Gadgets Blog

This is one of those gadgets that I kind of wish they were kidding, sadly, they aren’t.  If anyone were to see this on your table, they’d likely think you had a small child that made an attempt at some arts and crafts one afternoon.  Although despite the fact that it does look a bit ugly, it is said to be an eco-friendly table light.  Actually the people at Liquidesign wanted to come up with an eco-friendly light and that’s how they came up with the idea for this lamp.

The bag is part of an entire series of lighting.  Within that series is a pendant light as well, that is made from card and paper, as is the lamp shown here.  You can also pick up their desk lamp version of the light.  Hopefully the desk lamp version does actually point light directly at your desk.  It’s always nice to have eco-friendly lighting.  However, it being eco-friendly doesn’t exactly give the designers a free pass to stop caring about the look of the overall design.  You can purchase this Bagalight for £29.99 or about $43 from My Deco.

Source: Switched

It used to be that if you wanted a pair of colorful earphones you might be able to get them from one brand, but that’s about it.  Now other brand names are tossing in a few brightly colored options for those of us that don’t necessarily want all of our gadgets in bland colors.  Yes, black is nice and sleek as well as neutral, but every so often bright red or pink is nice.  These Shure earphones come in a grand total of four different colors to choose from.

No, it’s not an overwhelming amount of color, but it is nice to have the choice to go for the blue earphones instead of the black.  These Shure earphones are from Shure’s noise-isolating range of earphones.  This range also features enhanced bass, for those that love a nice rich bass to go with their favorite tunes.  Unfortunately, these are a bit pricey, but they are a nicer set, they will cost you $99.

Source: TechDigest

The big part of the perk of owning a Shuffle is the fact that it has the handy clip for anyone that does a lot of physical activities.  However, once you get your brand new iPod Shuffle, you might not want anything to happen to it.  Despite that it has that clip, it’s still entirely possible that it could be jarred loose just depending on what it is you’re doing.  With this armband you wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not your Shuffle is secure.

When you’re not listening to your Shuffle, you won’t have a tangle mess of earbuds either.  Instead the DLO armband has a spot that can hold the earbuds in an orderly manner.  It’s made out of neoprene, that is great for resisting moisture.  It also has a front panel, which is where you can store your earbuds while they’re not in use.  These aren’t out yet, but you can expect to see them appearing in Best Buy stores as of April 5th for $19.99.

Source: Gearlog

Some of you might remember the Interactive Mirror, which allows you to try out T-shirt designs by selecting patterns on a design menu. It would appear a new online program called the Virtual Wardrobe does a similar thing.

The program is very simple, allowing you to put your head on a virtual mannequin, and then put on outfits like your body was a paper doll. You can also try on different hairstyles with colors.

Of course, most of our own bodies don’t look like mannequins. So you may wonder if the Virtual Wardrobe is giving the users an unrealistic look at what these clothes would look like on us.

The way that this technology is going is the e-fit, which involves stepping in front of a three-dimensional scanner, getting the actual measurements of your body, and the clothes are digitally painted on. This will definitely give you a more realistic look.

Of course, that leads to another question. Does anyone have a scanner that can do your entire body? I know I don’t. Perhaps some company will have to make them, and then distribute them like they were photo-booths.

That’s the problem with advancements in technology. It always appears that society isn’t ready for what new tech suddenly comes in the light.

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Chinavision has made several devices for gamers, such as the Seven-inch Nintendo Wii LCD Monitor. Now the company has come out with the Multi Platform Portable Gaming Entertainment Station.

This is Portable Gaming Station can support ROMs from NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Game Boy Advance, Neo-Geo and even selected Capcom arcade systems.

This just in! I have just been told that ROMs are illegal if they are downloaded from the Net. Okay, you probably already knew that. I’m sure there is a legitimate way to obtain your old-school video games, so use it. This blog doesn’t support illicitly obtained ROMs any more than we support illegal MP3 files downloads. By the way, this device also supports other multimedia formats such as WMVs, AVIs, MPEGs, and MP3s. More details on this product after the jump.

