, and encourage more scrutiny of their operations. By doing this, we hope to play a small part in maintaining the web as an information tool that is more useful for the masses, than it…

Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages service is brilliant. [Thanks DJ] ‘Every morning, more than 250 newspapers from around the world submit their front pages to the Newseum via the Internet…All of the front pages received that morning are then posted on the Newseum’s Web site. The full selection of each day’s front pages is available on the Web site by 9:30 a.m. daily…’

The PalmOne GPS Solution TE looks like a really nice implementation of a handheld navigation system. The box contains a Palm Tungsten E PDA, a GPS receiver module, MapSonic voice navigation software and ViaMichelin maps covering 100,000 towns in 16 Europe countries and 5 languages. Oh, and a mounting bracket for your car. Priced at 429 euros.

Sony’s new LPR 5000 [Babel] printer can produce a full colour A4 sized print in approximately 10 seconds. Sounds fast to me, and it sure looks purty too.

Peter Garner decided to use his pen drive flash memory device as a portable program vault (sort of like a people carrier without the…ahem….people). Using small software packages garnered from various locations he has managed to store a word-processor, spreadsheet, browser, email client and assorted utilities on his 32MB drive, all of which can operate in a self contained manner from the device. In the interest of research I have duplicated his work with my own 16MB drive, and managed…

You think that retailing is going to stay the same forever? Think again. Discount Watcher – ‘Discount Watcher scours the Internet, gathers, organizes and delivers the latest discounted products.’ On a minute by minute basis by the looks of it. Pricenoia – ‘we want to help people around the world check for a book’s price at all the Amazon stores, in a convenient way.’

What do you get that special paranoid someone in your life? Well how about a Special Value Kit 8 at just $155.95? ‘2 x 1/2 oz. Keychain Sprayer[s] 1 4 oz Police Home Sprayer 1 LED Personal Alarm 1 300,000 volt Stun Gun 1 500,000 volt Stun Baton There you go dear, feel better now?

Cory Bergman puts forward some very interesting ideas about media and television in this new digital age. ‘� Journalists who say weblogs aren’t journalism have just dated themselves. Wake up and smell the new millennium. � Sometime soon, a cable network will promote an overnight show for DVR viewers. “We’re on at 2am, so set your TiVo and get some sleep.”

Two rather cool mobile phone technologies being developed in Japan. How about speech recognition without the speaking part? The researchers are looking into ways of recognising what you’re saying by measuring speech muscle activity around the face. The idea is to develop phones that can ‘hear’ what you’re saying even in incredibly noisy environments when the mic fails. The second idea is to look at ways of developing three dimensional directional audio, which is really interesting. ‘But the new technology…

Here’s a small service for all those broadband surfers who miss the cutesy modem tones from dial-up days. Enjoy!