The Sound Bug is a clever little gizmo from Olympia that turns any flat surface (table, window, etc) into a loudspeaker. The �49.99 Bug attaches via a suction cup, is powered by 3 AAA batteries and can deliver up to 75 decibels of sound from any 3.5mm jack socket device like a personal stereo, mini-disk, MP3 player or even….gasp…a laptop. Based on a type of sonar technology which was developed to detect submarines, UK company Newlands Scientific created the material…

So when is a credit card not a credit card? Erm…when it’s a keyring attachment? This is a short article looking at the advent of new, trendy credit cards designed to be a fashion accessory rather than a mere piece of square plastic. Yeah right, so no doubt we can expect more of these gimmicky attempts to crop up over the coming months as the credit card people frantically try and lure us to their services.

Another from the ‘too much spare time’ department. See this guy had an old Apple Macintosh lying around and figured that it would be cool if he squeezed a full blown PC into it, and so he did. This is the result. A PC in sheep’s clothing you might say. Not that I’ve got anything against sheep you understand, or indeed Apples for that matter. Oh no, siree!

The folks at Infineon have come up with a range of technologies which they say will make it easy to create techno clothing or wearable electronics. The site features a jacket which has an MP3 player integrated into the fabric, with the controls on the sleeve and the headphones embedded in the collar or hood. To be honest this kind of thing tends to look better in press releases than it does sitting in your pile of dirty washing, so…

The Inventor Archives is one of those sites which is an essential bookmark for anyone who loves winning trivia arguments down at their local hostelry. It lists inventions and inventors across a whole spectrum of stuff, and more importantly lets you search by invention or inventor’s name. Did you know that the windsurfer was invented by a certain Newman Darby after watching his girlfriend Naomi sail a boat he’d made by standing up and steering it with her feet. Or…

Slaving over a hot carpet will never be the same. The Trilobite from Swedish home appliance company Electrolux is billed as the world’s first self propelling vacuum cleaner. That’s right, just press a button and sit back as this little wonder scoots around your room sucking up all the dirt and nasties as it goes. It travels at the mind numbing speed of 0.4 meters per second, and navigates using sonar (although you need to embed little magnetic strips in…

Logitech has announced that it will be shipping a new credit card sized digicam based around SmaL’s Ultra-Pocket technology. The Logitech Pocket Digital is the second camera based on this technology announced within the past two months, and shows just how the digicam market seems to be separating up into tiny consumer gizmos and true 35mm replacements. It will be priced at around $129.95 when it ships later next month. This model joins its stablemate the Eyeplate from Fujifilm, but…

The folks at TwoMobile.com have come up with a report on the new Jabra bluetooth headset for mobile phones. The Jabra Freespeak headset is a slimline unit which will cost around $99.00 when it debuts in the US in September. More interestingly, the company also plans to sell a $179.00 package which includes the headset plus a small 2.5 mm jack plug bluetooth adapter which will bluetooth enable older phones which don’t have the feature built in.

Well you can’t say that these folks haven’t got ambition. In one of the most astonishing debuts on the world music market yet, a company calling itself DieCorp Ltd has announced the Musit system.. The two components of the new service are a portable, palm sized MP3 music player which incorporates a 5GB hard disk and USB connector, plus a – wait for it – satellite connected P2P file sharing network.

So Mark Shuttleworth has got more money than you, and can get ferried up to the International Space Station as a VIP guest? So what. Now, courtesy of those nice folks at Palm you can download his Palm m125 schedule onto your own PDA and pretend that it’s you up there floating around uttering suitably impressed comments during the grand tours. Go here to get instructions. Day one: Wow, space. Wow isn’t earth small? Wow, look at the moon. Ouch,…

FakedNews.com is a great little spoof site which lets you set up authentic looking news stories from major news outlets using the name and details of your target. The result is a link which you can embed in an email to the victim which they will….ahem….take as real. They click on the link and voila, there’s a genuine looking CNN, FT.com or Cnet news report detailing their peccadillos. Ha ha ha har! OK, so it’s not going to fool a…

Shell Toys is another set of cool free Windows utilities, this time from CfiSoft. The package basically installs a whole heap of useful new functions to the right mouse button, including print folder list, shred files and view inside zip files. Looks neat and works with Windows versions from 98 to XP.

Ad Flip is a cool site which bills itself as the world’s largest archive of classic print ads. What this boils down to is a site which is crammed with six decades worth of American print advertising from magazines, newspapers and the like. It’s a fascinating collection and you can even choose to send your favourite ads off as e-cards to someone you love. Aaah!

So you thought that little box in the corner of your kitchen was just a microwave oven right? Wrong. It’s a veritable treasure chest of useful and not so useful entertainment and knowledge. The microwave experiments site goes into more detail about the power and technology behind the humble oven than you’re ever going to want to know, but it’s fascinating nonetheless. For example – the funny things to do with your microwave section. Or even the microwave FAQ section….

While we’re on the subject of Google, here’s a neat little service which lets you send a query and receive the results from Google via email. Just email [email protected] with your search query text in the subject line and bingo! you will receive an email message listing the top 10 results and URLs (plus the total found) within minutes. Sounds great for mobile phone and PDA users, as well as being a neat example of the power which has been…