This Multi Platform Station has 4GB of internal memory, and there is a miniSD memory card for even more storage. It also has a 2.8 inch LCD screen with a 320 x 240 resolution screen. You can also hook up the device to an AV-out that supports NTSC or PAL in 16:9 or 4:3.

If you want in on this action, feel free to lay down about $87 at the Chinavision Web Site.

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If you have one of those garbage cans that are stored under the kitchen counter, then you have probably noticed the smell. No doubt the rats and mice have noticed that area too.

Turkish Designer Cem Tutuncuoglu has come up with a way to keep garbage from getting smelly with the Minus Frozen Garbage Container. As you may have guessed, it keeps your garbage odorless by keeping it below zero.

So how does this work? There are cooler grills located on the sides of this guy, and an electrical engine at the base. On the top of its lid is an antibacterial blue light that prevents bacteria formation.

The garbage can goes right in this Minus Frozen Garbage Container, and I wonder how difficult it will be to take it out. After all, if it does freeze, then the garbage might be a little heavy. After all, a huge percentage of garbage is water, like a human being.

I wonder if the garbage will be frozen into one big piece that is the shape of the can. If that’s how it is going to be, maybe I should keep WALL-E under my sink. Maybe it could freeze my garbage and compact in a nice cube instead of something cylindrical-shaped.

As I mentioned before, this is a concept device for now. Perhaps we are looking at a future with frozen garbage in the house? I suppose it will inevitably lead to trash thawing in the landfill.

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Trust us on this - a shoe is not just an ordinary piece of walking equipment that you wear so that you won’t end up with blisters at the end of the day after following your other half through endless miles of shopping malls. Not when your feet are treated to the wonders of the Sat Nav Shoes. Not only does each pair help you walk around comfortably without causing potential health problems, they also feature GPS technology that help guide you from postcode to postcode, making us wonder whether postmen who walk through rural areas will find this to be much more useful compared to a conventional map. How in tarnation does a pair of Sat Nav Shoes work, anyways? We were stumped initially, but thank the heavens for a pretty comprehensive product description.

The left shoe holds all the gadgetry: under the tongue (the shoe’s, not yours) you will find the control unit. Just enter your starting and destination postcodes and shazam, you’re off and walking! Just remember to look both ways (like that hedgehog says) before crossing roads. There are two ways Sat Nav Shoes give you directions. An LED DNav Bubble on the front acts as a visual guide and you’ll hear a beep when you are heading in the wrong direction. So now even Boris can find his way around City Hall in the dark! For those that don’t eat their carrots, the heel of the shoe is equipped with waterproof speakers, so you can hear the reassuring drone of ‘left, next left, right after Pancho’s Kebabs’ etc. It’s genius! But that’s not all because you can use your mobile headset and listen to instructions via Bluetooth. Ooohhhh you hear that?!

A secret compartment located in the sole of the shoe houses a couple of rechargeable AA batteries to keep it going, and with each pair going for £129.95 a pop, we personally think this is the next best thing after sliced bread.

Shave off a few seconds of your precious time (no pun intended) when it comes to grooming thanks to the new Mobile Razor Attachment that can be attached to compatible handsets, allowing you to get rid of nasty, unwanted hair wherever you are. After all, there is always the use of Bluetooth headsets or speakerphone function on most modern phones that ought to allow you to carry out your conversations prim and proper without the person on the other end of the line knowing you’re busy removing pit hair that seem to grow much faster than your lawn’s grass. The Multi-Blade Polo Frail Mobile Shaver Attachment comes with half a dozen cutting-edge blades to guarantee the closest shave possible without splitting your skin open. The £347.83 price tag might throw you off quote a bit though.

Samsung aims to spruce up your spring season with its new Blu-ray line-up that is spearheaded by the top-of-the-lone BD-P4600 player. For those who feel that they have heard of the BD-P6400 before, that’s because we first caught whiff of it at CES 2009 earlier this year. What made it stand out from the rest a couple of months ago is similar to what makes it stand out today - it comes in an extremely sophisticated design form factor, and is touted to be the slimmest in the world - thin enough to be mounted on a wall just like that super svelte Samsung LCD TV. Apart from the BD-P6400, Samsung also has a couple more Blu-ray players in the offing including the BD-P3600 and the BD-P1600 which we’ll look at in greater detail right after the jump.

