If you hate notepad trackpads then get yourself one of these One Finger Mouse doohickeys. It’s got 3 buttons, two on top, the “trigger” is the third and operate the trackball with your thumb. It would be good for tight places too, you know, like cattle economy class. US$21.95. Use this newly invented alternative to standard mice or trackballs instead. The ergonomic design of this 3-button finger mouse/trackball combination is ideal for home, office, or the mobile traveler. A perfect…
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Orca Browser – the super faster Firefox?
The Orca Browser is a new free web browser based on the Mozilla code such as used in Firefox. It comes with a number of extra features you won’t find in vanilla Firefox, like online storage of bookmarks as standard, support for mouse gestures and a built in download manager. The locked in Yahoo! search box is a bit weird admittedly, but that’s not going to matter much shortly anyway, eh? But it’s the performance of the software that stands out….
Read MoreBluePlanetSMART – stylish composting
For those who take being green to the next level BluePlanetSMART – a spherical, weather-resistant blue plastic composter – takes the smell out of indoor composting. This cool looking, stylish device by Ecolosphere Inc accelerates the decomposition rate and easily rotates for aeration. The BluePlanetSMART cuts the volume of a household garbage bag by more than a third, producing high-quality fertilizer for flower and veggie gardens, lawns and houseplants. The tumbler holds 9 cf and the base stores 5 US…
Read MoreLifetone Bedside Fire Alarm Clock – bringing the emergency one pillow closer to your face
This Lifetone Bedside Fire Alarm Clock is like having your own personal faithful Labrador pup sitting by your bed at night. Just waiting to sniff a bit of smoke so he can pounce on your head, wrestle you out of the house and get featured on Oprah as the Pet Pooch of the Month. Awww.. Anyway you don’t have one of those, so you’ll have to make do with a machine which picks up your home smoke alarm screech, tweaks it up…
Read MoreGeoChirp – Find who’s Twittering what and where
Designed as a marketing and exploration tool, GeoChirp mashes Google Maps and Twitter into a gorgeous interface. It’s actually very fun just to see who’s nearby and what nonsense they’re chattering about. If it’s news you’re after, then change cities, set the number of Tweets you want to trawl through, the search radius and enter a topic. Hours of fun. If you’re a serious Twit, Twatter, Tweeter, Twitterer then login and you can reply to Tweets that appear in the…
Read MoreAnimation Station – make your own stop motion movies
The Animation Station has everything you need to join the elite and secretive world of animators. The station has a cell camera on an adjustable arm so you can shoot drawings from above or turn it sideways to make stop/go movies (maximum of 42 frames) with the included backdrops. It comes with software, USB and television connections and full instructions (doesn’t say anything about the plasticine). Now all you need is an imagination, and there I cannot help you. It’s…
Read MoreMiniature Hand Crafted Wooden MP3 Speaker Cell Phone Strap
I don’t understand cell phone charms, but if you do then this Hand crafted Wooden MP3 Player Speaker might be what you need. It’s the size of a sugar cube, needs an hour of charge via USB but it will let you rock out for 3 hours when you plug it into your music player of choice. Hey if you’re going to hang stuff off your phone, it might as well do something. If you’ve got 2 speakers and a…
Read MoreDuck Hunter – taking the video game into real space
Duck Hunter is an interesting experiment. Take a popular video game from a decade or two ago, create real live elements – i.e. an indoor flying duck and an infrared pistol – and put the two into a game package which involves shooting down the duck in mid-flight. Complete with sound effects and flapping wings. If it all gets a bit Arkansas redneck for ya, you can always discard the gun and just feed the duck batteries whenever it looks…
Read MoreSmillaEnlarger – pump up your image
SmillaEnlarger is a freeware program designed to let you magnify portions of an image. The software offers fine grained control over the expanded portion, including sharpness, dithering and the like, and it seems quite effective in improving the results. However no matter which way you cut it, the basic fact is if the information ain’t there, you’re not going to be able to improve it. Still it’s a nice little utility. SmillaEnlarger is a small graphical tool ( based on…
Read MoreScreenCastle – cool browser based no registration screencast creator
ScreenCastle is a rather nifty new zero registration screencast application which lets you create screencasts from within your web browser. In this respect it’s very similar to Screencast-o-Matic which we covered a while back, but there are some neat differences. First, the interface is cleaner and more user friendly with this service. There’s a huge friendly orange Go button for a start, which has got to be worth some points, right? Click on it and you’ll get to start the…
Read MoreFerret posts this week
Here’s a quick round-up of Red Ferret posts from the past week for those who missed them. Enjoy. Eyezone Eye Massager – cures face ache – The Eyezone Eye Massager uses… French Fry Phone – will look great with your hamburger phone – This French Fry Phone is red and… Tow-n-Stow – the trailer that converts to a cabinet – Tow n Stow is a car-towable… SmartSwipe – the clever way to shop and drop – The SmartSwipe home credit…
Read MoreToyota Partner Robots – the case of the advancing robot army
Look, I don’t mind when you show me robots playing brass instruments, or even the violin . But I do get just a tiny bit creeped out when you demonstrate an inorganic piece of metal and plastic aka a Toyota Partner Robot running in a disconcertingly human-like manner. Robots should stay out of the running game, because we all know, deep down, that it’ll just end in tears, right? Toyota’s most recent humanoid robot prototype (one of many partner robots the automotive…
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