February 2010 - Page 13 of 16 - The Red Ferret JournalThe Red Ferret Journal

opinion piece February 5, 2010 posted by Dan

Heinz Dip & Squeeze – World peace in a sauce packet?

Crikey people. Heinz invents a new tomato sauce ketchup sachet and suddenly it’s all over the internetz with people making out that it may just cure cancer or something. Well, Down Under where I come from you always bought ketchup tomato sauce in silly little dipping containers which were completely useless for meat pies, the staple Australian food. So the boffins at Masterfoods and Conoflex Packaging came up with this little beauty, the Masterfoods Squeeze-On Tomato Sauce sachet. Snap it…

Gadgets February 5, 2010 posted by Dan

Logitech Speaker Lapdesk N700 – Good sound, cool legs

The Logitech Speaker Lapdesk N700 is a combination laptop cooler, external speakers and comfy cushion with a 10� pitch built-in so the keyboard is angled towards you. The fan and stereo speakers are USB powered, with ultra-low energy usage, there’s a comfortable mesh fabric underneath and you can use it with the fan off and it will still keep you cool. Useful, but not cheap. �69.99 The Speaker Lapdesk N700 doesn’t just sound good, it feels good. So you can…

Gadgets February 5, 2010 posted by Dan

Magneat headphone wire organiser – Hands on review

The nice people at Magneat have sent me some of these funky-looking, earphone-wrangling Magneat doohickeys to have a look at. The Magneat fastens to the front of your shirt using two strong magnets, allowing you wrap your headphone cord. This keeps the cord in place and stop it catching on train seats, bus seats or small furry animals.

Awesome February 4, 2010 posted by Debra Atlas

Piezoelectric Rubber – A new renewable energy source?

The name may not be a household word yet, but it may soon become one. Piezoelectric Rubber is a new technology for embedding piezoelectric tech onto rubberized material which could soon be used to power mobile phones and pacemakers. These stretchable rubber sheets embedded with ceramic nano ribbons could be used to make shoes which would generate electricity while we walk or jog, and so charge our cell phones or pedometers. Or by placing this material on our chests we…

Gadgets February 4, 2010 posted by Dan

Nokia Releases Symbian OS to Open Source for Free

Ooo, what a busy week couple of weeks Nokia is having. If giving away Nokia Maps with free voice directions wasn’t causing enough upheaval. Now Wired is saying that Nokia has made the Symbian Operating System Open Source and Free starting this Thursday. Fuel, meet fire. Photo from Flickr The source code for the ten-year old Symbian platform will be completely open source and available for free starting Thursday. The transition from proprietary code to open source is the largest…

Gadgets February 4, 2010 posted by Dan

Polar Bear Bath Plug – Global warming takes a bath

This is just too cute. The Polar Bear Bath Plug, is an ordinary bath plug chained to a lonely bear sitting on an ice floe. This cute scene is actually a reminder that everything you do is ultimately killing polar bears. This is even more so if your bath is so deep that the chain isn’t long enough and poor Iorek can’t keep his head above water. Who knew baths could be so confronting? �17.37 Global warming is changing the…

Bizarre February 4, 2010 posted by Dan

Ear Wax Cleaner – Sucks out your brains

Hope you’re not eating breakfast. If you’re not, check out this you-beaut earwax cleaner. It runs on a pair of AA batteries and vacuums out all the nasty critters living in your ear. Yes. It’s a vacuum cleaner for your ears. You know what this means? There’s nothing else in the world to be invented. Sorry. This might be our last post. US$9.98 Cordless ear wax cleaner safely and easily suctions out wax. Powerful, yet gentle suction removes embedded wax…

Gadgets February 4, 2010 posted by Nigel

Demy – the kitchen safe recipe reader

The Demy is a recipe reader and digital library which comes with a touchscreen, splash resistant casing, built-in timers and converters and access to an online recipe archive of over 100,000 dishes. Enough for a weekend in other words. Priced at around $299.95. The Demy is powered by keyingredient.com, the best site on the internet for you to find, create, share and collect your recipes. Membership is free and getting started is easy. Once you have a keyingredient.com account, you can use…

