Instead of using a slow, old USB hard drive dock, keep your SATA data rate with this easily accessible SATA II HDD Mobile Rack for 3.5″ drives from Brando. Your hard drives are secure-ish behind the keylocked door, it fits any 5 1/4″ drive bay and it even has 4 rubber feet so your ham-fisted attempts at removing the drive don’t cause crashes on your other ones. Comes with 2 spare keys and it’s only US$24. SATA II Mobile Rack…
Read MoreMonthly Archives: October 2009
ToolLogic Firesteel Knife – Sharp and sparky
Speaking of things exploding, ThinkGeek has gone all analogue with this ToolLogic Firesteel Knife. Just what any self-respecting geek needs when they’re far from the familiar glow of their screens. The 3″ knife blade has an easy one-handed opening action, there’s a whistle, a hole for a lanyard and a water tight cavity. The fire starter bit makes a bevy of beautiful sparks perfect for long exposure photographs and making fires. Just be sure to pack some wood shavings, or…
Read MoreLED Gas Detector – Stops you exploding
The LED Gas Detector will keep you safe from noxious leaks. Works with the most common flammable gases including propane, butane, acetylene and natural gas. Simple LED indicator tells you what’s what. Green = Good, Red = Run! Needs 2 AA batteries and US$29.98 Lab tested to sense propane, butane, acetylene and methane (natural gas). LED indicator lights up and alarm sounds when flammable levels of gas are detected. No calibration required. Tags: gadget, led+gas+detector, household+safety
Read MoreSound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Card – upgrade your puny computer sounds and make macho
According to the blurb this Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 external sound card is positively guaranteed to blow the waxy bits out of your ear holes with its Xtreme Fidelity, CMSS 3D surround, EAX Advanced HD sound effects for games and that nice friendly volume knob. Kinda cute looking too. £54.99. Upgrade your PC or notebook to an Xtreme Fidelity Entertainment System with Creative’s USB Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Easy to install, it replaces low-quality on-board audio with high-quality connectivity…
Read MoreuPlaya Artists – do ya think your song could be a smash hit?
The new uPlaya Artists service lets you upload your own pop song to receive an evaluation of whether it could be a hit. The site uses the Hit Song Science technology which got some press a while back, to determine algorithmically whether your tune has a chance at Top 10 glory. It’s all lovely until you realise they’re also offering to help you market your song for a price, at which point the scoring feature becomes a little hmmm…… I uploaded…
Read MoreGoogle Wave Add-on For Firefox – free plugin brings Wave to your browser
I’ve been playing around with Google Wave for a few days now, and it’s definitely a fascinating piece of technology. The idea is to drag email and text communications into the 21st century by restructuring the way we chat with each other. As with all innovative tech, it’s going to take a while to see what benefit this initiative will bring to the table, but I’m tending to agree with Daniel Tenner in his view that at the very least…
Read MoreThe One Second Emergency Smartphone Stand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bnDe4ufd0k Or: Recycled Credit Card No. 1 Recycled Credit Card No. 2 Tags: 1+sec+emergency+smartphone+stand, gadget, ecological, iphone, smartphone, youtube+video
Read MoreSync Blocker USB Cable – Stops your iPhone syncing with the wrong people
You now how it is. You’re at someone’s place and your iDevice is running flat. You want to charge it but you don’t want to sync with their iTunes. What to do? Well there are probably a couple of simpler solutions or you could use this Sync Blocker USB Cable. Switch it to one side when all you want to do is charge your phone. Switch it to the other to sync and charge. Much easier than closing iTunes. US$12.99…
Read MoreNightwalker – it’s not what you think
The Nightwalker is a pedestrian safety flashlight to help keep you safe on badly lit streets or in bad weather. It has an easy to carry handle and is equipped with three sets of LED lights, including a flashing red tail light so you can be seen from behind. All the lights are LEDs and it will last 13 hours on three AA batteries. It’s even weather-sealed in case you’re caught in the rain. US$39.95 from Herrington. At Last, The…
Read MoreHelio DAB Radio – a colorful flashback to the 60’s!
For an awesome blend of color, design and technology, you can’t beat the Helio DAB Radio concept. The Helio is a DAB digital radio powered by an array of Gr�tzel solar cells. The cells provide the power and make it a very colourful addition to any room. Gr�tzel cells are dye-sensitised solar cells that can be made with organic dyes including some of the ones associated with chlorophyll and can be made in various colours. With the range of colours…
Read MoreEncrypt-Stick – Turns your computer and flash drive into a vault
Encrypt-Stick allows you to create secure vaults on your PC and uses a USB flash drive as the key. To access your documents on the PC the system needs both the special encrypted USB flash and a password so if you lose your laptop, the files on your hard drive can’t be read. If you lose your USB key, the files on it can’t be reader either so everything is safe. Just don’t lose both of them together. If you…
Read MorePhilips Wake Up Light Dock : illumination and technology in perfect harmony
This Philips Wake Up Light Dock gets our 10 points this week for cramming as much coolness as possible into a single product. Harmonious increasing intensity light alarm clock? Check. Integrated iPhone and iPod dock? Check. Recharge point and integrated iPod sound enhancer? Check. Energy saving lamp? OK already…where do we sign? $199.99. Light gradually increases for 30 minutes before your wake up time to gently prepare your body to wake up and feel more energetic at the start…
Read MoreGoogle Building Maker : recreating the world, one pixel at a time
The new online Google Building Maker is a superb idea – literally to recreate the world’s cities in 3D using Google Earth and the Sketchup program. Ooh crowdsourcing at its best, clever clever. Having played around with it, I’ve got to say that Google has definitely got it right, Sketchup and Google Earth go together like Jam and Cheese (yum…what?). The whole idea of getting bored geeks to create a 3D world is also brilliant, as it becomes less of a…
Read MoreSungworld 7″ netbook – The 73 dollar computer
Move over OLPC and make way for the ultra-cheap netbook. This Sungworld 7″ netbook is priced at 500 Yuan or roughly US$73. Don’t expect blazing specs though, it’s packing a 300MHz VIA VT8500 processor, 800 x 480 7″ screen, 128MB of RAM and 1Gb of onboard storage expandable to 16Gb via SD card. It has b/g wifi, a built-in battery and it weighs a total of 700g. Oh and it’s running Windows CE. Still 73 dollars is 73 dollars. [Via…
Read MoreEcotronic Eco Phone – Battery-free kinetic powered kids’ toys
Seems that every time you turn around there is another annoyingly noisy electronic kids’ toy requiring batteries to be replaced. The Ecotronic Eco Phone is an annoyingly noisy electronic kids’ toy with a difference – you can’t silence it by pulling the batteries out. When it goes quiet all you have to do is shake it to restore its charge. Not that any kids I know would ever shake a toy to see what noises it could make. Around �12…
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