Both the BD-P3600 and BD-P1600 should be available by now, with the former retailing for $399.99 while the latter is going for a hundred dollars less. According to Reid Sullivan, senior vice president of Audio/Video and Digital Imaging Marketing at Samsung Electronics America, “As a leader in technology and design innovation, we are excited to provide Blu-ray players that meet consumer demand for exceptional viewing quality and accessibility to great content. Samsung’s Blu-ray players go beyond the box, providing the flexibility to access favorite content from the latest Blu-ray discs, on-demand services, and even networked home PCs with ease.”

All three players will feature BD Live (Profile 2.0) that allows interactive content to work just fine on selected Blu-ray discs, while Bonus View (Profile 1.1) supports picture-in-picture functionality with high definition discs. Other features include full HD 1080p Blu-ray playback with DVD upscaling, complete HD soundtrack support, the ability to stream over 12,000 movies and TV episodes from various services such as Netflix and Pandora - albeit you will need a subscription in the first place, of course. The BD-P4600 and BD-P3600 are able to work wirelessly thanks to the included 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi dongle if you decide to ditch the standard wired Ethernet connection. You can pick up the BD-P4600 for $499.99. Image from Engadget.

Press Release

The next time you host a party and want to be the talk of town, how about purchasing a few of these ShotCarvers in advance? After all, they’re able to offer something most people would never have expected - shot glasses made out of fruit itself. All you need to do is insert the device into an apple, pear or other fruit, twist and remove - voila! You’ll have removed most of the innards of a fruit, offering a fair bit of space for you to pour your favorite poison within. Sure, the ShotCarver doesn’t seem to function any differently from an apple corer, but at least this $12 device ought to be more of a hit among drinkers than housewives.

Source: Craziest Gadgets

The winner of last week’s coolest gadget competition is the World’s Fastest Hard Drive.

The Fusion ioDrive Duo is according to the manufacturer, the fastest SSD solution available today, and from the looks of the specification they might be right.
The ioDrive duo comes with 160GB of storage, for the basic model, with up to 1.28TB for the top model, it has read speeds of 1.5GB per second and write speeds of 1.4GB per second.

Congrats again to Geeky Gadgets.

In second place we have the Scan Toaster: Wear your heart on your toast.

This nifty Scan Toaster will transform your plain piece of bread into an art canvass, and the best thing is, you can still eat it. Once hooked up to your PC via USB, the Scan Toaster will download the design for your piece of toast. It has the ability to download everything from the weather to the latest news headlines. What better way to catch up on the news than by biting into it as you go?

Finally in third place comes the ThumbTack - The iPod Microphone.

ThumbTack is a microphone for the Nano 4G and Touch 2G. Shaped like an ordinary thumbtack, this device plugs into the 3.5mm headphone jack and can be used as a voice recorder. Small and unintrusive, this may go well with the anticipated iPhone OS 3.0 mic applications.

Thank you to everybody who voted, submitted, commented or told a friend. The randomly drawn winner of the $50 Amazon vouchers is:

Thyago (Thyago@…), congratulations.

Thanks again everybody and good luck with the next CGOTW contest on Friday.

Want to hear about future contests first? Subscribe to our daily digest via email or RSS.

If you write for a gadget themed blog and wish to be included in next week’s contest check out the CGOTW instructions page.

There’s never a shortage of people preferring their gadgets complicated and with lots of built-in features.  After all, it does make things more convenient, since that’s one less thing you’ll have to deal with.  However, sometimes it’s nice to keep things simple, instead of overloading your gadgets with things that you often never use.  In some cases the added extras aren’t quite as well done when they’re combined with another gadget.  This fan from Elecom is anything but complicated.

Just plug it into your USB port and it’s all powered up.  Of course, that means one more gadget clogging up your USB ports, so you might need to start utilizing a hub if you want to keep this plugged in.  The speed of the fan can be adjusted to what is comfortable for you.  Although you might not get much use out of a fan right now since it’s only early spring.  Soon the days will be getting hotter.  You can pick this up for Â¥1,200 or about $12.

Source: Akihabara