Gadgets February 4, 2010 posted by Nigel

Desktop Teeth Whitener Lamp – bright light smile tight

The Desktop Teeth Whitener Lamp promises to make your teeth shinier than Donny Osmond on happy pills. Stick some gel on your pegs, point the light at your mouth for a while and voila, a smile that’ll kill a blackbird at 10 feet. Or something. $410.69/£257.74. The up-to-date cool light Desktop Teeth Whitening Lamp can convert electric energy into strong blue light. The cool blue light activates the whitening gel and oxidizes the pigment of the teeth through dentin tubes…

Gadgets February 4, 2010 posted by Dan

iLugger 24 – Carry your PC in style

iLugger make a bunch of bags designed to carry, you guessed it, iMacs, including this iLugger 24. It’s not only for Macs, it will also hold HP Touchsmart, Gateway and Cintiq all in one PCs. It’s full of pockets for bits and pieces, it’s got a water resistant exterior and fully lined with foam. US$149.9 Still lugging your iMac box with you on business? If you are doing this, then you should consider the 24″ iLugger for your iMac. No…

Gadgets February 4, 2010 posted by Nigel

Cirrus3 CR250 – the ultimate virus killing machine

This nondescript looking Cirrus3 box apparently slaughters 99.9999% of ‘pathogenic airborne and surface bacteria and viruses’. The device, which is really just a glorified air filter I guess, is designed for public areas like waiting rooms, lobbies and other places where nasty stuff spreads quickest. It comes in various sizes/capacities and costs from £4000.00 upwards. The unique technology contained in the Cirrus3 manufactures a continual stream of hydroxyl radicals that are found in abundance in the natural environment and destroy any harmful bacteria in…

Awesome February 4, 2010 posted by Nigel

Google Map Buddy – awesome freeware lets you grab the maps you need

Google Map Buddy is an excellent free program which you can use to grab any part of a Google map you may need. It’s much cooler than simply doing a rough screen capture, because you can select exactly what you need, roads, satellite or hybrid maps even, select the zoom level, and generally customise the results to your total requirements. Lovely stuff! Tags: google+map+buddy, google+maps, maps

Awesome February 4, 2010 posted by Nigel

Scientists manage to communicate direct to the brain – Dr Frank spins in grave

This BBC report on scientists communicating with brain damaged patients directly via the brain is absolutely astonishing. Apparently the boffins can now recognise patterns of thoughts and treat them as answers to questions using an MRI brain scanner. Stick a patient who is apparently in a vegetative state (i.e. completely non responsive) into a scanner, and you can ask them questions and receive answers based on what they’re thinking about. Watch the video, it’s mind-blowing. It reminds me of that…

hmm..interesting February 4, 2010 posted by Nigel

Nokia starts to cull mapping competition – forces Nav4All to cease trading

Hot on the heels of its successful roll-out of the free Ovi GPS navigation service in 10 countries – with over 1 million downloads in a week – it looks as though the Finnish giant is embarking on a campaign to destroy rival services. Popular free GPS navigation service Nav4All has just sent an email message to its 27 million customers shuttering the service after 5 years of operation. The reason? The owner of the international maps they use, Navteq (100% owned…

Gadgets February 4, 2010 posted by Dan

Twilight Umbrellas – Glow in the rain brollie

These Twilight Umbrellas have little glowing lights to brighten up your day. You can choose from; 5 colour phasing stars, inside out phasing stars or just plain blue stars. A switch on the handle controls all the action and they need 3 AAA batteries, �24.99 The original Twilight Umbrella is studded with a galaxy of tiny blue fibre optic lights, while the Colour Phasing Umbrella has fibre optics that phase (rather unsurprisingly) through five different colours. Unfortunately both of these…

Monthly Archives: February 2010