Wishing all the Red Ferret readers a fabulous New Year and see you again in 2009. Maybe this year we’ll start jetpacking to work or driving flying cars. You just never know. [Photo from Flickr]
Read MoreHappy New Year! – Here comes 2009
Author Archives: Dan
La Crosse BC-900 – battery charging with smarts
Rechargeable batteries are great but they’re kind of an investment especially if you buy good quality ones. I have four sets of four batteries and for that kind of cash you don’t want to ruin them with some junk charger you found in a bargain bin. The La Crosse BC-900 battery charger isn’t new, but I’ve been using one now for almost a year and I’m very impressed with it. The BC-900 is like a massager for your batteries that…
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Gin and Titonic – too soon?
Relive the glory days of the great ocean going liners, or just pour yourself another drink with the Gin and Titonic ice cube tray. Each tray makes 4 icebergs and 4 Titanics so there’s plenty to go around. Ironically a Titanic made of ice wouldn’t have sunk but I digress. Bombay and tonic thanks barman. Ice Ahoy! Gin and Titonic is guaranteed to be an unsinkable addition to your next party or boat launching. This reusable ice tray contains four…
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Happy holidays, Christmas and so on
Just wanted to wish all our lovely Red Ferret readers a fun, relaxing and safe holiday season. Thanks for making my first few months on the job lots of fun and very enlightening. I’ll still be posting the occasional article over the next couple of weeks and my normal service will resume in January. As for Nigel, well the last time I saw him he was muttering something about sun and the Maldives so I don’t know. See you all…
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MICROspikes – maximum traction action
Maintain your traction this winter with these MICROspikes slip-on spikes for your shoes. Unlike your hard-core crampons which have to be strapped and tightened to your shoes, the MICROspikes slip on easily over your boots or running shoes and will improve your grip on ice, snow or even wet rocks, concrete and scree. The rubber harness slips around your shoe securing the 10mm spikes via stainless steel chain. Might be good for cricket too, dunno about baseball though. Available in…
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Icon Mobile – high quality personal music amplifier
The Icon Mobile is a high quality headphone amplifier designed to provide better quality music from portable music players. Plug it into your MP3 player’s headphone socket, adjust the gain and you’re all set. The variable gain means it’s compatible with most earphone and headphones as well as line-level active speakers. It even has two headphone outputs so you can share your tunes with a friend, and it’s powered by an integrated Li-ion battery for 13 hours of continuous playback!…
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FX3022 Expressionist Bass – all-in-one speakers and subwoofers
In the long running battle of “what to do with the big boxy subwoofer”, Altec Lansing have come up with these gorgeous creatures. The FX3022 Expressionist Bass powered PC speakers with integrated subwoofers. Altec Lansing call it “2.2 sound”. The speakers have 1.5″ drivers while the two subwoofers have 4″ drivers that boom into the body of the enclosure, total power is 25W RMS. It has two inputs, one for the PC and one for an auxiliary source like an…
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Bagtv – a TV in a handbag
Bagtv is range of handbags featuring an integrated 7″ DVD/MP3 player and digital photo viewer. Available in range of colours and finishes, Bagtv ensures you’re never without stylish accompaniment and entertainment anywhere you go. It has 2.5 hours of battery life and you can connect it to a PC for uploading your pics and vids or plug in an SD card. Hang it on the back of the loo door and catch up on Sex and City, show off your…
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Gladinet – use cloud storage locally
There is no shortage of online storage around the internets. Yeah it’s a great idea and you can access it anywhere, upload, download etc, but it’s browser-based and kinda clunky. Until now. Gladinet is an online storage aggregator, it allows you to use some of the most popular online storage services through your PC and mount them as virtual drives and everything is controlled through the Gladinet client (PC only). You’ll need to create accounts with Google Picasa, Skydrive or…
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Emoze – push email for people without fruity phones
If your current phone isn’t made by a fruit company chances are it doesn’t have push-email. Emoze can probably help. Emoze is a free push email service for Symbian 60 and Windows Mobile smart phones. First install the client on your handset, it’s preconfigured to play nicely with Microsoft Outlook, POP3, Lotus Domino and Groupwise and it plays nicely with Gmail, Yahoo! and Facebook straight out of the box. Enter your details and you’re all set. New emails will pop…
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iSpring – PowerPoint to Flash converter
Moving a PowerPoint presentation from one computer to another is fraught with danger, especially if it’s got multimedia or hyperlinked content. iSpring Free is a PowerPoint to Flash conversion program that bundles everything up and sticks it into Flash player for easy portability or to display presentations on the web. Retain the use of your hyperlinks and actions buttons, animations, audio and narration, embedded video and Flash movies. Best of all, it’s free. Works with PowerPoint 2000, xp, 2003 and…
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DoodleBuzz – typographic news explorer
DoodleBuzz is a new take on displaying news articles from around the internets. Choose a news item you wish to search for and make a squiggle to display relevant articles. You can then drag out the more interesting articles, explore them in detail, see where else they link to or click through to the story itself. Words don’t really do DoodleBuzz justice so go and have a play, it’s very cool and a great way to discover new angles on…
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Candy Grabber – you can’t help but help yourself
Nothing worth having comes easily as the old proverb says. The Candy Grabber enforces this by making you work for your sweets. Pop in one of the provided tokens and control the grabber forwards-and-back, up-and-down and open-and-close to grab your treat. It even has 1 minute and 15 seconds of fairground music to keep you entertained as well as canned applause when you finally demonstrate your dexterity. $US39.99 and annoyingly needs three D batteries. What are you going to…
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DNA Mini Portraits – because you’re unique, just like everyone else
A DNA Mini Portrait is a great way to tell the world “it doesn’t suck to be me”. Each portrait is a one-off picture of your DNA, unless you happen to have an identical twin, and is elegantly framed so you can show it off proudly. Simply contact DNA 11 and they’ll send you a DNA collection kit. Wipe the swab around the inside of your mouth, post it back to them with $169US and your DNA portrait will be…
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Spoonflower – design your own fabric
Spoonflower is a new webservice (is that a new word?) and etsy community that allows you to design your own patterned fabric and have it printed and delivered. It’s in beta mode at the moment and not everything’s been ironed out but it is up and running. The idea is you design a swatch or a repeating pattern that is printed across the fabric. You choose how much you want printed and they make it and ship it out to…
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